Piano-playing son is 'treated like a prisoner' at his school

The mother of an award-winning young pianist has accused his school of treating him “like a prisoner” after she tried to excuse him from rugby lessons in case he injured his hands.

Hayley Elton, 40, herself a concert pianist, claims that her son Curtis, nine, a pupil at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School in Eltham, has now been stopped from playing football at lunchtime and has to sit on his own until her complaint has been dealt with — yet he still has to play rugby.

“Now he is like a prisoner walking in a little area. Football was never the issue. Rugby is one hundred times worse,” she said.

But the school said Ms Curtis cannot “pick and choose” which lessons her son attends.