Issues of Gender, ‘Race’, Sexuality, Disability and Social Class
Edited By Mike Cole
Edition 5th Edition
First Published 2022
eBook Published 12 August 2022
Pub. Location London
Imprint Routledge
DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003177142
Pages 350
eBook ISBN 9781003177142
Subjects Education
Category: Articles
To Rt. Hon. Bridget Phillipson MP 5th September 2025
Secretary of State for Education
Orchard House,
20 Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3BT
Dear Bridget Phillipson,
I am the CEO of World of Inclusion, a consultancy and training organisation that has since 1998 (including its predecessor Disability Equality in Education) delivered training on implementing inclusive education to more than 150,000 educationalists across the UK and in more than 60 countries around the world. I produced many films and resources to aid this process. I myself am a teacher by training and profession, have the added advantage of being a disabled person and have generalised a ‘social model’ perspective into my practice and the pedagogy we promote. For over 40 years I have written, lectured, trained and filmed inclusive education throughout the world.
I have been a strong proponent of Inclusive Education and represented the UK Disabled People’s Movement at the Ad Hoc Committee at the United Nations that drafted the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities , in particular Article 24 and the subsequent General Comment No 4. Therefore, as a Labour Party member I addressed the Policy Review and moved a reference back at 2018 Conference to ensure we had a policy of promoting Inclusive Education. As the Manifesto said “Labour will take a community-wide approach, improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools..”
Despite the UK Government agreeing to a ‘Social Model’ approach and adopting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009 (albeit with a reservation on education and a side letter); there has been a failure to appreciate the paradigm shift that is required to develop an education system where all learners are equally valued, the support they need is provided and the barriers which prevent them thriving are systematically addressed. A number of these barriers have been unintentionally encouraged by Governments. We still are caught up in a historically developed Special Educational Needs system, whose predominant feature is to identify what a child/young person cannot do compared to their normative and non-disabled peers.
This, in essence, is a deficit model and has its roots in the stereotypes and exclusion of the past, segregation fuelled by contagion theory, eugenics or normative assessment models. The result has been increasingly broadening gaps in attainment between disabled and non-disabled children. The revised National Curriculum of the last Government made it increasingly difficult for many disabled learners to access the mainstream curriculum, as we moved to rote learning and normative testing, rather than a pupil centred curriculum encouraging course work, allowing pupils and young people to succeed and develop a more empathetic approach to each other and towards their individual progress.
The emphasis on testing has also created a more hostile environment in our schools, leading to greater competition, harassment (bullying) and alienation, absenteeism and poor behaviour. Perhaps you should be championing a different model to see if this can improve the level of inclusion in our schools. Creating alternative models of learning, and engagement of students.
I have seen and filmed these different inclusive practices in schools across England.
In 2015 ‘Inclusion Working’ series at Wroxham Primary, Hertfordshire, Emersons Green Primary, South Gloucestershire, Priestnall Secondary, Stockport and Eastlea Secondary, Newham in 2017. Cleves Primary, Newham, a school I filmed in several times, stood out as a world leader with 32 PMLD children fully included with a team of teachers and teaching assistants in 4 specifically designed suites of teaching spaces of 120 EY/Reception,Y1/2,Yr3/4 and Yr 5/6, demonstrating what is possible with leaders and staff committed to inclusion.
In 2003/4, I was acting as a consultant to the previous Labour Government, which like this one, said it was committed to a more inclusive system. This was left to individual local authorities and their schools and practice varied enormously. Ofsted (2003) identified 20% of schools that were good at including disabled children, 60% who could do with improvement, and 20% who were hostile. However, using the 20% who were good, we identified over 500 schools with good and developing practice towards including children in the then 5 main categories of SEND. The result was a filmed record of inclusive practice in 40 schools across England as can be seen in ‘Implementing the Disability Discrimination Act in Schools and Early Years’. (DFES 2006)
The 2001 Education Amendment Act had brought schools and colleges under the Disability Discrimination Act, but there was a lack of understanding of what this would mean. The Government commissioned Reasonable Adjustment Project that I led which demonstrated many ways that schools were already meeting these duties and by filming what was going on as a ‘fly on the wall’ we could share this good practice. We interviewed all the headteachers and many staff, parents, students and outside professionals and there was a strong consensus on what were the characteristics of these inclusive schools:-
I strongly am of the view that Government should encourage policies and practices in English schools based on the above.
I have since revisited many of the schools we featured and have to report that the good practice has not survived subsequent attacks of teacher training, the curriculum, Local Authorities and the way they ran schools. It would be naïve to think everything was perfect in the early 2000s, but the statistics show a period from around 1998 to 2008 when around 60% of students with a Statement/now EHCP were catered for in mainstream schools. This subsequently went down to around 50% from 2010 and is presently slowly going up but the numbers of children overall has increased. The total PROPORTION segregated, in breach of their human rights, has continually risen.
| Year (A)) | % Mainstream Primary & Secondary Schools (B)) | % State funded Special Schools, PRUs, NMSS and Independent schools (C) | Total students with a EHC Plan /Statement (D) | Nos of Pupils in Segregated settings with No EHC Plan /Statement (E) | Total School Population (F) | % Total School Population Segregated Number C+E /Total School Population (F) (G) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 54.55 | 45.45 | 483,000 | 10,432 | 9,032,426 | 2.29 |
| 2024 | 54.54 | 45.45 | 433,520 | 10,432 | 9,092,073 | 2.28 |
| 2022 | 50.14 | 49.86 | 327,028 | 9,170 | 9,000,031 | 1.91 |
| 2021 | 50.4 | 49.6 | 325,618 | 11,665 | 8,911,887 | 1.94 |
| 2020 | 49.8 | 51.2 | 294,800 | 15,619 | 8,890,245 | 1.87 |
| 2019 | 47.8 | 52.2 | 271,200 | 16,980 | 8,819,289 | 1.79 |
| 2018 | 47.7 | 52.3 | 253,680 | 18,124 | 8,735,100 | 1.72 |
| 2017 | 48.3 | 51.7 | 242,185 | 17,785 | 8,669,080 | 1.64 |
| 2016 | 49.2 | 50.8 | 236,805 | 17,430 | 8,559,540 | 1.61 |
| 2015 | 51.0 | 49.0 | 236,185 | 15,525 | 8,438,145 | 1.55 |
| 2014 | 52.1 | 47.9 | 232,190 | 14,760 | 8,331,385 | 1.50 |
| 2013 | 53.0 | 47.0 | 229,390 | 14,985 | 8,249,810 | 1.49 |
| 2012 | 53.7 | 46.3 | 226,125 | 15,295 | 8,178,200 | 1.47 |
| 2011 | 54.3 | 45.7 | 224,210 | 15,700 | 8,123,865 | 1.45 |
| 2010 | 55.2 | 44.8 | 225,945 | 16,655 | 8,098,360 | 1.45 |
| 2009 | 55.1 | 44.9 | 221,670 | 24,010 | 8,071,000 | 1.53 |
| 2008 | 56.3 | 43.7 | 227,315 | 23,560 | 8,102,190 | 1.48 |
| 2007 | 58.4 | 41.6 | 232,760 | 15,480 | 8,149,180 | 1.35 |
| 2006 | 59.1 | 40.9 | 236,750 | 15,110 | 8,215,690 | 1.36 |
| 2005 | 59.5 | 40.5 | 242,580 | 14,550 | 8,274,470 | 1.36 |
| 2004 | 60.0 | 40.0 | 247,590 | 13,560 | 8,334,880 | 1.35 |
| 2003 | 60.3 | 39.7 | 250,550 | 13,240 | 8,366,780 | 1.35 |
| 2002 | 60.2 | 39.8 | 248,982 | 12,291 | 8,369,081 | 1.33 |
| 2001 | 61.2 | 38.8 | 258,200 | 11,200 | 8,374,100 | 1.33 |
| 2000 | 60.5 | 39.5 | 252,875 | 11,827 | 8,345,815 | 1.34 |
| 1999 | 64.6 | 35.4 | 284,041 | 12,352 | 8,310,476 | 1.36 |
| 1998 | 58.4 | 41.6 | 242,041 | 11,774 | 8,260,582 | 1.36 |
| 1997 | 57.2 | 42.8 | 234,629 | 11,730 | 8,194,964 | 1.37 |
| 1996 | 55.9 | 44.1 | 226,923 | 10,670 | 8,116,543 | 1.36 |
| 1995 | 53.6 | 46.4 | 211,348 | 11,176 | 8,017,830 | 1.36 |
| 1994 | 51.9 | 48.1 | 195,410 | 10,462 | 7,882,835 | 1.32 |
These changes and the impetus for them were created by educational reforms and have led us backwards in terms of inclusion. As more and more parents have voted with their feet, unsatisfied with the education on offer, going to the Tribunal to assert their rights under EHCP provision, mainly choosing independent expensive education; the increasing cost is being born by the Higher Needs Budget, which is now causing you and your colleagues sleepless nights as you try and square the circle and bring forward a White Paper to deal with the financial fall out of the failing SEND system.
Several measures the Government could take would improve the current situation dramatically. Identifying all those children covered by disability in the Equality Act 2010 and enforcing the duties that schools are meant to enforce, but generally do not.
Firstly, the 1.9 million children and young people with additional needs do come under the Disability definition of the Equality Act. You’re disabled under the definition in the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities”. For example:
For the purposes of the definition, you “have to ignore the impact of medicines, appliances and aids”. E.g. Asthma, ADHD or Epilepsy drugs, teaching assistant, hearing aid or wheelchair. This applies to nearly all this group.
Secondly, what would happen if equality duties were then properly enacted?
The proper enforcement, monitoring and training for schools on the Public Sector Equality Duty, especially as it applies to disabled people (Section 149 of the Equality Act), would lead to a rapid embracing of disability equality as a key aim in schools and colleges. The Disability Equality duties are based on a human rights/social model approach rather than the older deficit/medical model approach to disability.
How much better it would be if all schools enrolled the disabled children living in their catchment area and the school was resourced to meet their needs, made necessary reasonable adjustments, challenged and removed barriers, all staff are trained to provide an inclusive approach to learning and socialization and the children and students were empowered to collaborate and support each other, rather than compete? In other words, an education system based on inclusive values.
Thirdly, the Government should drop its reservations to the UNCRPD. This would then lead the incorporation of Article 24 …. “
1. The UK Government recognise the right of persons with disabilities to education. With a view to realising this right without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity, States Parties shall ensure an inclusive education system at all levels and lifelong learning directed to:
The full development of human potential and sense of dignity and self-worth, and the strengthening of respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and human diversity;
The development by persons with disabilities of their personality, talents and creativity, as well as their mental and physical abilities, to their fullest potential;
Enabling persons with disabilities to participate effectively in a free society.
2. In realising this right, States Parties shall ensure that:
Persons with disabilities are not excluded from the general education system on the basis of disability, and that children with disabilities are not excluded from free and compulsory primary education, or from secondary education, on the basis of disability;
Persons with disabilities can access an inclusive, quality and free primary education and secondary education on an equal basis with others in the communities in which they live;
Reasonable accommodation of the individual’s requirements is provided;
Persons with disabilities receive the support required, within the general education system, to facilitate their effective education;
Effective individualised support measures are provided in environments that maximise academic and social development, consistent with the goal of full inclusion.”
Fourthly, the Government should adopt the definition and guidance of General Comment No 4 to guide the development of their Inclusive Education Policy:-
“10. Inclusive education is to be understood as:
Placing students with disabilities within mainstream classes without accompanying structural changes to, for example, organisation, curriculum and teaching and learning strategies, does not constitute inclusion. Furthermore, integration does not automatically guarantee the transition from segregation to inclusion.”
Other than the four changes outlined above let us speculate that instead of the wrong turn taken both by Labour from 2008-10, the Coalition Government of 2010-2015 and the Conservative Government of 2015 – 2024, we had continued and generalised the good inclusive practice that was increasingly developing in our schools in the 2000s. What else could have happened and should be now guiding us in developing a more inclusive mainstream?:-
I would be very happy to meet and discuss these ideas with you, your ministers and relevant civil servants and advisers.
Your sincerely
Dr Richard Rieser OBE
CEO, World of Inclusion Ltd.
Category: News
Micheline Mason died of a stroke on Saturday 7th September 2024. Micheline was 74, a major leader in the Disability Movement and a brilliant thinker, taking our Movement forward, especially the struggle for Inclusive Education, in a series of quantum moves.
This will leave a great hole in the lives of those who loved, knew and worked with her, but also a strong feeling of loss across the thousands of people whose life Micheline changed directly and a diminishment of possibility in the lives of millions.
Micheline had been developing her thinking since she had been born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (Brittle Bones) and although she felt like everyone else coming from a loving and supportive home, firstly Medical, then Educational and Social authority required her to be hospitalized, isolated and educated at home and later sent to a segregated boarding school. Micheline has powerfully written about this formative process and how it strengthened her in her book she self-published in 2022 “An Ordinary Baby: Tales of Childhood Resistance.’ Against the odds Micheline excelled academically and went to Art College where she began to liberate herself. After leaving Art College she rejected having a commercial art career in favour of activism. Micheline’s thinking developed further through the Re-Evaluation Counselling, the Women’s Movement and the burgeoning Disability Movement.
In the 1980s she played a key role in launching and running the ‘In From the Cold Collective’ [ See this clip where with her long term friend Chrissy Wilson she describes this], which brought together many of the future leaders of the Movement particularly Women, as it took a more all embracing approach than Union of Physically Impaired against Segregation (UPIAS), who became the majority of the leadership of the newly formed British Council of Disabled People (BCODP, 1980).
‘The Liberation Network of Disabled People (LNDP) were influenced by the Women’s Movement. Following their initial meeting at Lower Shore farm outside Swindon in 1980, they focused on breaking down isolation by finding ways to communicate with each other whether deaf, blind or physically impaired. Many of the ideas were developed by Micheline Mason and others in their ‘In From the Cold’ magazine. “We brought together leaders of different fragments of a movement. We challenged the effects of ‘internalised oppression’, recognised by all marginalised groups as the major ‘tool’ of the oppressive society; we challenged the conditioned hatred of ourselves and each other as disabled people; we challenged the desire to assimilate; we challenged the denial of ‘hidden’ disabilities; we challenged the fierce competition between us; we challenged the inability to champion, appreciate and support each other’s achievements or thinking (especially when it challenges our own); we challenged the lack of information & understanding about the issues of other oppressed peoples.’’ The LNDP were at the founding meeting of BCODP, leaving at lunchtime not happy with the male dominance and rigid approach. Many of these activists formed organisations that joined BCODP as it grew, but they always formed a different approach within the Disability Movement. The thinking of LNDP helped form the Alliance for Inclusive Education. The work on self-representation, social model and disability as an oppression was brought together to transform education.’
To earn a living Micheline had also become a Disability Equality Trainer and worked with the London Boroughs’ DET Team. Here she had learned and developed the thinking about the Social Model of disability, the need for self-representation and to challenge disability as a social oppression.
For Micheline “Friendship is key. I would argue for inclusive education as young people need to be facilitated to make friendships across the barriers that adults have created. That can’t happen unless they’re all together. All the rest of it is secondary. It was certainly the thing missing from my childhood. You never get over it, not really”.
Let me give some examples. I was introduced to Micheline, when I was put together with her by the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) to write advice on Disability Equality to the 13 successor boroughs, after abolition in March 1990. As a disabled teacher who won my grievance against compulsory redeployment, I had been seconded to develop work on bringing disability into the curriculum. Margaret Thatcher had abolished ILEA for purely ideological reasons, even though it was highly effective and popular with parents. The parents of disabled children, through an advisory group in 1989, had demanded that such advice be produced, as unlike Race, Gender and Class none had come from the ILEA.
The core of that group of parents became Parents for Inclusion, who had worked with Micheline previously when she’d sought advice on how to ensure her daughter, Lucy, who had the same impairment as her mother, could be successfully included in mainstream primary school. They mainly had children with Learning Difficulty, mostly Downs Syndrome, and had been struggling to get their children included [though at that time we called it integration].
I had come from a teacher trade union and socialist background and until this point had seen my impairments as a personal issue to be overcome. All this changed on the carpet of Micheline’s flat in Tooting as we argued and sought to find a way to reconcile our different views. I think I learned more from Micheline, but she also gained an understanding of the education system and wider social organisations. We met for the first time in September 1989 and what was meant to be a 80 page document grew and grew, as we agreed different experiences and thoughts had to be in ‘Disability Equality in the Classroom : A Human Rights Issue’. Launched by the political leaders of the ILEA three weeks before its demise, copies of the 280 page handbook were sent to every school in Inner London, every English Education Authority. Largely due to Micheline’s thinking in bringing the social model into education to challenge the deficit thinking of the medical model (Special Education Needs view) a uniquely radical approach to the education of disabled people was presented, covering impairments, curriculum, disability equality, pedagogy and self-representation.
Several things arose from our collaboration. Micheline became a life-long friend and collaborator. The Alliance for Integration was formally formed following an initial conference. The 3000 remaindered books were delivered to me and Micheline. Disability Equality in Education was formed to deal with the distribution and training over the next 17 years. Founding the Alliance, Micheline worked with me to develop a constitution that would represent all our allies but have a majority of the Council as disabled people, so it could be part of the UK Disability Movement. This meant having places on the Council for disabled people with various descriptions, disabled school students, disabled teachers, disabled parents and allies being parents, teachers and headteachers, educational psychologists, non-disabled young people. It sounds cumbersome but as the first elected Chair for 12 years, it was very effective, following Micheline’s leadership. In the first 10 years Allfie supported many parent led local campaigns for inclusion, drafted an Integrated Education Bill for Parliament, adopted Inclusion rather than Integration and changed its name, worked closely with Parents for Inclusion, Education Psychologists for Inclusion, spoke at many education and training conferences and later set up Young and Powerful. We got grants from Platinum Trust and Barrow Cadbury. Micheline held, for the first time in her life, a regular paid appointment as Allfie Coordinator with an office.
In 1995, Save the Children approached the Alliance, concerned at the lack of portrayal of images of disabled children and to organise a conference of children’s image makers, both authors and programme makers. This was the highly successful Invisible Children Conference. Out of this came the 1 in 8 Group which led to real changes both in books and children and adult programming.
Comic Relief were keen to work with us and Micheline became a member of their Board. The change in the images, their patronizing approach and their grant giving to DPOs is in no small way due to Micheline’s tenacity. Though they could not fund children they were able to commission a pack for training the adult workforce for inclusive education. ‘Altogether Better from ‘Special Needs’ to Equality in Education’. This was another collaboration between Micheline and myself and gave us a valuable space to produce a more practical case for inclusive education. With a film from Anthony Minghella – Break down the Wall and Griff Rhys Jones in a head to head with an astute disabled student from Tottenham, linking film extracts chosen by Anne Pointon, Channel 4 disability advisor, this was a powerful salvo for inclusive education. It sold more than 10,000 copies and was used throughout the country for training education professionals.
Comic Relief funded the first national Disability Equality Trainers Training for Education at the Leicester Holiday Inn,1992. They gave an interest free loan for a second edition of a further 5,000 Disability Equality in the Classroom. In 2008, Comic Relief was able to fund children’s activities and they funded ‘Young and Powerful’, ‘The Alliance’’ and ‘Disability Equality in Education’ (DEE), a small charity based on the work of Micheline Mason & Richard Rieser. DEE has developed and trained a national network of 100 disabled Disability Equality Trainers in England and Wales. The trainers delivered high quality disability equality training for inclusion to schools and colleges. This was launched by Jacqui Smith MP, Minister at the DFE in 1999. Micheline and I worked on developing the materials and running the Training the Trainers. We thought the Alliance should be the campaigning organisation, which is why it was not a Charity, whereas DEE could be and it got funding. Its training was received by over 100,000 educationalists in the UK. 625 disabled people had received Training the Trainers training which developed a much more positive view of inclusive education in the Disability Movement, by the time it was wound up in 2008. This was because Labour had changed their mind and would no longer fund this important work.
Some of the other major achievements were getting a meeting with David Blunkett MP before the 1997 General Election. As the future Secretary of State for Education he committed to developing an inclusive education system. Amending the Disability Discrimination Act to bring all Education establishments under it and removing 2 of the caveats that prevented parents getting their wish for mainstream. We called this compulsory segregation. Micheline and I, along with Jo Cameron of PI on the Council for Disabled Children managed to get the support of all the Charities sitting there. Ministers, Estelle Morris MP and Jackie Smith MP also supported and brought in the 2001 Education Amendment Act. Support of the Disability Rights Commission, teachers’ unions and TUC helped. Things were not perfect but from 2002 to 2006 the range and number of disabled children successfully included in mainstream schools went up in England. The publication of the Inclusion Assistant which came out of a weekend workshop of young disabled people was another major achievement, later taken up by the Government (2007) for Learning Support Assistant training.
Further achievements were getting a Disability Equality Duty into the 2005 Act for all public bodies and UK Government support for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), especially Article 24 on Inclusive Education.
However, as David Blunkett said to Lucy at a Young and Powerful meeting :‘Send Micheline and Richard a message. I could not do what I promised. The forces arrayed against us were too powerful.’ This was an unholy alliance of ‘SEN experts’, politicians led by David Cameron, special school headteachers, teachers who had not received adequate training, ill-informed parents, LA bureaucracy. The Baroness Warnock, author of the report that led to the 1981 Act changing her mind about inclusion and a Government laisse faire approach, not requiring schools to admit disabled pupils. The Labour Government view by 2007 had shifted when Andrew Adonis , Schools’ Minister, told the Education Select Committee that Labour did not have a policy of Inclusive Education. Micheline joined in these public debates on TV.
In 2010, the Conservative /Liberal Democrat Government had a policy of countering the ‘Bias to Inclusion’ which was nonsense, but together with austerity it led to an onslaught on the rights disabled people had gained.
In 2010, Rosa Branson launched her Portrait of the Inclusion Movement, painted 5 years earlier, which puts Micheline at the centre of multiple avenues of change. Launched after the first ever UK Disability History Month on the theme of Education at the Institute of Education, in November 2010, where the picture was hung.
Speaking at that event Micheline said:-
“Inclusive education AND Disability Rights are here to stay. I have seen such an enormous change in this area in my life-time. When I was born in the 1950s to be disabled was a terrible tragedy. It was just seen as a life sentence. At the point a child got a diagnosis they would be called handicapped. The parents were told they would never achieve. The expectations for their life were extremely low. Certainly, for me it was never expected that I would leave home, that I would get married, have children, have a job or a voice in the world. None of those things were expected. There was no Disability Movement. Disability was seen as a God given tragedy and possibly a punishment for the past evil deeds of thew parents. Parents felt full of guilt and shame. As a disabled girl there was absolutely no place in this country where I could receive an education that would lead to taking public examinations.
There was no differentiation between people with different impairments. We were all handicapped, we were all the same and needed to be shouted at, patted on the head and treated as children for the whole of our lives. The best you could hope for was a job at Remploy. I can remember that word filling me with absolute horror. One of the reasons it is so important to say all this is because of how it makes you see yourself. Apart from the Rights you don’t actually have it makes you feel so insignificant as a human being. I think what happens is even when things change, because today disabled people have far more rights in the world and there is a growing understanding that we are an oppressed group. Like other oppressed groups it is the discrimination and mistreatment that makes our lives so difficult. Even with some of those improvements it doesn’t necessarily mean you feel any better about yourself, without actually learning the history, learning that we are part of a group that have resisted, that have come together and fought. It is disabled people who have brought about these changes and that is something that each generation needs to know. That they are part of that group of people who chain themselves to buses, who fought for the DDA, who did so many things to make lives better for ourselves and each other. That struggle and that history is not known. They still think the Government did it, kind souls, or parents did it.
It was disabled people who did it. We had to organise and do it. It’s a history we have to be immensely proud of. As Richard said if you look back at how we have been treated over the years, it’s amazing it did not work. We’re still here. We are coming out and getting stronger, louder and bigger all the time. So what does that say about human beings and what really matters to us? Something I have noticed we call it a struggle for inclusion. An awful lot of people are using that word and they know what it means. It has stirred something right in the core of our beings, which everybody wants. I don’t believe there is anyone on this planet who does not want inclusion in their hearts. It is only the fears and everything else that is stopping it. The bigger our voices and the more platforms we have to speak on the more we can move things forward and its not just for us but for a kinder world to live in.”
2016 UKDHM Micheline read two of her poems Micheline’s poems are powerful and impactful. Not Dead Yet (2006) is as relevant now as then, with threats to introduce assisted dying.
I have lived to see another spring
To breath in the blossom’s perfumed air
To feel again in the sun warming my skin
To wonder at the life we share
I have another chance to notice
Shining eyes meeting my own
Some with love, some with questions
The hope, fear, pain we have all shown
I can touch again those I care for
With my hands, my mind, my heart
They touch me as if for the first time
New thoughts, our dreams just start
Physical pain I have known plenty
Impairments hold little fear for me
But to feel unwanted, a burden, a weight
Is the intolerable pain I fear
The answer cannot lie in murder made easy
In fueling guilt, complicity and dread
It lies in the courage to create a kinder world
In which no one would choose to be dead
Happily, I am not dead yet
I have lived to see another spring
I will use every precious moment I have left
This welcome change to bring
Micheline’s illustrations of our inclusion message have often convinced people more than screeds of words.
In 2019 for UKDHM Micheline and myself did a 2 handed interview on the History of the Alliance for Inclusive Education
Going into retirement, Micheline was free to write and began to drill down into the origins of some of the thought barriers we had come up against that reversed the moves to inclusion. Micheline was always an optimist and strongly believed that much of what we had done by challenging the status quo of segregation and integration could not be put back in the box.
So ‘Incurably Human’ and ‘Dear Parents’ published by Inclusive Solutions, bear witness to this deeper thinking and both still stand as invaluable templates for rekindling the Inclusive Education Movement.
The Financial Crash of 2008 and Austerity led Micheline on a deeper investigation of Capitalism and its impact on the working class. Micheline was convinced that a process of healing in group meetings was necessary to empower working class people, including disabled people, to have the confidence to challenge the oppressive power of those in control.
Interview with Colin Newton from Inclusive Solutions
Critique of the Conservative Government SEN Green Paper and Plan. Here Micheline says the Government has spoken to everyone but those who have grown up in the special segregated schools and can attest to their negative and long-lasting impact on their lives.
Those of us who worked closely with her will always venerate and be thankful for her insights and the challenge she provided which moulded the journey forward. In her memory we must continue. I will also never forget her joy and laughter.
As the American Socialist, Joe Hill said on his death by firing squad “ Don’t Mourn. Organise!”
Richard Rieser friend, collaborator and comrade in the struggle for Inclusive Education and a better world. World of Inclusion and UK Disability History Month
Category: News
The following template text has been designed to send to your Member of Parliament. The section in green can be deleted if it’s not relevant. The sections highlighted in yellow should be changed depending on constituency. MPs can only respond to correspondence from their constituents so it’s important to include your address. You can find your MP by using this link: Find your MP – MPs and Lords – UK Parliament
Dear [INSERT FULL NAME OF MP],
I am writing to you in relation to the ‘SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) crisis’ which, while widely acknowledged, is not necessarily understood in the same way by all parties. The content of this letter was also delivered as an open letter to the Secretary of State for Education on 3 September 2024.
It is well known that we have:
• A 72% increase in the number of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) since 2019.
• A 283% increase in agreements to requests for Education, Health and Care Needs Assessments since 2015.
• A 250% increase in appeals to the SEND Tribunal since 2015.
• Over 20% of students recorded as ‘persistently absent’, likely related to emotionally-based school non-attendance.
• An increase of 33,485 students attending alternative provision and special schools since 2015.
• Increasing numbers of Local Authorities unable to fulfil their statutory SEND requirements and experiencing associated financial unsustainability.
• 17% of pupils in England identified as having SEND (January 2023), indicating one in six children and young people are unable to successfully access the curriculum without support or adjustments.
In order to understand the factors underpinning the current crisis so that it can be addressed, we need to stop looking at the ‘SEND System’ in isolation and consider the wider education system as a whole.
A series of well-intended developments, policies, and practice introduced in good faith have combined to result in a fragmented system characterised by multiple examples of competing pressures and inconsistent legislative frameworks. Combined with chronic underfunding, the cumulative impact of these unintended consequences is to disproportionately disadvantage children and young people who need something additional or different to access education.
• The 2014 National Curriculum was introduced with intentions to raise educational standards but in doing so brought a much more rigid, prescriptive and narrow focus to learning with increased expectations for attainment at the end of each Key Stage. This came in the context of high-stakes performativity measures for both schools and individual teachers, (no doubt aimed to increase school performance) and a culture of competition between schools (aimed to provide more of a sense of parental choice). However, these were not congruent with the flexibility and adaptations needed for inclusive education. This was accompanied by considerable costs to school budgets (often reported as 8% in real terms), the wider impacts of austerity, the aftermath of COVID and much reduced access to external services such as mental health professionals and educational psychologists. As a result of all of this, the capacity of schools to provide the flexibility and resourcing that is required for inclusive education has been significantly reduced.
• Local authorities are responsible according to the Children and Families Act (2014) and SEND Code of Practice (2015) for ensuring access to provision for children and young people who need something different or additional to access education and for securing educational placement. However, since the Academies Act (2010), Local Authorities have very little power and no effective mechanism to hold academy schools to account, nor are they able to build new schools (mainstream or special) themselves, having instead to rely on negotiations with MATs or with central government in relation to free schools. This comes in the context of the huge increase in the demand for statutory assessments and special school requests already outlined, a severely depleted workforce, including educational psychologists, and a 21% cut in funding to local authorities since 2012.
Within the landscape outlined above, it is not possible to ‘try to fix SEND’ without looking at the role of other parts of the system in contributing to and maintaining the current situation. This must include a repositioning of ‘SEND’ within the wider education system so that it is no longer viewed as a ‘bolt-on’ or afterthought as it is now. Rather, those children and young people who need something additional and/or different to access education must be considered as central to all educational policy.
Instead of providing solutions, the current approach has led to parts of the system blaming each other:
• Schools are blamed for not being inclusive enough when true inclusion is impossible within current competing pressures and stretched resources and with teachers often feeling that they don’t have adequate training in how to support students with additional needs, including the application of reasonable adjustments (Independent review of teachers’ professional development in schools: phase 1 findings – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)). School staff often report experiencing a sense of professional fatigue associated with not being able to provide the flexibility and support for the children in their classes that they would like to, or were able to, 15 years ago.
• Parents are blamed for being ‘pushy’ or ‘demanding’ when what they are doing is advocating within a system which was not designed with their children in mind. Families are too often bearing the impact of limited capacity for responsiveness within systems so that children are often in crisis before they begin to access the level of support required. This often has serious implications for families, including huge emotional impacts, as well as difficulties with maintaining employment when their children are not able to access education (full time or otherwise), therefore resulting in serious difficulties with financial stability
• Local authority staff are blamed for not being able to meet their legal obligations in the concurrent and opposing vice-like constraints of financial strangleholds (since 2012), the demands of interventions such as Safety Valve, Delivering Better Value and Change Programme, which are all predicated on local authorities having control of rates of requests for Education, Health and Care Needs Assessments and special school places which the Children and Families Act and SEND Code of Practice don’t allow for. They are blamed for not providing enough support and early intervention in a context where the workforce crisis for support services has been growing over the last decade and a half. As an example, 96% of Local Authorities report difficulties with recruiting and retaining educational psychologists.
• Most alarmingly of all, children and young people are increasingly being blamed in narratives around behaviour, in particular on social media, for not being engaged enough in education. Given that fewer than a quarter of children eligible for free school meals pass combined maths and English at GCSE, it is not unreasonable to understand ‘low attainment’ as a result of external factors. Indeed, issues within the SEND and wider education system disproportionately disadvantage children and young people from marginalized communities, including Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students, those from low-income backgrounds, and those with additional vulnerabilities. For many children and young people, their educational experience is not accessible, meaningful or purposeful. We can’t blame teachers for this; they are obliged to teach to the curriculum.
Our children and young people need a coordinated and united approach to improving the education system, and an end to the current culture of blame.
It is in your power to be part of the solution. We ask you to please raise awareness of the broken, ‘bolt-on’ approach to SEND with your colleagues in the Department of Education and the Treasury. Please could we ask you to request that any response is not limited to reference to the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan, which does little to address these issues, or any funding initiatives for local authorities already mentioned. Please press your colleagues to engage with a full review of the whole education system and curriculum to address the inconsistencies outlined here, and to place the needs of those with additional needs at the forefront so that all children and young people can access a meaningful and relevant educational experience within which they can thrive and have a sense of belonging within their own communities.
The profession of educational psychology, represented through our joint liaison professional group (LA Principal Educational Psychologists, Training Programme Directors, AEP Professional Union, Division of Child and Educational Psychology at the British Psychological Society) would like to constructively engage with the DfE to co-produce a way forward. We are keen to work with the new government to work towards a solution to the issues identified, and so set an ongoing relationship where we are at the table for informed decision-making around holistic education policy.
Very best wishes and many thanks,
[INSERT NAME AND ADDRESS]
Please note that the open version of this letter delivered directly to the Secretary of State of Education, has been signed by the following organisations:
• Association of Educational Psychologists
• British Psychological Society’s Division of Educational and Child Psychology
• National Association of Principal Educational Psychologists
• Action Cerebral Palsy
• Afasic
• Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education
• British Dyslexia Association
• Disabled Children’s Partnership
• Equals
• National Development Team for Inclusion
• Special Needs Jungle
• Thomas Pocklington Trust
• Down’s Syndrome Association
• Contact
• Square Peg
• World of Inclusion
Category: News
Information pack for Progression steps 1, 2 and 3 aimed at learners and practitioners to support them in promotion of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People in education settings.
Disability Rights, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (UNCRPD) and The Curriculum for Wales: Find them here.
Contents:
Category: Projects – UK
Jacqui and Sally are retired Co-Headteachers – they explain how their school had become one of the most inclusive in the UK. To learn more about Peer mediation and how to set it up in schools, see our video tutorial or learn at your own pace via our online school.
Category: Video
The Inclusion Think Tank Podcast is presented by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education (NJCIE). This podcast features conversations with inclusive education experts and advocates to discuss the impact of inclusion in schools. It serves as a resource for educators, school administrators, and families who are seeking additional knowledge about topics related to inclusive education.
NJCIE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that serves parents and educators in New Jersey. Established in 1989 by professionals and parents, it is the only nonprofit organization in New Jersey with the sole focus on inclusive education and provides needed expertise to schools and educators on how to include students with disabilities into school communities and classrooms with dignity and equality. NJCIE supports inclusive education for all students as a fundamental civil right and views inclusion as a means to creating an equitable, socially just democratic society.
Listen to all 13 episodes in the playlist below:
Category: News
The Welsh Government is fully committed to the principles and practices embedded within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (UNCRPD). The Convention requires signatory countries to protect these rights and to monitor progress. Welsh Government are keen to promote the Convention – to help ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights by disabled people.
Working with Richard Rieser, Disability Wales has been commissioned by Welsh Government to produce and pilot curriculum ideas and activities on disability and the UNCRPD to be introduced at Key Stages 1, 2, and 3. These curriculum ideas will be cross curricular, complementing the new reforms: Relationships Sexuality and Religion, Values and Ethics. These curriculum ideas will cross cut the 6 Areas: Expressive arts, Health and well-being, Humanities, Languages, literacy and communication, Mathematics and numeracy, Science and technology and Information Technology and Access.
Category: Projects – UK
