• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Education / ALLFIE to build new coalition on fight for inclusive education
Separate pictures of Michelle Daley, one of them a head and shoulders, and the other speaking from her wheelchair at a protest in front of an Educate Don't Segregate banner

ALLFIE to build new coalition on fight for inclusive education

By John Pring on 12th January 2023 Category: Education

Listen

The disabled people’s organisation leading the fight for inclusive education in the UK is building a new coalition of allies and supporters to end segregation and push for mainstream education for all disabled people.

The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE) is working to build a coalition of disabled activists and allies who see the fight for inclusive education as a social justice and human rights issue.

ALLFIE hopes the coalition will draft new legislation on inclusive education and push for it to be introduced in parliament.

It is recruiting a new member of staff to help build the coalition, and set up a young disabled people’s parliamentary group.

Among the areas the coalition will need to address, says ALLFIE, are the lack of funding and support for disabled children in mainstream settings, which forces parents to seek places in segregated special schools and colleges, and the disproportionate number of disabled children excluded from mainstream schools and colleges for “behavioural” reasons.

Michelle Daley (pictured), ALLFIE’s director, said: “We know inclusion works, there are good examples of it working.

“But at the moment there is no meaningful investment or interest from government in making inclusion thrive and be sustainable.”

Mainstream schools are choosing the children they want to accept, she said, and often that means they refuse to accept disabled children, particularly those with high support needs.

She added: “The systems in place disproportionately affect children who are disabled and disabled children who are from the furthest marginalised communities.”

ALLFIE is also looking at links between segregated education and poverty, and the experiences of black and other global majority children.

Daley said: “We will make sure that the coalition looks at the causes and effects of segregation and links to social injustices.

“While the coalition will focus on segregated education as a social justice issue, it will also be rooted in intersectionality to challenge how discrimination around our identities and backgrounds is used to drive disabled people out of the mainstream education system.

“For example, children and young people who have significant impairments are more likely to be excluded from mainstream education, and children with significant impairments from a marginalised community are pushed furthest to the margins across all areas of society.

“The focus will be on education, but you can’t talk about education without talking about access to other areas of life that are needed in order for somebody to access education, such as independent living and health, because all of those things are interconnected.”

ALLFIE and other organisations supportive of inclusive education are awaiting the government’s response to a consultation on its special educational needs (SEN) review, which was published 10 months ago.

Daley said last year that the green paper was “steeped in social injustice and inequality”, omitted any reference to inclusive education as a human right, and was “riddled with biases towards segregated education for disabled children and young people”.

She warned then that key parts of the review were incompatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and would likely force some disabled children, particularly those with higher support needs, into segregated education.

She also said the green paper had erased intersectional injustices, by all but ignoring issues such as race, class and gender bias.

Daley said this week: “We are not excited about what the response will be, but it will give direction about where the government will be going.”

But she added: “None of the parties have done well on this.

“It is something that Labour must – not should – must take seriously.

“They have to be serious about this because too many disabled children and young people are being failed and let down by the system. Way too many.”

 

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Tags: ALLFIE inclusive education intersectionality segregation SEN SEN review special schools

Related

Concern over expansion of supported internship scheme ‘with potential for exploitation’
23rd March 2023
Government’s SEND plan is ‘wholly insufficient’ and ‘an all-round failure’
9th March 2023
Anger over trail-blazing inclusion council’s support for new special school
19th January 2023

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to the free Access London Theatre Guide

Access

Latest Stories

Disability discrimination in Met police is ‘baked into the system’, says report

Evidence mounts of disability benefits white paper’s fatal flaws

Court orders second Jodey Whiting inquest to probe consequences of DWP’s actions

‘Nonsensical’ disability benefits white paper sparks return of Spartacus

Concern over expansion of supported internship scheme ‘with potential for exploitation’

Labour ‘shares concerns’ about government’s work capability assessment plans

‘Heartless’ reforms to disability benefits ‘defy logic’

DWP white paper offers mix of ‘human catastrophe’ and overdue reforms

DWP figures show 600,000 could be missing out on disability benefits

DLA ‘disallowances’ plummeted after death of Philippa Day, DWP figures show

Advice and Information

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2023 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web