Is it that the policy of 'inclusion' has been sold to parents as the ideal, when it was/is as much about closing special schools? Three closed in the borough where I used to live and the sites sold for housing.
I have mixed feelings about this, mainly because it's difficult to get to the root of what the real purpose is/was.
We have two children on the autistic spectrum, both were offered mainstream places. I can see that there are children whose conditions are limiting who are nonetheless capable academically (and socially) of coping with mainstream school - to exclude them is to segregate them, to make them different, to isolate 'normal' children from the experience of disability, and that's not a good thing.
On the other hand there are children who, with the best will in the world, will not benefit significantly from exposure to mainstream schooling but whose presence would - does, in some instances - jeapordise the education of the children around them.
Mrs. O. works in education and has seen this first-hand, and we know from our own that whilst one of children struggled but came good in mainstream, the other would have wasted everyone's time.
What was needed, I think, in the 'Push for Inclusion' was a firmer stance against schools complaining of the cost/difficulty of adapting to children with (particularly) physical needs, rather than a blanket 'let the parents choose' policy.
As a parent I know the pressure to pretend like nothing's wrong, to hope rather than reason, and that helps no-one. There is a place for professional assessment, but there is also a place for professional support mechanisms.
Learning Support Assistants in schools are, generally, wonderful people, but they got into the work to help small groups of kids catch up: they didn't sign up to be care assistants, and they sure as hell aren't paid anything like a going rate for that sort of work, but that's increasingly what they end up doing.
O.
