A school in Aboyne, Scotland, is under fire for offering two class photo day options for parents to purchase: one with the ‘complex needs’ kids included OR one without the complex needs kids. Which is pretty jaw-dropping when you remember we are living in the year 2024.

Fuming parents at Aboyne Primary School complained after being sent a link from a photography company offering them the choice of alternative photos.

Tempest Photography, one of the biggest school photography firms, said in a statement it was investigating the matter, adding that it had spoken to the photographer involved and the school, and are getting to the bottom of it.

The firm said: “We are currently investigating the situation with the school, and have no further comment.”

Mum Natalie Pinnell’s daughter Erin was included in one class photo and excluded from the other – the photography firm offered both versions of the photo for sale.

She said: “To give people the option to erase my daughter from history for the sake of optics is frankly inhumane. One of the cruelest things that I’ve ever experienced. Me and the other parents just feel devastated beyond belief. It’s actually like a physical pain, having your child removed like that. Thankfully Erin isn’t aware of it, and neither are the other pupils who were removed.”

Honestly, that’s pretty disgusting. I thought we were all about inclusivity these days? Especially in Scotland. I know that back in our day complex needs kids (or special needs as we called them then) were given their own classroom. But since then, we’ve evolved as a society to group all kids together in the same environment, where extra help is available for whoever needs it by specially licensed teachers in the classroom. Which seems to be working out fine, except for on class photo day, it seems.

Aberdeenshire Council said in a statement: “We are aware that following Aboyne Primary School’s recent school class photographs, links to purchase the pictures included images with and without complex needs provision pupils. Whilst this was not a decision taken by the school, we absolutely appreciate the distress and hurt this has caused some parents and carers and we are sincerely sorry. The issue has been taken up with the photography company directly as this is totally unacceptable.”

What next? Keep the non-binaries out of the class photo? The fat kids? Kids with acne? Seems like quite a slippery slope now that Tempest Photography have got the ball rolling. Here’s hoping they clarify their mistake and we can write it off as a bad day at the office and leave it at that.

For the schoolboy who tried to shoot his teacher ‘for saying he smelled back in class three years ago’, click HERE.