Memorandum submitted by SPINN
1. The committee seeks evidence about SEN
in mainstream schools. I write in my capacity as the founder chair
and trustee of a voluntary organisation (Newham Parents' Support
Network, now SPINN) which we set up in 1984 for parents of children
with special needs in the local area. This was the original from
which the DfES derived its model for parent partnership, now statutory
for all local authorities.
2. Newham adopted an inclusion policy in
1986, with a long-term aim of full inclusion and an immediate
series of small practical steps which developed over the years.
As a result, almost all its disabled children now attend mainstream
classes in mainstream schools, using resources and expertise transferred
over from special schools. This really does include the most severe
degrees of disability, covering all categories (physical disability,
sensory disability, autism, severe learning disability, profound
and multiple disabilities). We have responded to various government
consultations pointing to this concrete example as evidence that
the inclusion of every type and severity of disability is already
being practised somewhere, but we find that the terms of debate
never seem to catch up with this fact.
3. At first, our Network spent a lot of
time supporting parents who were anxious about special school
closures. Now that the schools have closed, however, we encounter
almost no anxiety from parents about their children being in mainstream,
even about children with the most profound disabilities of all.
In our caseload we sometimes come across a lack of welcome or
appropriate support in this or that mainstream school. From our
point of view the system is thus evidently not some sort of utopia,
since it is we who deal with the fall-out. However, solutions
in such cases are almost always found, if not in that school then
in another mainstream school, and so disabled and non-disabled
children are still able to share each other's lives.
4. Ofsted gave Newham an extremely rare
Grade 1 for its SEN provision. We take this to mean that disabled
children have not suffered as a result of full inclusion. Newham
has been one of a small handful of authorities where A*-C grades
have risen every single year since the inception of league tables,
and is now close to the national average despite being at or near
the bottom by indices of social deprivation; its five A*-G grades
are close to the top of the national averages. We take this to
mean that the presence of disabled children in mainstream has
not been to the detriment of others.
5. We as parents, plus staff from the schools,
get invited to speak around the country by parents wanting mainstream
for their children, who cannot even begin to think how they might
get it in their area. In Newham, on the other hand, a family with
a school-age child is always referred by the local authority to
a mainstream school in the first instance, however severe the
degree of disability involved. This contrast is striking. The
work of your committee was partly prompted by current anxiety
about special school closures. However, DfES statistics themselves
show that the number of children in separate special schools in
England has barely decreased in the last 20 years. It is just
that in an era of choice, some parents are anxious because they
cannot always choose the particular special school they want.
But the de facto position is that they will always be able to
get a special school of some sort.
6. This is not the case for the parent or
pupil who wants mainstream. Two High Court cases have ruled in
favour of local authorities (North Tyneside, 1997 and Lancashire,
1998) which refused to name a mainstream school on the child's
statement. This suggests that local authorities are legally entitled
to enforce the segregation of a disabled child from its peers.
There is a potential conflict here with the Disability Discrimination
Act.
SUGGESTED STEPS
There seems to be general agreement that current
policy and legislation are a mess, and that it is necessary to
cut through the contradictions. We suggest the following:
1. Change the law so that a child with any
disability is able to attend a mainstream school if the pupil
or the family so wish, and remove the power of local authorities
to prevent this. This will help rectify the inequity between those
who want a special school place and those want a mainstream one.
It will also avoid potential conflict between education policy
and disability discrimination law.
2. Continue as before, in policy statements,
to refer to inclusion as a long-term aim, but remove contradictory
caveats about some children's disabilities requiring them to be
excluded, eg "Of course, there will always be some children
who will need special school". Actual evidence from the local
authority areas which have advanced furthest towards inclusion
shows this not to be true. Practice in these areas is thus ahead
of policy as it is currently worded, and should be used as a model.
3. Having an aim that is unambiguous, as
above, does not necessarily mean wholesale structural changes
overnight. However, it does mean that smaller-scale changes will
be achievable and effective because they are compatible with that
clear aim. For example, the Government could focus attention on
inclusion in Early Years.
4. Make sure that education policy aims
are compatible with adult disability policy aims. This applies
particularly to learning disability. The Government's policy document
Valuing People aims at enabling these people to fulfil their lives
in the mainstream community. Segregating them at the age of three
is not going to lead to this.
January 2006
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