17 July 2009 Accessibites – A girl’s tale of life in mainstream education
Following the education theme, as Trailblazers have just started our 'Education Campaign Investigation,' I recently read an interesting article about Nadia Clarke whose parents eleven years ago fought to win her a place into mainstream schooling. Since then, her achievements have been extraordinary.
Nadia's family moved across the country to find a place in mainstream education for her, their "bright but severely disabled daughter' (with cerebral palsy combined with deafness). The family faced many struggles, such as having to move over a hundred miles away to a town with a poor educational reputation, but always kept going to provide the greatest education for Nadia. Finally after much persistence, Nadia's parents found a primary school willing to place her in their school, despite the amount of support she required, and were able to find a secondary school head-teacher willing to take a chance with Nadia again.
The so-called "Nadia Effect" is one of a number of cases of parents fighting to get their children into mainstream schools according to The Alliance for Inclusive Education and Parents for Inclusion.
In 1979, Baroness Warnock led a committee that stated that children with special needs should be included in mainstream schools wherever possible. According to the article, she u-turned in 2005 and wrote in a pamphlet that inclusive education was having a detrimental effect on children. David Cameron also has stated he would completely reverse the closure of special schools. I disagree with these sentiments because based on personal experience, in which I spent the first 10 years of my education in a special school, I found myself ill-equipped and under-educated. The special school did not give me an equal education to what I would have received in a mainstream school. Instead the curriculum was patronising and children with purely physical handicaps were treated in the same way as children with learning disabilities. The lack of interaction between myself and non-disabled peers also caused huge problems when it was time to integrate with the rest of society, and I would imagine that this would be even more striking for someone with a non-physical disability. The reversal that David Cameron speaks of might result in councils pressuring parents to accept special schools as their only option, further marginalizing disabled children.
The article argues that because of a lack of special schools, parents no longer have choices about what type school to send their children to. I disagree with these arguments because I feel like the best solution would be to close special schools and channel those resources instead into special needs facilities and departments within mainstream schools. For example, my secondary school in the United States had a Special Needs department that provided intensive support to disabled students with specialists for the various types of disability, but operated within the framework of the rest of the school; and even though I was in the Special Education programme, I attended mainstream classes, with the addition of a scribe and other specialist study adaptations. The advantage to this was that students learned to interact with their non-disabled peers and received an equivalent education, but still benefited from specialised support for their specific needs. I feel the resources that are used on creating and maintaining condescending special schools could be better channeled to support students in mainstream schools in being successful. Also the more disabled children in a mainstream school there are, the more these children and their disabilities become accepted and non-taboo, with the additional advantage of having other disabled children to fall back on as a support network.
Find out more information about 'The "Nadia Effect".'
By Sulaiman Khan
2 Comments
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Kimberley Randle replied on 25 Jul 2009 at 21:19Report abuse
i think this is true as my mum had to fight to get me into a mainstream school, if it wasn't for her my education and my friends would have been totally different, university would not have even been a issue and my friends may not have accepted me the way they do know, so a fab story,
you need to put the video on hear as i showed my friends and they learn't a lot from it, a good eye opener!!!!
kim
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evette lee replied on 5 Aug 2009 at 07:34Report abuse
i was in mainstream school from the age of 5, but this wasn't 'inclusive'. all through my schooling I was excluded by both teachers and peers. I would be made to sit and watch p.e., and in all other lessons the teachers sat me at the back of the classroom and just didn't bother. I am disabled and therefore would never need an education behind me in my adult life!
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