Conservative Policy and Inclusion

[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?

inclusion is fine as long as it is just that - inclusion.

dd1 is not able to be "included" in a MS school.

she would end up excluded, due to her difficulties. there is no way in this life that I will let her become the class pet (which, quite frankly is exactly what she would be)

18 months ago we moved across the country to avoid dd1 having to go into MS school.

we are now havinfg to do so again.

inclusion should be a right for all, but so should Sn schools.

dd1 needs a SN school. it is just as unfair to her to be forced into a MS school under the name of inclusion as it is to segregate children with disabilities on that fact alone.

what we need is a proper system that allows for children to be individuals, and caters for them according to their specific needs.

I totally agree with silverfrog.

We are pushing for our DS to go to MS, however he requires one-2-one care and we are fighting for this. He has this at pre-school and it works fine. We feel he would be held back at a Special Needs School. We have written to our Conservative Candidate to get what there actual take on Special Needs is. It could swing our vote!

Check out
SEN/raw deal article for some policy discussion.

I totally agree with silver frog my son has been in a ms school since he was 3 and he is now 12 and I had a terrible fight getting him into a specialist school that would meet his needs. he is physically vunerable around others and unbalance easily if knocked on stairs for instance and my local authority wanted him to go back to using a wheelchair so he could attend ms (cheaper than special school)

this made me so angry!

sometimes children need to be treated differently inorder to be treated the same.

my son was also beginning to feel very different from his peers and this was having an affect on his self esteem.

he is now extermely happy in his special school and making relationships with children he feels on a par with.

please please please let children/parents feelings be heard and do not make our child feel unhappy in an enviroment they are not at such a tender time in their lives.