The 11-year-old gang leader

A Gisborne school is fighting to save an 11-year-old boy from a life of crime after his mother bragged he had already passed Mongrel Mob initiation tests.

The boy is said to already be running his own gang which includes some 18-year-olds.

But Awapuni School principal David Langford says he is being hampered by a lack of early intervention support for pupils with severe behavioural problems.

The boy was excluded from his first primary school in 2006, aged eight, after a series of violent incidents including bringing a baseball bat to school, crushing a pupil's hand with a chair leg, and assaulting and injuring children.

That principal, who did not want to be named, said the boy had been behaving violently since his first day at the school as a five-year-old.

The principal also said the boy's mother had recently boasted to educational professionals that her son had passed gang prospect tests.

"This is a child we are talking about who was encouraged to complete criminal acts," she said. The boy, whose father had been a Mongrel Mob leader, is known to police.

National leader John Key visited the boy's first school last week and was told about his history.

The principal said she was impressed by Key's willingness to listen to her experiences in a decile 1 school that was "bottom of the heap". Her hope was that whoever was elected on November 8 would "walk the talk".

"Early intervention would be fantastic. We're not getting that at the moment," she said.

After he was excluded from the first school, the boy remained outside the education system until earlier his year when he was enrolled in another primary school and assigned a fulltime minder a measure Langford said has cost an estimated $14,000 this year.

Langford said he enrolled the boy three weeks into the first term on the understanding he would be transferred to Auckland's Westbridge Residential School within weeks.

The specialist school caters for up to 32 pupils with significant emotional and behavioural problems.

However, Langford said there had been many delays to the paperwork and the boy had only recently been accepted.

He was now on a waiting list and it was hoped he would transfer before the end of the year.

Langford, a principal for more than 20 years, described it as "probably the most severe case in my career".

He said the boy was described by a psychiatrist as a predatory assailant several years ago and is now believed to be running his own gang, which Langford said included some members who were aged 18.

"He can be a very nice boy but he has done some pretty wicked things."

The child's father had been a Mongrel Mob leader and the boy was a product of that environment, he said.

Langford said the boy was only one of three pupils at the school of 430 students with severe behavioural problems for whom early intervention was required but often not available.

Referrals to special education services took weeks and when specialists visited often from Auckland they "confirm everything you knew a month ago".

"Meanwhile the whole school culture just goes to pieces. The delays are extremely frustrating and the whole quagmire of bureaucratic nonsense needs to be addressed.

"When schools are faced with children who have extreme behavioural problems and are significantly violent, how much do we tolerate? As a school we are left feeling it is our responsibility."

The boy's first principal said she had been left gutted by the experience of having him at her school but said until the boy's family engaged in trying to help him, nothing would change.

"He is going to be a very successful gang leader, he has amazing leadership ability and is a very bright child. But what is celebrated as success in his day-to-day life is violence."