Tory Policy on Inclusion in Education

[LadyBlaBlah]

One of my friends has a girl with Retts Syndrome who attends mainstream school. She has been in touch with her local MP about their policies on inclusion ( she is totally FOR inclusion, 100%) and she is getting very wooly answers back.

Do you guys know any more about their policies?

Just cutting and pasting a recent email from her here:

"I am extremely worried about the Conservatives education manifesto, and thought I would circulate it to those of you in my address book that have a particular interest in education. The last section of the manifesto states that the Conservatives will end the bias towards the inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream school. I met with David Rutley a few weeks ago (the Macclesfield Conservative candidate). He was not sure what this meant, but spoke to a colleague who said that the Conservatives want to give parents the choice of where to send their child to school. Many parents currently do not feel that they have a choice other than to send their disabled child to special school, as they feel that mainstream schools cannot meet their child's needs. Increasing segregated provision will only take away more resources from mainstream schools, so this really does not improve parental choice at all. I have asked David how the Conservatives plan to fund more special schools and also support inclusion at the same time, but as of yet I have not had a reply. It simply is not possible! The only way to create a truly inclusive education system is to put all the resources into mainstream schools, and give every child in this country an excellent education.

I won't go on a rant about inclusion, but most people now see that it is harmful to segregate people because of race, religion, gender, sexuality etc, but segregating people because of disability does not cause the outrage that it should!"

Anyone have anything to add /advice?

Given their addiction to choice, I doubt the Tories are going to take the choice to include in mainstream away (though it is definitely worth writing to them and clarifying).

I think it is very sad that parents are being forced to send SN kids into mainstream because all the special schools are closing.

Zapostrophe - if you read my post, you would have noticed that I put, for example, after the comment about my inability to teach a blind child; I was not commenting on the ability of a blind child to learn. Many non sighted people may indeed use technology to learn, but I had never come across it; nor do I think that my LEA had the money to provide that technology.

I know what you meant, Scary teacher, and I feel the same way. I know that I could not give my own child what he needs in my own classroom even given my own knowledge of him, BSl and his abilities. I would certainly not be able to accommodate a blind child in a way that would adequately support them in their learning. I felt that I completely failed a child with ASD who was in my class last year (he had no statement, so no extra support). It was an example - and a relevant one. People with sensory impairments need specialist equipment to access teaching and the money will not adequately cover it - whatever it is.

if your friend wants 100% inclusion in mainstream, then most schools would need to be knocked down and rebuilt. if I think fo the few primaries near me, none are wheelchair friendly(even the one ds went to that is newish in comparison)
I would hate to think any one would try to take a way the sn school option from parents, don't we have enough to contend with.
bit of topic but even modern new sn schools are not built with inclusion in mind.
the LEA want to move dd for post 16 to a local college(sn) and I am going to have to fight it. I have
looked round the college twice, and for someone who can walk it is great, but the amount of barriers they have for people in wheelchairs is ridiculous, the first thing you see when entering is 2 flights of stairs.(excuse small rant)

i have a child with SEN but with above average IQ and should have access to education.

problem is no where exists for him.

50% people will want special schools
50% want inclusive education

the ideal would be to choose whats best for your child. but cash strapped LEAs and Learning and skills councils wont fund, ironically they seem to prefer to spend money on tribunals than just fund whats needed.

mine is in college now and im still fighting the good fight. so many mainstream schools and colleges openly flout the disability discrimination laws that its gobsmacking. ive met my MP with this very issue. they really dont have an answer. there isnt one. dont vote for a party on the premise that theyll change anything - the money isnt there to do it.

VicarInaTuTu was your MP helpful?

op, can i ask how old your friend's daughter is? i'm just curious tbh. i'm guessing quite young and early stages of formal education - yr 1 or 2?

it's quite common for children to manage very well in ms for the first few years, with their experiences becoming less and less satisfactory, particularly where ld's are present. a lot of parents with very positive infant school experiences opt for special schooling for junior school/ secondary.

i'd be really interested in hearing from her if her daughter is older and they are having success with ms into secondary with a retts dx. it's a useful anecdote for me to be able to offer when asked in the future tbh!

vicar - dd2 has cp and an iq of 142. despite the ed psych report i was told she wasn't eligible for the gifted programme because she can't hand-write (she uses a lap-top).

he was nice, but not really helpful. he couldnt really do very much - i think he wrote a (weak) letter or two, but i still got nowhere.

Interesting - thanks all.

My friend's DD is in infants yes, madwoman, she is currently in Year 2.

I think the worry is that the Tories would be leaning more towards more SN schools and less towards encouraging inclusion.

see thats the thing - i would have preferred my son in a specialist educational setting than the version of inclusion he got, and is getting now at college.

inclusion in our case meant - 'there you go son - your included, now get on with it.'

inclusion is a great idea - but in practice its not working. in school my sons teachers resented their experience being questioned, they had very fixed ideas about what autism means, and were not prepared to meet me half way.

its all too half arsed. for inclusion to work then schools would HAVE to follow the SEN code of practice - which i have found in every single school i tried DS at they all flouted openly and had a "so what?" attitude.
crap.
so while 50 % of us are wanting to keep SN schools and even specialist schools, 50% like your friend want inclusive education. none of it works. they should scrap the whole bloody system and start again. the child should come first. my son was too mainstream for a special school and too special needs for mainstream. many many people i know are in the same boat. inclusion could work, but there isnt enough money in the system for training, equipment, etc.

I taught at a comp in Cornwall where we had wheelchair access, and a stannah/wheelchair lift to access the floor my classroom was on. We had a unit where those with really special needs were taught, and they were integrated into the main tutor groups for tutor time and assemblies. We had a fab SENCO who knew her stuff and fought for funding. Some of the students who had hearing problems had special microphones that the teachers had to wear, or if it was a lesson with video, then we draped it over the TV. We were given info on who was SA or SA plus; but the training we had on special needs such as ADHD, Aspergers, Dyspraxia and Autism was lacking. Our TAs did a fantastic job and invariably knew more about the special needs than did the teachers.

However, imo and ime, this was not enough. The system fails those with SN, at whatever end of the spectrum; but this cannot be addressed without sufficient funding and that is not around. SN provision also needs to be driven as others have said by what the child needs, and not by the prevailing orthodoxy of either everyone mainstream, or everyone in SN schools. If a child is doing well in mainstream at primary, then that is great; but take that child from a small primary and place him/her into a large noisy comp, and you may see that the situation changes, especially as lessons are taught my specialist teachers, not the same person all day. Some kids I only saw for an hour a week; how could I hope to give them, plus the other 29/31 in the class the attention and support they needed for that time?

Vicar would your child have nbefitted from opne like ds3 attends I wonder, where a child can access as much MS as they are able but there is always a specilasist base and they take a ta into ms with them?

Our LEA is good as lea's go and we have mostly those units with one very severe unit and otherwise MS or there is a specilaist asd unit but everyone tells me it is so much demand that it has been able to take only the most severely affected % of candidates and as such a good deal of children are then left uncatered for still.

Had the school had any verbal children ds3 would attend that school but he was just elarning to talk when he transferred at 5.5.

I agree that the ones in the early years of school do better in MS- I was told outright that Juniors would enver even contemplate taking ds3, and most children here go to sepcilaist input at that stage (separate infant / junior provision here still, so end of yr 2). I think for soem the expressed aim of being a member of their community ids valid and that it is nive but also had ds3 remained there any longer then he would ahve been far more damaged. We got him out just in time.

Interesting post ST.

I think that the barriers are so varied that no system of integration can cater for all. Autistic kids at teh comp who have issues ith attendance are fetched by the police, yet when you dig they just cannot cope with the sheer mass of pupils entering teh school. Halls have projectors that make whirring noises most people cannot hear but upseet some asd kids, sports involve muddy areas unsuitable for wheelchairs.....

the problem from my understanding is this: SN is a label that means only that a child has special needs. Within that label lies the entire range of abilties and personalities. Someone with a high IQ and no issues except for a need for a wheelchair is going to need a very different system than a child with say GDD and VI and ASD (a friend's child who satrted in MS against har wishes).
There is nothing homogenous about kids with SN but services need them to fit nicely into boxes. Trouble is, even when you get two kids with the same level of need and the same dx their underlying personality means they may well suit different environments- a natuirally buoyant child who learns through tjeir peers and is outgoing will fare better in MS than a naturally introverted shy child who has an innate dislike of buy environments even before their SN. Kids with no SN or ones that can be absorbed easily into a MS environment get choice of schools at application satge (theoretically anyway) why shuoldn't a child with more specific needs?

WRT to the OP, I don't think there is any party that would close all SN schools but SN provision is expensive and as a dad said to me today his child is safe in his unit- no LEA would even attempt to force a child with severe GDD and ASD presenting as he does into MS, even the SNY struggles. Those that would suffer would be those already amrginalised by a alck of provision- the kids with 10 hour satements, syndromes calssed as borderline. They are already the children who cannot get DLA, SD respite, holiday club access- a sort of lost group.

I agree Peachy; I taught kids with a range of SN needs, but never felt I had received sufficient training on their dx or their needs thereafter. You also have to include ebds within that as these can cause some of the most horrendous problems, and mainstream isn't equipped to cope with some of the damaged youngsters with whom we deal everyday.

Speaking as someone who grew up under a Tory government i can safely say they are possibly the worst prospect for this country.

Did anyone know David SCameron (as my husband likes to call him) and his lot will be bankrolling a wave of private schools out and seeing to the closure of many public schools. He is using a Siwss programme that means working families will pay increased taxes which will subsidise well heeled upper class families and many thriving public school will close due to the hype about "the new place round the corner". Its pretty shameful.

RIv- i totally agree where quals are not an option but schools do work towards them now for those who can: tehre's a child in ds3's school on 98th centile all round, and he and ds3 are aimed firmly at furuyree quals whilst others focus on other aspects (IMO ds3 will not ever use them but it'd be stupid to denyy him the chance at least)

A good SNU can handle that. Whereas the money it would take to make incluusion work for everyone is an amount that is impossinble. Also as ST says, when looking at SN you have really to take in EBD and of course ds1 sort of straddles the border there: the issues of inclusion tehre are vastly different to someone such as your dd where much of it is abouyt provision / TA / equiopemnt and she can then blosson. If the rpesence of a child in a school is a risk to the others why would we want to enforce it?

And YY to teacher training being a first sstep: the old ASD MA course leasder use dto teach that module at my Uni which is known for it's teaching courses. half a day, and the one with the lowest attendance. could be worse though- GP traijning is slowly dropping SN training and a GP he taught thought autism meant hearing defiicieny

Here the choice for ds3 after 11 is a place at the severe unit (he wouldn't stand a chance of getting in), a palce at the integration unit (something like 11 palces for every other SN child in the city) and MS.

It will be MS. he doesn't cause enough trouble to get a pale at the intgration unit.

I would cheerfully wrap a spade around my head to stop that happening. I have no idea at all where he will end up.

DS1 might get the AS base though. If I shout enough. My throat is sore from shouting. But the LEA are currently in hiding and accidentally double booked when theya re meant to meet me which, at the end of the financial year, I take as a good sign.

Ish. It only takes one child with AS who hits ahrder to lose that chance.

Given that non attenders at the local get taken from hom by police without even a note being left for their mother to find, it'ss be HS. Which will compromise my own safety. What a bloody choice

Lisa - at my secondary school in the late 1980s we opened a brilliant SNU which catered for 12 students with severe physical difficulties. I know they have been fighting closure due to funding cuts over the past four years.

I have no idea whether a Tory government would close the unit or not (might write and ask), but to imply that the last Tory government was a disaster across the board for sn ed is too simplistic. It was very good news for our community.

Have you got some links to the Tory education policy? A swiss model sounds interesting but I don't know anything about it?

(I don't actually vote but am interested in what might happen...)

I just read the Tory manifesto on education. It's really very woolly. I want to know just how they are going to put their ideologies into practice because that is what is going to have the most impact for children and teachers..

Admittedly Cornsilk, but the current lot at the DCSF aren't exactly an examplar of joined up thinking are they? I am still spluttering over the fact that the new Edexcel RE spec has a section on Government Action to Promote Community Cohesion in the UK. I have to teach lessons on it. What has govt policy got to do with RE fgs? Politics are creeping in to the classroom now with PSHE and Citizenship.

A policy biased towrads inclusion was the big fucking idea from New Labour - and the intenet was beautifully worded and wrapped up in a bow as equal oppertunity and equality of choice, What a pile of horse shit.
The notion that they were ever prepareed to spend the money to make education truly inclusive was always a lie and the closure of some decent specail schools was the result.
I don't want my child attending mainstream thanks - you might as well just book his place in full time residential care now,
he is thriving at special school but more importantly he is safe and happy.

By all means beat the tories with any stick you wish.
But the miserable, two faced, abject failure of the New Labour push towards inclusive education was a policy with a motto and no principal.

( I have to sau New labour. That was I can distance these slimey shitheads from the party of my relative youth)