Memorandum submitted by the Centre for
Studies on Inclusive Education
The Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education
(CSIE) is an independent centre, set up in 1982, actively supporting
inclusive education as a human right of every child. We are funded
by donations from charitable trusts and foundations, with additional
income from sale of publications and small grants for research
or other projects. Our work is driven by a commitment to overcome
barriers to learning and participation for all children and young
people. Our activities include lobbying and campaigning, research,
training, consultancy and dissemination of information. We can
be reached at www.csie.org.uk.
In our submission we would like to draw your
attention particularly to the DCSF's proposal to reserve or make
an interpretive declaration on Article 24 of the Convention. Out
of all the government's doubts about ratification, this seems
to be the one where the line has been most firmly and clearly
drawn.
We would ask you to consider whether this does
not constitute a resistance to the very principle of the Convention.
Government policy documents and programmes pertaining to disabled
adults now routinely mention the basic human right to inclusion
in mainstream life and institutions (for example Improving
the Life Chances of Disabled People; Valuing People). Policy
documents and programmes pertaining to disabled children also
talk about the right to inclusion in mainstream life and institutions—except
that this seems to exclude schools (as if children spent the majority
of their waking lives in some other kind of institution than a
school). Improving the Life Chances of Disabled Children,
for example, talks about inclusion before school and after school—but
not in school. Aiming High for Disabled Children talks
about the right to inclusion in mainstream institutions, but states
that this does not cover schools.
Can governments make an exception of children?
The UK government clearly considers children to possess basic
human rights, since it signed the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child. It clearly considers disabled people to possess
basic human rights, since it was the main initiator of the Convention
on the Rights of Disabled People. In the latter case, then, the
question we would ask you to consider is: How can "people"
exclude "child"? Indeed, the UN's response to the UK
government's report on its progress with the Convention on the
Rights of the Child criticised it precisely for failing "to
develop a comprehensive national strategy for the inclusion of
children with disability in the society" (53d).
In its resistance to ratifying Article 24 without
reservation or interpretive declaration, the DCSF is essentially
drawing the ox-wagons around the existing system of segregated
("special") schools. CSIE has no doubt that this goes
against what senior civil servants and Ofsted inspectors with
a knowledge of the issues privately consider to be both the moral
and the educational case in favour of inclusion. However, they
also to regard the segregated sector as too big and too entrenched
an interest for them to be able to shift.
Governments can protect this sector's interests,
or they can protect the well-being and future life-chances of
disabled children. They cannot do both. By denying children with
disabilities and other difficulties access to friendships and
social relationships with their non-disabled peers, segregation
damages them and the opportunity for the full adult life which
other departments acknowledge as their right; equally, it damages
the staff who work in them. Segregated institutions are by their
very nature abusive to all who are in them, as we ought to have
learned from the history of long-stay institutions for disabled
adults, now thankfully closed. When will we apply that lesson
to children?
It should not be necessary to add that some
children with every type and every level of severity of disability
are being educated at this moment in some mainstream schools somewhere
in the country (see the DCSF Statistical Bulletin 15/2008,
Table 9). We know, in other words, that inclusion works. Despite
what any of us may have been told, doing inclusion is not difficult—the
difficult thing is wanting it. The government cannot reserve on
Article 24 without saying that they do not want it. And not to
want it is clearly to contravene the principle of the Convention.
20 October 2008
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