Anger over government’s ‘gleeful’ announcement of yet more special schools

The government’s policy of opening more and more special schools is stripping funding from mainstream settings and handing it to profit-making bodies, disabled campaigners have warned.

They said the government was allowing these organisations to make “huge profits” through the “institutionalisation and inhumane segregation” of disabled children, and they criticised this week’s “gleeful” announcement of locations for another 16 special free schools.

The warning came from The Alliance for Inclusive Education, as the Department for Education announced that the new special schools would provide spaces for more than 2,000 disabled children across England.

Academy trusts will now be given the opportunity to compete to run the new schools.

The government has already opened 108 schools as part of its special free schools programme since 2010, and said it planned to open a further 93.

David Cameron’s pledge in his party’s 2010 general election manifesto (PDF) to “end the bias” towards including disabled children in mainstream schools led to successive Conservative-led governments focusing on building new segregated special schools, and increasing the number of children attending special schools.

But Iyiola Olafimihan, ALLFIE’s justice and campaigns officer, said the government’s latest plan was nothing more than to “take away much needed funding and resources from mainstream educational settings and giving it away to commercial and private providers who are making huge profits off the back of institutionalisation and inhumane segregation of disabled children.”

He said the move to open yet more special schools across England “clearly undermines” the presumption of mainstream education included in the Children and Families Act 2014.

Even more importantly, he said, it breaches article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by the UK government, which states that inclusive education is a human right.

Last year, the government admitted in its Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan that there was evidence “that greater inclusion in mainstream settings can improve the academic achievement for children and young people with SEND* and has neutral or small positive effects on the outcomes of those without SEND”.

Olafimihan said it was “shocking” that the government kept funding special schools and units when there were “disturbing reports of harm and torture” in segregated schools.

He pointed to last month’s report by the BBC, which described how staff had been filmed “hitting, kicking and leaving special school pupils in their own urine” at Whitefield School in Walthamstow between 2014 and 2017.

Olafimihan said the government’s plans would ensure disabled children and young people “remain segregated, excluded and marginalized from society” and would deprive them of the chance to build “meaningful social networks and friendships with their non-disabled peers”.

He said the government had “gleefully and unashamedly” announced its “appalling” latest plan, which “clearly demonstrates that the government’s interest is to undermine the belief that every disabled person deserves equal access to mainstream education”.

Announcing the new special schools, education secretary Gillian Keegan said: “Special schools can truly transform children’s lives, enabling pupils with special education needs and disabilities to thrive in environments that meet their needs.

“We’re creating tens of thousands of special school places since 2010 and today’s announcement takes us one step closer to our commitment of a record 60,000 more places for children with additional needs.

“I know how hard it can be for families trying to navigate the SEND system, and the creation of more brilliant special schools is just one part of our plan to make sure every family and every child get the right support, in the right place at the right time.”

But ALLFIE said the argument that inclusive education works “is already won” and “education on an equal basis is a matter of human rights that must never be denied to disabled children and young people”.

Olafimihan said: “By continuing to implement policies that undermine equitable and equal right to the same quality of education in mainstream settings that non-disabled children and young people have access to, the UK government is violating our human rights and dignity.”

And he called on the disabled people’s movement to support ALLFIE’s campaign, and help it push back against the “relentless and continuous assault” on inclusive education.

*Special educational needs and disability

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…