• 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 / Ofsted report ‘shows government is ignoring alarm bells on inclusive education’
An overhead view of the delegates in the chamber in Geneva

Ofsted report ‘shows government is ignoring alarm bells on inclusive education’

By John Pring on 14th December 2017 Category: Education

Listen

Some parents are being asked to educate their disabled children at home because their schools claim they cannot meet their needs, the education watchdog’s annual report has warned.

Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, said in her report that the proportion of disabled children needing support who had been excluded from their schools was “typically high”.

She said that some disabled children and young people who need support were having “a very poor experience of the education system”.

She said that some parents “have been pressured to keep their children at home because leaders say they can’t meet their needs. This is unacceptable.”

Her report also says that there are now about 1,000 state-funded special schools, three-quarters of which are maintained by local authorities, while a quarter are academies.

And it says that the proportion of pupils with a statement of special educational needs or a new education, health and care plan attending a state-funded special school, rather than mainstream provision, has risen from 40 per cent in 2010 – when the new coalition government pledged to “remove the bias towards inclusion” – to 45 per cent of pupils.

Tara Flood, director of The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE), said: “The government is in complete denial that there is a crisis in the support that disabled children and young people should be receiving.

“The alarm bells are ringing everywhere apart from in the Department for Education.”

She said ALLFIE had heard from parents who had been told to educate their disabled children at home.

She said: “It highlights what ALLFIE has been raising the alarm about for a long time now, that disabled children and young people are being forced out of mainstream education by a tightening of the [Ofsted] inspection regime and a narrowing down of what is considered to be educational success.”

She said that the increasing Ofsted focus on academic attainment and discipline “gives a reason for schools to remove children considered to have challenging behaviour”.

As a result, there had been a rise in the number of disabled children being viewed by schools as having challenging behaviour, with that being used as a reason to exclude them and avoid “putting [the school’s] academic results into jeopardy”.

She said: “We have noticed in the last two years the real increase in parents being told that their [disabled] children are no longer welcome in school and in college.”

She said there was also an increasing “disconnection” between schools and local education authority support services for disabled children, because of the education reforms brought in by the government.

Flood said: “The real worry for us is not only the government’s denial that there is a crisis in education for disabled children and young people but that their response to that is to build more segregated provision rather than taking a human rights approach and building the capacity for inclusion.”

And she said there was also anecdotal evidence of children being excluded from school while on the waiting-list for support from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

This has led to children being denied any kind of education “for months and months” while waiting for an assessment.

She said the report in August by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities on the UK’s progress in implementing the UN disability convention “set out clear recommendations for the UK government in terms of what it needs to do to make fundamental changes to the education system”.

The report was highly critical of the UK government’s approach to inclusive education, and the “persistence of a dual education system” that segregates increasing numbers of disabled children in special schools.

It called instead for a “coherent strategy” on “increasing and improving inclusive education”, which would include raising awareness of – and support for – inclusive education among parents of disabled children.

Picture: Representatives of UK disabled people’s organisations at the UN in Geneva in August

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Tags: ALLFIE CAMHS Department for Education inclusive education Ofsted Tara Flood

Groundhog Day at the Old Vic, access performances, with icons for audio description, captions, relaxed performances and British Sign Language, and a picture of a groundhog

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

Access

Latest Stories

DWP hands hundreds of millions more to firms linked to claimant deaths… but not Atos

Review finds multiple agencies failed over Whorlton Hall abuse scandal

Regulator tells government’s access advisers to act on unlawful secrecy

Government breaks pledge to consult on improvements to housing adaptations

Broadcaster’s silence over ‘rabblerouser’ tweet on disability benefits

Met’s mental health emergency warning ‘risks creating serious harm’

Call for direct action protests to build support for ‘radical’ social care reform

Disabled mum took her own life after actions of DWP and Capita ‘magnified’ anxiety

Public inquiry on inaccessible footbridge will be ‘line in the sand’, say activists

Thousands of disabled people tell MPs: Cost-of-living crisis is affecting our health

Advice and Information

Groundhog Day at the Old Vic, access performances, with icons for audio description, captions, relaxed performances and British Sign Language, and a picture of a groundhog
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