Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education

supporting inclusion, challenging exclusion

news & events

Always Someone Else's Problem

25 April 2013

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner published yesterday, 24 April, its year 2 report on illegal exclusions. "Always Someone Else's Problem" details the scale and nature of children illegally excluded from school, suggesting this affects thousands of children in several hundred schools. This report follows the March 2012 report "They Never Give Up On You" and the March 2013 report “They Go The Extra Mile”, both of which had explored inequalities in school exclusions. These earlier reports had highlighted alarming levels of inequality with regard to gender, ethnic background and perceived ability and had suggested that the current system of school exclusions is in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and of UK legislation.

This latest report states that, in some of the schools visited, some practices are clearly discriminatory and are contrary to schools’ legal duties. These include school rules on hair length or hair cut which only apply to boys; or which relate to hairstyles much more likely to be worn by a particular ethnic group. In both cases, breaches of these school regulations could lead to immediate short-term exclusions, without any notice given.

The inquiry found evidence of pupils being moved to other schools or sent home without an exclusion being recorded; having asked parents to keep children at home to avoid an exclusion, schools then coded their absence as ‘C’ (authorised absence).

In other instances young people categorised as having ‘special educational needs’ were sent home because their specialist teacher was unavailable or the school wanted to avoid the possibility of disruptive behaviour during an Ofsted inspection.

The report states: “This situation is unacceptable. It should be a source of shame to the education service. It means that even in what we believe are relatively small numbers, some children lose out on education through the action or inaction of the adults responsible for educating them.” The report suggests that urgent action is needed and makes a number of recommendations, including that schools illegally excluding pupils for one month should be fined an amount equivalent to the funding they receive for educating that pupil for a year.

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CSIE workshop in summer 2013
Anti-bullying strategies for a rich and positive learning environment

24 April 2013

About the workshop:

Do all pupils and staff feel welcome, visible and respected in your school? Do lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pupils and staff feel safe at school? Can disabled pupils and staff, current or prospective, fully participate in every aspect of school life? Ofsted’s report No place for bullying” (June 2012) said that LGBT and disabled pupils bear the brunt of bullying in schools. Do all staff at your school feel well-equipped to tackle homophobic and disablist bullying? If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, this workshop is for you.

This workshop is designed to help staff in primary and secondary schools to promote equality and eliminate discrimination. It aims to do more than simply help schools fulfil their legal duties or do well in an Ofsted inspection. It is a practical, “hands on” workshop designed to be engaging and constructive. It highlights equality issues for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and disabled members of the school community, explores proactive and reactive approaches to bullying and offers a clear framework for advancing equality in schools. It encourages participants to consider experiences of discrimination from a range of perspectives and to take practical steps towards generating rich and positive learning environments from which everyone can benefit.

For further information or to book a place please visit CSIE training

Who should attend:

Aims

This workshop aims to:

Objectives

At the end of this workshop participants will be able to:

Cost: £90 +VAT (total £108)

HALF PRICE offer: Places available at £45 +VAT (total £54) to delegates who participate in a 30-minute focus group discussion. This will take place straight after the workshop, to explore further ways in which CSIE can help schools promote equality.

Dates and venues:

London

Wednesday 19 June 2013 1.30 – 4.00pm

National Children’s Bureau (NCB), 8 Wakley Street, London EC1V 7QE

Sheffield

Thursday 20 June 1.30 – 4.00pm

Quaker Meeting House, 10 St James Street, Sheffield S1 2EW

For more information please see www.csie.org.uk/about/training.shtml

Feedback from previous CSIE workshops

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Lukewarm commitment to equality

19 April 2013

The Home Office has called for a review of the public sector equality duty (PSED), as part of the Red Tape Challenge spotlight on equalities, which seeks ways for the aims of existing regulation to be fulfilled in the least burdensome way possible.

The public sector equality duty is set out in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 and says that public bodies must have due regard to the need to: eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation; advance equality of opportunity; and foster good relations between people who have, and those who do not have, any of the ‘protected characteristics’. The ‘protected characteristics’ identified in the Equality Act are: age, gender, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity (the Act uses the term ‘race’), marriage & civil partnership (in connection with eliminating discrimination), pregnancy & maternity and religion or belief. The public sector equality duty came into force just over two years ago, on 5 April 2011.

The steering group which has been convened to oversee the review has called for evidence on: a) how well the PSED and related guidance are understood; b) the costs and benefits of the PSED; c) how organisations are managing legal risk and ensuring compliance with the PSED; and d) what changes, if any, would ensure better equality outcomes (for example legislative, administrative and/or enforcement changes).

CSIE has responded to this review and said that, in our experience, the PSED is not fully understood or implemented in schools. At a time when hate crime is reported to be increasing, the PSED should not be withdrawn but plans to support its implementation should be put in place as a matter of urgency. We also added that the benefits of eliminating discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations by far outweigh any financial costs in the process. Our full response appears below.

CSIE submission to PSED review

The Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE) has been at the forefront of developments in inclusive education for over 30 years. Founded in 1982, the Centre has extensive experience of working to promote equality and eliminate discrimination in education for everyone regardless of age, impairment, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion or belief. CSIE provides training and consultancy nationally and internationally and produces resources which support the development of inclusive education, some of which have become popular with education practitioners throughout the world. For more information please see www.csie.org.uk.

Our practical knowledge of the field and of relevant documentation, as well as our recent interactions with parents, schools, local authorities and other organisations in the sector, have led us to believe that the PSED is not yet fully understood or properly implemented in schools. In particular:

It follows from the above that the current legislation is not well understood in education; there is no immediate need to modify the legislation, but there is an urgent need to support its implementation. Hate crime, particularly disability hate crime, is reported to be increasing (see “Hidden in plain sight”, EHRC report of September 2011 and “Out in the open”, follow-up report of October 2012). Much more needs to be done in education, in order to eliminate discrimination and harassment, to advance equality of opportunity and to foster good relations between people who have a protected characteristic and those who do not. Getting this right in education is a first step towards better appreciation of diversity and greater social justice. The benefits of achieving this by far outweigh any financial costs in the process. In order to ensure that the PSED is better understood and fully implemented, CSIE recommends that:

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Concerns over legal reforms mount

21 March 2013

Last week the Department for Education published an Indicative Draft of a new Special Educational Needs Code of Practice, intended to support the passage of the Children and Families Bill through Parliament. A Draft Code of Practice for formal consultation is expected to be published in September.

While we applaud the government’s intention to extend legal protection to the education of young people beyond statutory school age and up to the age of 25, we are deeply concerned at much of the content, or lack of it, of this document.

The new Code is expected to replace the existing Code of Practice and the Statutory Guidance on Inclusive Schooling. In doing so, a number of existing legal protections will be lost, or diluted. This is precisely what the Department for Education had promised would not happen, when it set the ball of legal reform rolling with the publication of the Green Paper in March 2011.

The Indicative Draft Code of Practice suggests abolishing ‘school action’ and ‘school action plus’ categories and replacing them with a single category of ‘Additional SEN Support (ASS)’. It also proposes, in line with the proposed Children and Families Bill, to replace statements of special educational need with Education, Health and Care Plans. It does not, however, mention time limits for statutory assessments, and it clearly reflects a reluctance to adopt a standard format for EHC Plans and significant slackening of review procedures. Also at risk of being lost are the definition of inclusion currently in the statutory guidance on inclusive schooling, as well as the detailed guidance on the steps schools and local authorities can take, to make sure that the presence of one child in a school is not thought to get in the way of the efficient education of other children.

The government continues to declare its genuine commitment to parental choice of school. This, however, could be little more than salt in the wounds of parents who find that, in practice, the choice of mainstream is not open to them. What good does it do to have “a right to express a preference”, when there are no plans to make the choice of mainstream possible for all children?

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Children and Families Bill

26 February 2013

The government is pushing forward with plans to change the law on the education of disabled children or those said to have special educational needs. These reforms have been hailed as the most significant reforms in the area for more than thirty years, yet they are being rushed through at a pace that leaves many critics significantly concerned. Alarmingly, the Pathfinders that have been designed to pilot some of the changes the government proposes to make, are not due to conclude until after the new law is expected to receive Royal Assent.

Almost two years ago, in March 2011, the Department for Education had published the Green Paper “Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability”. This was around 10 months into the current government’s term of office. More than a year later, in May 2012, the Progress and Next Steps document was published, with details of the Green Paper consultation responses, changes already in place, and next steps in taking plans forward. In September 2012 the Department for Education published the draft provisions that were expected to form the basis of the proposed reform. The Education Committee conducted a pre-legislative scrutiny and published the report of its findings last December. The proposed Children and Families Bill was introduced to the House of Commons on 5 February and received its second reading yesterday (Monday 25 February). Despite some of the Pathfinders having been extended to autumn 2014, the Children and Families Bill is expected to complete its passage through Parliament and receive Royal Assent in spring 2014, a time which could be significant for the lifetime of this government. In other words, as the media were quick to report, MPs have voted through a bill for key changes, with no clear evidence that these changes will bring improvement.

The Bill sets out to improve services for children who are considered to be vulnerable and seeks to reform the systems for adoption, looked after children, family justice and special educational needs. With regard to special education reform, CSIE’s concerns are focused on the weakened wording for the local offer and for the amendment to the draft clauses which means that disabled children who do not fall under the current definition of ‘special educational needs’ will not be covered by this law. The government’s justification is that they are already protected by the Equality Act 2010, but the fact remains that they will not be entitled to an Education, Health and Care Plan (the proposed successor of the statement of special educational needs.) For more information please see the joint briefing produced by the Every Disabled Child Matters (EDCM) Campaign and the Special Educational Consortium (SEC), of which CSIE is a member.

CSIE is disappointed that such a major law reform does not seize the opportunity to replace the term “special educational need” which seems to us to have outlived its function. Repeated criticisms of the term had so far been met with the argument that it cannot be abolished because it is embedded in law. The current law reform provides an excellent opportunity to replace this term with alternative, more appropriate, terminology. The term “special educational need” first appeared in law in the 1981 Education Act, which stated that children should be identified as having special educational needs if they have “a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for them”. This definition still holds today and appears in the revised Code of Practice (2001). It has repeatedly been criticised as inadequate and, in the words of Baroness Warnock in 2005, is “the purest vicious circle you will ever know”. She added: “Well, that is not much of a definition but it is the only definition there is.” More than 30 years on, the term may only seem acceptable by virtue of its longevity.

Above all, CSIE is concerned that the Bill re-introduces clauses from the Education Act 1996 which had been repealed by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA 2001). More than ten years ago, this Act had strengthened the commitment to inclusive education by removing two of the provisos of the general duty to educate in mainstream which had been in law since 1981. SENDA 2001 repealed two of the clauses from Section 316 of the Education Act 1996 (that the child receives the special education he or she requires and that there is an efficient use of resources) in the name of disability equality, on the understanding that these are matters of school organisation. These clauses had remained in Schedule 27 of the Education Act 1996, which was not amended by SENDA 2001.

Conditions specified in previous laws reflected the educational context of their time. The 1981 Education Act introduced the duty to educate all children in mainstream schools, as long as: this reflected parental wishes, did not hinder the education of other pupils and was compatible with the efficient use of resources. This, in the context of some children having been considered “ineducable” just 10 years previously (the Education (Handicapped Children) Act 1970 transferred the responsibility for providing for children categorised as “educationally subnormal (severe)” from health authorities to local education authorities.) The 1993 Act added a condition that the education received must be appropriate to the child’s needs and the 1996 Education Act, consolidating a number of education laws, maintained all four conditions. In the context of a national move towards greater disability equality, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) 2001 removed 2 of the previous 4 conditions and stipulated that all children should be educated in the mainstream, as long as this is consistent with their parents’ wishes and with the efficient education of other children in the school. More than ten years on, in the context of today’s unconditional commitment to disability equality, there seems no need for any conditions to disabled children’s right to a mainstream education.

At a time when disability equality is more widely acknowledged and the government has confirmed its genuine commitment to parental choice of school, one could have expected that such a significant law reform would remove the third proviso on the duty to educate in mainstream (that this does not affect the efficient education of other children) on the understanding that this, too, is a matter of school organisation. This would have left only one proviso, that a mainstream education is consistent with parental wishes. We are deeply disappointed to see that the government has not seized this opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to disability equality. Instead, by keeping the existing proviso in the Children and Families Bill and re-introducing the clauses previously repealed, the government is effectively undermining parental choice. The message here is clearly that, for some parents, conditions will apply before their choice of mainstream can be honoured.

It is widely understood that the efficient education of other children depends on how teaching and learning are organised in a school. In some parts of the world there are no special schools; all children are educated in the mainstream. If some UK schools are concerned that the presence of one child will compromise the efficient education of others, they should be supported to develop their capacity to provide for the full diversity of learners; not be told that they don’t have to include disabled learners.

Last but not least, specifying conditions upon which parental choice of mainstream will depend, will be inconsistent with:

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Bias against inclusion?

12 February 2013

The long-awaited Children and Families Bill received its first reading at the House of Commons last Tuesday, 5 February. The Bill re-introduces clauses from the Education Act 1996 which had been repealed by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA 2001) in the name of disability equality. We are deeply disappointed to see such an assault to the development of inclusive education for disabled children and will be reporting on this more extensively after the Bill’s second reading, scheduled for Monday 25 February.

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Study visit from India

04 February 2013

We were honoured to have been invited to host a two-week study visit from a delegation from India, wishing to develop more inclusive education in their country. Senior government officers and teacher trainers from the Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat regions visited the UK from 21 January to 1 February and engaged in a rich programme of school visits, seminars and other events.

The delegation spent the first three days in London where, despite the beautiful inconvenience of the snow and some last minute rescheduling, we managed to engage in all planned activities. The delegation heard about LGBT equality from Sue Sanders, co-chair of Schools OUT and LGBT History Month and about disability equality from Richard Rieser, CEO of World of Inclusion and from Jonathan Bartley, Chair of the CSIE Council of Trustees and father of a disabled child. We visited Stoke Newington School and heard about their impressive efforts to promote LGBT equality and Bygrove Primary School in Tower Hamlets, to see their inclusive provision. Some of us even managed to attend the launch of CRAE’s report on the State of Children’s Rights 2012. On our way out of London we stopped at the Wroxham School and were impressed to see how Learning Without Limits looks in practice.

The end of the first week was spent in CSIE’s home city of Bristol. From here, we visited Emerson’s Green Primary School in South Gloucestershire, a mainstream school with a resource base for pupils with physical and/or visual impairments. Delegates were impressed with the school’s commitment to disability equality and the way the resource base forms an integral part of the school, intentionally moving away from conventional models of locating a “unit” in a particular space. We also visited Henbury School and heard from the school’s Equalities Manager. CSIE campaigner Em Williams facilitated a workshop on trans equality and Dr Lendvai and Dr Bainton, Lecturers in Comparative Public Policy and Education respectively, delivered “Translating experiences of inclusive education in the UK into practice in India”, a seminar to explore issues of “translating” policy.

On 28 January the delegation attended “Equalities in Education: the new landscape”, a conference held at the Institute of Education, in London. From there we travelled to Norfolk where we spent the final part of the study visit. Delegates visited Framingham Earl High School, Roydon Primary School, Colman Infant School and Broadland High School and were impressed with the diverse ways in which the Index for inclusion has helped school improvement. In Norfolk we were joined by Professor Tony Booth, author of the revised edition of the Index for inclusion, who delivered a seminar on the Index and engaged in conversations about adapting the Index for use in India. We were also privileged to be present at an Index Forum Meeting, at the start of a two-year schools improving schools project, using the language of the Index for inclusion.

We remain grateful to all presenters, in and out of schools, who gave so much time and energy and contributed to the success of this study visit.

Wordle: Indian delegation's feedback to CSIE

Feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive and included comments such as: "It was really exciting and we learnt a lot", “This study trip will help me to implement the Index for inclusion in the context of India”, "Well organised", "Sufficient material is provided and very useful" and "Facilitator provided good facilitating, more than what we expected". Improvement suggestions were mostly requests for more detailed information available earlier (though, in CSIE’s defence, study trip dates were only confirmed at the end of December) and more Indian food to be served throughout the study visit. We remain grateful to the chef at the Avon Gorge Hotel, Bristol, who adapted the standard menu and provided meals tailored to our guests’ wishes.

Each delegate has been given a copy of the Index for inclusion and both regions have made plans to translate and adapt this school improvement resource for use in their local schools. The delegation considered what barriers to learning and participation might exist in their local contexts, in addition to those already mentioned in the Index, and identified a number of issues including extreme poverty, language barriers and issues of caste and other social inequalities. We look forward to hearing how these and other plans to develop more inclusive education in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat take shape.

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Unleashing Inequality

10 January 2013

A new report by the Academies Commission published today, 10 January, says academies use covert selection methods to skew their intake. Unleashing Greatness: Getting the best from an academised system has found that some academies manipulate admissions to improve results and use covert selection methods, such as using lengthy admission forms or holding social events for prospective parents, to get round a ban on direct interviews set out in the admissions code. Such practices enable academies to select pupils from more privileged backgrounds and, the report says, have "attracted controversy and fuelled concerns that the growth of academies may entrench rather than mitigate social inequalities". In order to guard against this, the report recommends that academies publish an annual socioeconomic audit of how their intake compares with the pool of applicants.

The report also raises concerns about the process by which schools are converting to academy status and has found that some academy chains seem more focused on expanding their empires than improving their existing schools. This, the report says, raises concerns over government claims that an increase in the number of academies is driving up standards.

One of the key arguments for the academies programme had been that, by removing local authority control, schools would be closer to the local community and more directly accountable to parents. The report, however, has found that this is not so, and says: “We heard many tales where parents felt they were no longer able to have their voice heard”.

More information is available from the Academies Commission website and in the national press including The Guardian and The Independent.

Sadly, none of the above comes as a surprise. CSIE remains deeply concerned at the path that the state education system is being pushed along. Instead of seeking ways to promote equality and increase opportunity for all, state education is being shaped in ways which embrace, if not perpetuate, existing inequalities.

Meanwhile, it is being reported that the Conservative party has plans to allow private companies to run state schools for profit. This has been vetoed by the Liberal Democrats for the time being, on the grounds that it could be seen as back-door privatisation of the state education system, but is likely to be included in the Tory manifesto ahead of the next general election. What values underpin such choices? How can market forces and competition (which aligns success with academic achievement), offer equality of opportunity and help improve the life chances of those from minority or disadvantaged backgrounds?

We urge all supporters of inclusive education to resist such paths to inequality. It is true that no one individual has the power to change an entire education system. It is also true that, if everyone who cares for the principled development of schools makes a small change in their immediate environment, the national picture can slowly improve. The CSIE resource Index for inclusion:developing learning and participation in schools (Booth and Ainscow 2011) is a values-based resource for school self-evaluation and improvement. It is available from all major booksellers, or directly from CSIEat a discounted rate.

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Page last updated: Saturday 04 May 2013

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