APPENDIX 3
EDUCATIONAL INCLUSION
A Policy Statement
INTRODUCTION
A Position Statement
1. A universal system of education must
serve the needs of all who use it: it must seek to offer fair
and equitable opportunities for learning for all young people.
Improving the proportion of success at the cost of excluding the
unsuccessful (both actual and potential) is not an option for
a universal system. So inclusion is fundamental to standards.
2. Inclusion can be achieved only through
cooperative action by schools[42]
pursuing a common purpose shared with those who manage and regulate
the service. All schools should recognize that they have a responsibility
for inclusion which extends beyond their own pupils. Governments[43]
should enact policies which positively promote inclusion, should
test all their policies (including those for school admissions,
funding and accountability) against the litmus of inclusion implications
and should abandon those which promote exclusion.
A Universal Issue
3. Our position statement leads us away
from the preconception that inclusion is simply the antithesis
of exclusion[44],
and that exclusion is a "problem" focussed on schools
in areas of most widespread and social deprivation. Instead we
begin from the principle that "The fundamental responsibility
for educational inclusion rests with the included".
4. Of course parents will rightly seek the
very best education for their children, and in consequence their
own children's inclusion will almost certainly be a more significant
issue for them than the exclusion of others. So policies must
seek actively to mitigate this rather than to exacerbate it.
5. None of us can regard inclusion as a
minority issue, and nor should we regard its pursuit in terms
of the provision of compensatory initiatives for the "deprived
minority". Educational inclusion is an issue which touches
us all and which should permeate all aspects of educational policy.
Policy Implications
PUPILS AND
THE COMMUNITY
Admissions
6. The state school system must provide
for everyone who chooses to use it. So there is a fundamental
problem in its embracing a competitive admissions process driven
by parental preference. If schools are encouraged to seek a competitive
edge, it is hardly surprising that they adopt admissions policies
which seek to use the cachet of "exclusivity" as a selling
point.
7. Our education service cannot promote
inclusion if schools are driven to adopt admissions policies which
are themselves exclusive. Many pupils are excluded even before
they are allocated a school place. In some areas schools[45]
have taken initiatives to work together to obviate this problem,
through agreed admissions protocols and joint and complementary
applications for specialist school status. SHA recommends that
Government should support and extend these initiatives, and that
incentives should be available to encourage schools to pursue
them.
8. At present, national policies encourage
and reward over-subscription: school listings are even required
to show how many pupils each school has managed to turn away.
SHA recommends that all such disincentives to inclusion should
be urgently reviewed in the light of the rejection which they
occasion.
9. SHA's view of schools of the future as
Community Learning Centres is rooted in the idea of schools providing
a base for education for their local community. To reconcile this
with the operation of parental preference, SHA recommends that:
— statistics should be maintained on
the percentage of Secondary School pupils throughout the country
being educated in their local school;
— there should be national targets
to increase this percentage; and
— incentives should be offered to schools
to contribute to the achievement of these targets by providing
places for all students from their local community.
Excluded pupils
10. Pupils may be excluded from education
in school by a range of circumstances. These include:
— those who absent themselves from
school (for whom being absent necessarily means being excluded
from education, but being present doesn't necessarily mean being
included);
— those who are "excluded"
from school on behavioural grounds, usually because by their behaviour
they exclude others from education;
— those who in effect exclude themselves
through low levels of motivation (recognising that poor motivation
can arise from "school factors" including the quality
of teaching and from "pupil factors"—social, economic,
cultural, physical, medical and emotional);
— those whose personal and social circumstances
are inimical to educational progress; and
— those who are adversely affected
by their peers, through bullying or anti-achievement peer pressure.
11. Such pupils are much less likely than
others to achieve high attainment scores, even when a value-added
measurement is used. So there is at present a strong disincentive
for schools to include them. Moreover, since schools may themselves
contribute to the disaffection which underlies some of these problems,
it is tempting to judge schools' effectiveness by the extent of
their incidence, thus providing an even stronger disincentive.
12. And since effective provision for these
pupils can be costly, it can often be difficult even to agree
the criteria which identify these pupils. (In this respect, SHA
welcomes the recent changes made to guidelines for exclusion for
disciplinary reasons.)
13. SHA recommends that all possible steps
be taken to encourage schools to provide for pupils in these categories,
including:
— agreeing appropriate and consistent
criteria for identifying them;
— adequate resources to schools to
provide for them;
— provision of incentives to schools
to demonstrate good practice in providing for them;
— agreeing appropriate criteria to
determine when the interests of educational inclusion are best
served by provision outside mainstream schools;
— not using headcounts of such pupils
as a basis for judging any school's effectiveness; and
— giving due weight to the extent of
incidence of such pupils when using value-added outcomes as a
determinant of school effectiveness.
14. Because they usually have more vacant
places than other schools, schools in challenging circumstances
often have to take a high proportion of these pupils, including
those permanently excluded from elsewhere. SHA therefore recommends
a limit on the number of permanently excluded pupils that a school
should be obliged to take into any single year group.
15. A number of schools have already made
significant progress in this area, and it is important that their
achievements are recognised and publicly celebrated and their
good practice shared. A significant feature of their success lies
in their creative liaison with outside agencies, including:
— the youth service, social and health
services, police, EWS, EPS, voluntary services, etc; and
— the Connexions service, which may
subsume some of the above, and which SHA welcomes in its aim of
providing both a universal service promoting educational inclusion
and a compensatory service for the disaffected.
16. However, rationing of resources can
often result in these partnerships being frustrating and time-consuming.
SHA therefore recommends that sufficient resources are provided
to make these partnerships effective for all pupils in need, and
that such resources are allocated so that they follow the pupil.
The community dimension
17. Central to SHA's vision of the school
of the future is the link between each school and its local community.
Every school can contribute to educational inclusion by:
— providing places for all its local
young people;
— linking curriculum to community[46];
— strengthening cross-phase links;
— making effective links with parents
in the community
— fostering the role and responsibilities
of parents;
— extending educational opportunities
beyond age 18;
— building the capacity for community
learning;
— supporting "family learning";
— encouraging community use of the
school premises; and
— involving the local community in
the celebration of success.
18. SHA recommends that incentives should
be made available to encourage schools to demonstrate good practice
in these areas.
19. SHA further recommends in the context
of a national policy which seeks to increase the number of specialist
secondary schools:
— the creation of a category of specialist
community schools, for whom recognition of the importance of the
community dimension should be a key criterion; and
— the allocation of large numbers of
schools to this category (assuming a sufficiency of high quality
applications).
STANDARDS AND
INSPECTION
The standards agenda
20. The standards agenda and the inclusion
agenda should be complementary and inseparable. But at present
they are in tension. It has been suggested that inclusion has
been used as an excuse for low standards: it would be as valid
to claim that standards are being used as an excuse for exclusion.
The aim of the standards agenda is to improve the attainment of
all young people. It is urgent therefore that steps are taken
to resolve this tension.
21. Raw score league tables (and targets
which are based on raw-score outturns) are probably the most potent
instruments of educational exclusion. Many of these tables are
literally exclusive: they refer to a percentage of the population
which excludes the least able. More insidiously, they provide
the strongest possible perverse incentive to schools to recruit
the most able pupils.
22. Guidance in the new Code of Practice
which restricts the scope of schools to refuse admission to pupils
on the grounds of their special educational needs may prove to
be a positive step in this respect (though it may also serve to
illustrate a view of exclusion as an issue which relates only
to a small minority of pupils).
23. So that the standards agenda and the
inclusion agenda can support each other most effectively, SHA
recommends that:
— all national attainment targets are
expressed in terms of average points scores rather than exclusive
percentages;
— raw score targets should not be disaggregated
to local or school level without proper account being taken of
prior attainment of pupils;
— the publication and use of raw score
outcomes as proxies for school effectiveness be discontinued;
and
— a valid system of value-added analysis
be used in all situations where school effectiveness is measured
and reported.
Inspections
24. SHA welcomes the change in emphasis
in the schools inspection framework which recognises the importance
of inclusion and of schools' attitudes and procedures which encourage
inclusion. Current training programmes for inspectors should enhance
their consistency in the application of the new guidance. Judgements
will need to reflect the community which each school serves and
the pattern of educational provision within the community.
25. SHA recommends that criteria for success
in inclusion be agreed so that a school's success in this area
can be publicly celebrated and rewarded and good practice effectively
shared[47].
26. SHA further welcomes the abandonment
of the discredited policy of "naming and shaming", which
claimed to benefit the pupils in the named and shamed schools,
but in practice often condemned them to the ultimate exclusion
of being identified with schools which no-one wanted to go to
(and few wished to teach in).
27. However, there is still a pressing problem
with school inspection judgements, which are made against national
raw-score norms, taking no account of the prior attainment of
the pupils in the school. These are not valid measures of school
effectiveness. The publication of these data as part of the "headline
information" in school inspection reports, and their use
in making overall judgements on a school provide the strongest
possible incentive for admissions policies which exclude less
able pupils.
28. SHA recommends that the publication
of such data within school inspection reports be discontinued
and replaced by valid value-added data which takes account of
pupils' prior performance.
29. SHA further recommends a programme of
independent research which interrogates Ofsted's database (and
any other relevant or necessary data) to test whether there is
any correlation between:
— the scores awarded to lessons and
the ability level of the pupils in those lessons; and
— the overall "headline"
judgements made on individual schools and the ability level of
their intakes.
(In particular it would be helpful to discover
— what proportion of secondary schools
classified as "very good" or "outstanding"
have low ability intakes; and
— what proportion of lessons graded
"less than satisfactory" are delivered to high ability
pupils.)
30. SHA recommends that the outcomes of
this research be incorporated into the framework for inspection.
FUNDING AND
ITS DISTRIBUTION
Compensatory policies
31. SHA welcomes the government's recognition
that social deprivation is a significant factor in educational
exclusion, and its initiatives to address this issue. It is using
the strategy of targeted projects—Education Action Zones,
Excellence in Cities and now the new City Academies.
32. SHA recommends that government continues
to monitor these compensatory projects objectively through the
eyes of both insiders and outsiders with particular attention
to:
— the criteria by which they will be
judged, and in particular the effects of specifying targets in
terms of raw-score examination and test results;
— the immediate effect on neighbouring
schools whose pupils may suffer the same disadvantages, but who
do not benefit from the additional funding; and
— the validity of a perception of them
a "quick fix", with less than adequate planning time
and a political imperative to meet short term targets.
33. SHA further recommends that the government
should act on its findings from this monitoring with the same
expediency which it has invested in creating the schemes.
34. The Government has sought in these initiatives
(as in the case of specialist and beacon schools) to encourage
schools which receive generous additional funding to share good
practice with other schools. To encourage the development of such
good practice SHA recommends that a criterion for designation
for all specialist and beacon schools should be a demonstrably
high level of commitment to inclusion. (30% of beacon schools
are already involved in such work.)
Geographical proxies
35. A universal commitment to educational
inclusion aims to provide for all pupils in danger of various
forms of exclusion and to encourage all schools to contribute
to inclusion. The use of geographical proxy measures for social
deprivation excludes a large number of schools and their pupils
from the opportunity to participate in and benefit from the policies
which support this aim.
36. SHA therefore recommends a reconsideration
of the distribution of inclusion funding to ensure that:
— all schools and their pupils should
receive and feel a benefit from the funding which is currently
being distributed to a minority; and
— the plight of disadvantaged pupils
in schools which do not currently fall within the geographical
boundaries which circumscribe the additional funding is given
particular consideration
Funding formulae
37. SHA's proposals in Fairer Funding provide
for a "disadvantage factor" in the funding of all schools.
This would have the effect both of recognising additional need
and acting as an incentive to schools to admit disadvantaged pupils.
Since the disadvantage we wish to measure is educational disadvantage,
SHA recommends that proxy measures of disadvantage should be abandoned
and that the fundamental basis of differentiated funding should
be disadvantage based on pupils' prior attainment.
Standards funds
38. It is likely that the introduction of
a transparent and equitable national funding formula incorporating
a disadvantage factor based on pupils' prior attainment would
obviate the need for many of the existing standards funds. However,
this document contains numerous references to the need to provide
incentives and adequate funding to encourage and facilitate schools'
commitment to inclusive policies and to overcome the manifold
disincentives which currently obtain. SHA recommends that consideration
be given to the creative refocusing of standards funds to support
all schools in this area of pupils' need.
Funding as a reward
39. SHA believes as a fundamental principle
that the purpose of educational funding is to support the processes
of education, and that any factor which determines the distribution
of funding should be related to pupil need.
40. A number of recent policies have sought
to use funding as a reward to schools for the achievement of pupils
for whom the need for funding has already passed. Examples of
this are the Schools Achievement Award, the proposed outturn element
in 16-18 funding and, most pertinently, the funding of government
initiatives tied to raw-score targets.
41. Moreover, the current predilection for
funding as a reward adds to existing incentives for schools to
recruit the most able pupils and is therefore wholly inimical
to the encouragement of inclusive policies.
42. SHA therefore recommends that policies
which involve the use of funding as a reward be discontinued.
Special needs
43. A national funding formula with a substantial
disadvantage factor based on pupils' prior attainment would reduce
the need for funding allocations which are currently made to schools
to support pupils registered with special needs at those levels
which in the new Code of Practice will be referred to as "School
Action" and "School Action Plus". A sufficiently
differentiated formula might also provide for some pupils who
are currently statemented.
44. However, there are a number of forms
of special need for which such a formula cannot directly provide,
and for which individual funding of pupils will continue to be
necessary. Moreover, some excellent work is being done collaboratively
between secondary schools and special schools to promote the inclusion
of pupils with special needs in mainstream schooling on a part-time
or full-time basis[48].
45. SHA recommends that incentives are made
available to encourage and enable schools to engage in these links,
while retaining their autonomy to determine the most effective
provision to improve pupil attainment.
Curricular Issues
46. An appropriate curriculum is demonstrably
one of the most potent factors in engendering the inclusion or
exclusion of individual pupils. All of SHA's policies acknowledge
the need for curriculum to be inclusive for all pupils and it
would be inappropriate to rehearse all the complex issues of curriculum
construction in this document.
47. However, amongst these issues there
are three which bear directly upon inclusion—content, status
and level. We have a content-based national curriculum which even
now shows comparatively little recognition of cultural diversity.
And we have not yet resolved the issues of status which lead us
to regard "academic" and "vocational" as antonyms.
It is often difficult to convince our pupils of the relevance
of many of the syllabuses which we teach, but we are reluctant
to change because we do not wish to exclude them from access to
higher status academic qualifications. SHA welcomes the recent
advances in provision of matching qualification levels for courses
with a vocational content and we look forward to further initiatives
to redress the lack of esteem accorded to such courses.
48. Age-related assessments lead to "tiering"
and can result in pupils studying at a level which is either insufficiently
challenging (and will provide a "safe grade") or which
sets unattainable targets (in response to the need to "aim
high").
49. SHA recommends the development of a
coherent 14-19 curriculum which provides sufficient autonomy and
flexibility to serve the needs of each individual pupil, and simplified
"just in time" assessment procedures which enable each
pupil to progress at the fastest appropriate pace.
CONCLUSIONS
50. This is a challenging and wide-ranging
agenda: we are proposing a gestalt which shapes the whole of educational
policy. We are enjoined by the government to engage in radical
thinking and this will surely be necessary if educational inclusion
is to be significantly improved. Education is a universal service
which must reach everyone, including the least able, the least
motivated and those with the least ready access to educational
opportunities outside school. Advances in inclusion could do more
to improve pupil attainment than any strategy which the government
has adopted to date. If the government is seeking a big idea to
complement and reinforce the standards agenda, then it need look
no further.
February 2003
42 Though much of what appears in this document may
apply with equal force to primary schools, references to schools
should be taken throughout as meaning secondary schools. Back
43
The principles set out here are applicable throughout the UK,
but detailed references are to the English system. Back
44
It is symptomatic of the ambiguity which surrounds issues related
to inclusion and exclusion that the words themselves have recently
acquired new and restrictive meanings. "Inclusion" is
sometimes used to mean the absorption of pupils currently educated
in special schools into mainstream schooling: "exclusion"
sometimes means the sanction formerly known as suspension or expulsion.
Throughout this document the words are used to refer to the much
wider issue of access for all pupils to high quality education. Back
45
The "Inclusive Schools Network" can provide exemplars. Back
46
The Schools Curriculum Award provides a template for this. Back
47
The Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education's Index for Inclusion
might provide a useful starting point for this. Back
48
A video, a CD Rom and printed materials describing this work
are available from the DfES under the generic project title "Connecting
Schools for Inclusion". Back
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