Conservative leader says children with learning difficulties could be forced out of special schools

July 9, 2002 in Disability

Children with learning difficulties are in danger of being
forced out of special schools and into the mainstream system,
Conservative leader Ian Duncan Smith has claimed.

Speaking at the Conservative party’s seminar on special
educational needs he said that children with special needs were
being encouraged to integrate into mainstream schools that were
“ill equipped to understand or to respond to their needs”.

He told delegates: “I do not want us all to turn around in 10
years’ time and find we have made the same mistakes in special
needs education as were made in care in the community because we
missed the warning signs in the dash for inclusion.”

Duncan Smith called for professionals to be “more imaginative
and open-minded” about education provision for children with
special needs. He is a director of Whitefields special school in
Walthamstow, London.