School inclusion can be abuse

John MacBeath from Cambridge University has co-written a report for the NUT on inclusion.  In it he says that "including children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms can be "a form of abuse".  The  report, The Costs of Inclusion, said teachers and teaching assistants were often going "beyond the call of duty" to help children with SEN. He is quoted by the BBC as saying:

"Physically sitting in a classroom is not inclusion. Children can be excluded by sitting in a classroom that's not meeting their needs. The typical secondary school timetable - rushing from physics, to history then French, say - was for some children as bewildering as being "on another planet". You might call it a form of abuse, in a sense, that those children are in a situation that's totally inappropriate for them."

He made it clear that their report was not "anti-inclusion", a point echoed strongly by leaders of the NUT. 

I think it's clear that teachers are all for inclusion, IF, suitable resources and funding is available.  All to often we become inclusive schools, taking in children with behavioural or physical problems etc and no extra resources or funding is provided.  Where the child was having 1:2 adult support they go down to 1:32 or a classroom assistant becomes their support and the rest of the class lose out...

 

Comments

[lucas baker]

I am so happy that the word "abuse" has turned up in the Inclusion debate. Simply put; No one appears to have thought the school operations and wider social implications of equality of educational access (inclusion) through.
Re-enfranchising a portion of our society that has been discriminated against and sequestered in "other" facilities for hundreds of years because people in general did not see outside of their own experiences and (mostly false) beliefs is a big job. It will take some persons with clear and unfaltering vision to get the message across to all that the benefits of society are for everyone, not just those who fall into the normative curve.
Abuse is what we have been and are continuing to subject children with special needs to when we don't provide them with a flexible, continuum of services in which they are empowered to move outward
as much as possible.
The trouble is that many educators see the this continuum as one of spaces but it needs to be one of services. Is anyone getting this message out? I have tried for twenty years and it’s been two steps forward and three steps back most of the way. Perhaps we have to sound the alarm. Abuse is occurring but what is the best way to deal with it?