Special needs

There's a lot about Katie Price that seems – how can I say this politely? – unreal. Her house, perched Southfork-style in the middle of a Sussex field, feels like a show home. Her hair could be a Barbie wig. Her lips and breasts clearly owe something to the wonders of cosmetic surgery, and her skin colour looks spray-on rather than sun-kissed.

But then into the room comes Harvey, Price's 10-year-old son. Harvey has complex special needs: he has autism, Prader-Willi syndrome, a genetic disorder that gives him a tendency to gain weight easily, and septo-optic dysplasia, which means he's visually impaired. And suddenly, everything that's false about Price falls away, as she pulls her boy on to her lap, gives him a kiss, and talks to him about what he's been up to and what else the family is doing that day.

What's absolutely obvious is that, when Harvey is around, Price isn't playing to the cameras (and there are two film crews in attendance on the day I visit). She just wants what's best for Harvey. "Mind that door doesn't bang!" she calls as she hears someone arriving. "Harvey can't stand it when the door bangs."

And it's that desire to get what's best for Harvey that is now pitching Price into the unlikeliest role of her life to date. She's founding a school: a special school for Harvey and other children like him. "Not in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to be starting a school," she says. "But we're planning to open in September 2013, on a site in Sevenoaks in Kent. It's going to be called the Visually Impaired Special Needs academy – it will have places for at least 20 children initially, but we hope to go up to 90 in time. And once we've got it off the ground, we hope to open more schools just like it: because we haven't got enough special needs schools in Britain, and we have to get them so that children like Harvey have the best chance in life."

School is an important part of every child's life: but, says the model-turned-businesswoman, for a special needs child like hers it has an especially crucial role. "The thing for Harvey, and others like him, is that everything has to be the same. He needs stability and continuity – if things around him are different, he finds it really difficult to cope."

All of which explains why news that Harvey's current school, Dorton House in Sevenoaks, was to close came as a huge blow. The RLSB (Royal London Society for Blind People), which runs it, says it is harder to access funding for pupils from out of the area, and also more special needs children are going to mainstream school. But that, says Price, isn't an option for Harvey. "A mainstream school couldn't deal with a child like Harvey. I knew that with Dorton closed, Harvey would have to be educated at home.

"And that made me shocked and angry, because Harvey needs to be at school. School has given a lot to his life. He's been going there since he was tiny, and we expected him to stay there right through his education."

The school has also helped to provide support for Price and her family. "You learn so much, as a parent with a special needs child, from talking to others who have a child in a similar situation. School puts us in touch with one another."

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