Inclusive Education for All #7
2 March 2022 by Chris Barnes, Inclusive Education Officer, Down Syndrome International
Recently, my wife and I were debating (jokingly?) which boarding school we would send our three children to if we ever won the lottery.
We don’t send our kids to private schools (mainly because we can’t afford to; partly because we wouldn’t want to) but we do see the advantages: smaller class sizes, longer holidays, superior resources, exotic trips, and seemingly more opportunities, etc.
After chatting about it we agreed that, even with more money, we’d keep them at the local school they were happy in.
Our eldest daughter, who is preparing for transition to secondary, chose not the ‘outstanding’ same-sex girls’ school but the mixed, average-scoring secondary, reasoning, ‘I want to play football with the lads too’. We supported her decision, and we’re grateful it’s hers to make.
Schools are a melting pot of personalities, abilities, characters, and preferences.
Schools safeguard, care for, develop, encourage, chastise, and wish the best for their children. Regular assessments of what the children have learned, alongside teacher assessment of progress, provides quantifiable results. It’s these results that teachers and management are held accountable for.
For many, mainstream schools are still only for ‘typical’, ‘general’ or ‘non-disabled’ children, where those ‘with SEND’ are/can be supported with extra assistance, provided with differentiated tasks, or to a large extent, expected to fit in with the mold (i.e., the way things have always been).
Before a true model of inclusion can be achieved in mainstream schools, there must be some fundamental developments. The mindset of ‘Learners with SEND being supported to keep up’ must adapt to something more like ‘Practice adapted to suit individuals.’ (Easier said than done, I know!)
In reality, teachers aren’t given enough time to do this. In reality, while the success of management is still largely based on data, (published, or otherwise) it doesn’t feature on everyone’s priority list.
As mentioned before in this blog, I have visited many specialised provisions and interviewed countless professionals, advocates, and parents endorsing them. Specialised settings, by definition, place greater emphasis on the individual needs of the learner, write an individual plan for their education, and provide specialist support, resource, and personal care. Specialist setting staff are often well-trained in SEND prior to their appointment or are developed by the school itself. A theme running central to this blog is ‘the individual’.
Specialist settings unquestionably hold ‘the individual’ as core to their practice.
Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) teachers (EYFS being perhaps the most important stage of a child’s education, in my humble opinion) are some of the most creative and inspiring practitioners; orchestrating a dynamic, ever-changing, and child-led environment where children learn some of their most important lessons, which sadly dissolves as the children grow up.
Teachers for the primary phase heroically spin countless plates as jack-of-all-trades – delivering a ‘broad and balanced curriculum’ that hopes to enrich & engage.
Secondary-age teachers, as specialists in their field(s), are tasked with equipping the hundreds of children they serve each week with the ammunition to pass life-changing exams and assessments that can set them up for further education and adulthood.
Some of the key differences between ‘mainstream’ and ‘specialised’ schools
Mainstream schools (all different, of course) can often struggle to adapt their practice quickly and efficiently to the meet the needs of a newly enrolled learner with SEND. This takes time, effort, often money, and a commitment by all staff involved. Change to the status quo can be met with resistance, by staff and parents who don’t believe in, aren’t trained for, or didn’t grow up with, a culture of inclusion.
Specialist schools (all different, of course) often struggle to fully immerse their learners in socialising endeavours with ‘non-disabled’ learners and young people. Needless to say, with learning and care needs often dramatically different to ‘non-disabled’ learners, it is hard for students at specialist settings to spend extended time with children from mainstream schools.
It is easy to say ‘There are no children without learning disabilities at specialist schools, for learners with disabilities to befriend, learn from, play and socialise with’.
The counter to this, of course, is equally, ‘There aren’t many children with learning disabilities, in the mainstream, which can lead to a feeling of difference and isolation’.
Down Syndrome International, alongside their partners and countless other advocates across the world, campaign for:
- Developing and progressive thinking about education;
- robust and meaningful system change towards a more inclusive education model;
- the removal of divisions, e.g., ‘mainstream vs specialised’ leading to shared expertise and resources;
- the centralisation of the individual child in the education process.
There is no quick, easy answer or solution and the uncelebrated, under-appreciated work of all education professionals must be respected and greatly valued.
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