Joshua is a boy with Asperger’s syndrome who enjoys an intellectual challenge and wants to go to school with others in his road. He seems the perfect candidate for inclusion but he was at his local secondary school for just three months because he could not cope with crowds in the corridor and the jibes of other children.
Mark is defined as having moderate learning and behavioural difficulties. At the age of four he bit a nursery teacher, when he was seven he threw a chair at a classroom assistant and two months ago he was excluded from a primary school because of another violent incident involving another pupil.
According to the government, both children have a level of special educational need that can be met in mainstream schools. But, say their parents, neither can function properly in large, busy classrooms.
The inclusion of children with special needs has proved one of the government’s most contentious education policies. Parents who exercise their right to express a preference for special schools find their wishes overruled by local authorities intent on closing them down. Meanwhile, teachers say that inclusion of children with behavioural problems disrupts the education of the rest of the class and is driving people from the profession.
At its annual conference this year the second largest teachers’ union condemned "the persistent rise in disaffection and disruption in schools brought about by the continued insistence of a government inclusion policy that keeps pupils with behavioural difficulties in mainstream schools". Amanda Haehner, a secondary teacher from London and a senior member of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said she noted with concern "the high rate of exclusions of pupils with disabilities and those with special educational needs."
The figures bear out her concern. Two-thirds of children who are permanently excluded have special educational needs, according to the Department for Education and Skills. Pupils with special needs are 13 times more likely to be excluded, temporarily or permanently, than those without.
School life is about more than the curriculum, says Haehner. "It is social interaction in the playground, being part of a class or year group, coping with the negative as well as the positive. For some included children this provides more pressure and more chances to fail."
However, the government has made it clear to teacher unions that it does not intend to back down on the policy first announced by the then education secretary David Blunkett in l997 and enshrined in the SEN and Disability Act 2001. Blunkett said that his views had been shaped by his experience at a boarding school for the blind where he felt "separated out" from society and was denied the opportunity to study for the same qualifications as other children.
Blame Blunkett
Ralph Surman, a primary teacher on the ruling executive of
the Association of Teachers and Lecturers surprised its conference
this year by his personal attack on Blunkett who he blamed for the
failure of the policy. "However passionate David Blunkett felt
about inclusion, I don’t think he really understood what it
entailed because he was thinking in terms of visual impairment," he
said.
"Children with physical disabilities are the easiest to include but the policy has been steam-rollered through to include children with varying degrees of autism, children with attention deficit disorder and those with severe but unspecified conditions that result in emotional and behavioural problems. Including children who feel threatened in the mainstream amounts to institutional cruelty."
The 1997 Act states that schools must not discriminate against disabled children in their admission arrangements or exclusion policies. But the SEN code of practice, which came into effect in January 2002, provides a get-out clause for schools by saying that children with SEN statements can be refused places "in the small minority of cases where the child’s admission would be incompatible with the efficient education of other children."
They can also be excluded for behaviour that "systematically, persistently and significantly" threatens the safety of others or impedes the learning of others.
The government’s latest approach, in the strategy document Removing Barriers to Achievement published last February (see box), is to support teachers by placing special education in the overall context of services for children. Charles Clarke, the education secretary, said the strategy reaffirms the government’s "commitment to partnership working between local authorities, early year settings, schools, the health service and the voluntary sector".
The expectation is that children with moderate learning difficulties will be educated in the mainstream but special schools will continue to provide for those with the most severe and complex needs and become centres of excellence, sharing their expertise with mainstream schools.
However, the government acknowledges that more research needs to be done on supporting children in mainstream schools and says a new Inclusion Development Programme has been set up to bring together education, health, social care and the voluntary sector. Projects will be set up to develop and pilot effective practice and develop the evidence base about what works and how to implement good practice. Initially, the work will be focused on autistic spectrum disorder, behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, speech, language and communication needs and dyslexia and moderate learning difficulties.
Behaviour improvement programmes have already been set up in 61 local authorities covering 2,000 schools, which the government expects to draw up new schemes to provide for excluded children, such as flexible placements in other schools or "in-school exclusion centres" or both in which the youth service will be involved. There will be more training for teachers and head teachers and the use of "P" scales - achievement benchmarks for children working below the first level of the national curriculum - will be extended and promoted.
Refused places
According to the Audit Commission, children with emotional
and behavioural difficulties are the least likely to be admitted to
mainstream schools and the most likely to be excluded from them.
Children with physical and learning difficulties are also
disproportionately refused places and excluded.
"Some schools feel that the only way to ensure support for individual children with challenging behaviour is to exclude them. This does not, of itself, resolve the child’s underlying difficulties, it disrupts their education and can be damaging to their long-term prospects," says the document. In-depth research into the admission and exclusion of pupils with SEN has been commissioned and will be published in September.
"I believe that young people with learning difficulties and disabilities have a right to lead rewarding and independent lives," said Maria Eagle, the then minister for disabled people in the forward to Removing Barriers to Achievement.
It would be hard to find a parent or teacher who did not share her sentiments. But there are many who feel the needs of the most vulnerable children are not being met by the inclusion agenda.
Key points of government strategy
The government’s Removing Barriers to Achievement for special educational needs (SEN) includes the following main points.
David Blunkett says people should work until 'incapacitated'
05 September 2008
News round up: Blunkett - people should work until 'incapacitated'
05 September 2008
How social workers are benefiting schools
04 September 2008
'I've helped make the children happier'
01 September 2008
Youth Justice and the Youth Justice Board
26 August 2008
Substance misuse
15 August 2008
Details of government consultations
21 August 2008
Private Member Bills
25 July 2008
Government Legislation
25 July 2008
