Report to the People
Special Educational Needs
The posters are going up, the leaflets are being delivered and the eggs have begun to fly. Welcome to another General Election campaign.
In the week when the Westminster campaign really kicked off, the Scottish Parliament had a strangely peaceful feel about it. Insulated from the frenzied theatrics of the campaign, MSPs quietly got on with important (if not electrifying) work.
One of the most thought-provoking debates of the week was on the subject of how we provide for children with Special Educational Needs. The Education, Culture and Sport Committee conducted an extensive inquiry into the issue earlier this year and this debate was a chance for the whole Parliament to debate its findings.
People of my generation will remember the way we used to educate children who had any sort of physical or mental disability. Whether he or she had a learning difficulty, was deaf, or physically disabled, they were cut off from their friends and bussed to a special school. They never had the chance to interact with other children and this led, unsurprisingly, to those educated in mainstream schools having no understanding of disability. A fertile breeding ground for prejudice.
We have, of course, moved on since then. The majority of children with special needs are already in mainstream education. Indeed, the Standards in Scotland’s Schools Act 2000 put in place a presumption that children with special needs would be educated in the mainstream. Concerns, however, remain around issues such as the training for school staff and the availability of support and information to pupils and parents.
The Education Committee therefore made a number of detailed proposals to help more children with special needs into mainstream education. Their main message is that all children must be treated as individuals, rather than lumped together in a group labelled "disabled."
This is not only good for the children with special needs themselves, it is also good for their classmates. The more they learn about disability, the easier it becomes to break down barriers and challenge old prejudices.
This, of course, does not mean that all children will be forced into a mainstream school. Special school placements must continue to exist for those with the most significant disabilities.
The days of seeing educating children with disabilities as a waste of time are over. It is time to recognise they are not a part of a homogeneous group, but individual people. Individual people with as much right as anyone else to realise their full potential.
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