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Inclusion: theory and practice
This paper was originally prepared for Japan on the basis of UK experience but it is relevant to other countries with a strong special school tradition.
In contrast to most writing on inclusion which is concerned with the reform and restructuring of ordinary schools, I want to consider ways in which countries like the United Kingdom and Japan with well established systems of publicly funded special schools can develop more inclusive practice by changing the role of special schools and special services.
The challenges will be different in other countries - for example, where special schools are run by non-governmental organisations or the private sector, whether or not financial support is provided by the state. I would therefore like to begin by considering what we can learn from developments in other countries and above all how we can work within the major United Nations programmes on inclusion and disability.
Global needs and challenges
During the last 20 years, and especially since the International Year of Disabled Persons and the subsequent UN Decades for Disabled Persons, we have much more information on what is happening in other countries and also at the global level of some major United Nations programmes and the possibilities which these present to national governments and to regional groupings.
Consider some global figures, from UN statistics and estimates:
United Nations initiatives
The United Nations has provided exemplary leadership in creating a global framework to encourage governments and communities to face up to these challenges. These include:
The Education for All initiative, first launched in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990 and at a world summit on children in the same year. This encouraged each government to set targets to increase the number of children completing four years of free primary education. The education of girls was strongly emphasised. The global initiatives to which most national governments are committed involve children living in poverty and disadvantage, children who are working or living on the streets or in grossly overcrowded homes, as well as children who are dropping out of school after only one or two years of primary education.
Although children with disabilities are meant to be included in the Education for All targets, they are often overlooked and forgotten, unless voluntary organisations and parent groups insist on their inclusion.
Progress in achieving these targets has been very slow but some very poor countries have made striking progress. Perhaps the most dramatic is Uganda where the government is implementing a guarantee to provide primary education to four children in every family. Disabled children and girls were given the highest priority - a good example of a truly inclusive policy.
Priority for children
A major obstacle to reaching the Jomtien targets has been the crippling burden of debt owed by many developing countries to rich countries and to the World Bank. For example, Africa is spending $13 billion on debt repayments; Zambia spends four times more on debt repayment than on education.
Ten years after Jomtien, the world's leaders met again in Dhakar, Senegal to review progress and set new targets for 2015. Disabled children were barely mentioned.
It has been estimated that $US 8 billion a year would be needed to meet the Education for All targets. This sum is equivalent to:
In the last few years, several of the richest countries (including the UK) have reduced or cancelled the debt of some of these countries, on condition that the money saved is invested in education and health. Uganda has shown that even a very poor country can bring education to all its children, including those with disabilities. We can only hope that other countries will follow its example.
Salamanca Declaration and Framework for Action (UNESCO 1994)
The importance of including children with disabilities was strongly reaffirmed at the UNESCO World Conference on Special Needs Education in Salamanca (UNESCO 1994). This conference has been very influential in encouraging governments to adopt inclusive policies and in giving examples of progress in reforming schools to respond to a much greater diversity of need in their local communities.
The UN Standard Rules (UN 1993)
Another UN initiative is reflected in Standard Rules on the Equalisation of Opportunities for Disabled Persons, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1993. Rule 6 is concerned with education:
"States should recognise the principle of equal primary, secondary and tertiary education opportunities for children, youth and adults in integrated settings. They should ensure that the education of persons with disabilities is an integral part of the education system".
This is then followed by nine more specific recommendations. The UN has appointed a rapporteur to monitor the extent to which national governments are adopting this and 21 other Standard Rules. The most recent development is the possibility of an international legally binding United Nations Convention to promote the rights of persons with disabilities.
There is a role here for parents' organisation, advocacy groups and movements to work together to remind governments of their commitments to these international initiatives.
Lessons from ISEC 2000
'Including the Excluded' was the over-arching theme of ISEC 2000, the 5th International Special Education Congress which was held at Manchester University from July 24-28 2000. Over 1000 people came from 99 countries to share their ideas, experiences, dreams and frustrations. There were 44 symposia and around 800 individual papers and posters (ISEC 2000). What lessons can we learn from this wealth of information and experience?
Despite enormous differences in background, culture and economic conditions, some common themes can be traced.
Need for clear national policies
What implications do these international developments have for countries like Japan and Britain with a strong special school tradition but with a new commitment to inclusion?
The fundamental foundation for progress is that clear policies should be worked out and agreed at the level of central government, local government and above all by each ordinary and special school. These policies should result in clear plans for implementation, with target dates for the achievement of goals and sub-goals. Can we define inclusion?
In order to develop clear policies, it is first necessary to try to clarify what is meant by inclusion and how it differs from integration. Although there is no agreed definition, there is consensus that inclusion calls for a fundamental reorganisation of regular schools and classrooms in order to cater for a greater diversity of children's needs in the community. Inclusion involves changes at three levels:
Inclusion and integration are different. Integration assumes that some children have difficulties which require special measures - maybe special environments, special teachers, with specialist training. It is the child who must adjust to the school.
In inclusion, the emphasis is on the changes in the environment of the school and the educational system as whole. These include reform of the curriculum and the methods of teaching, the nature of the interactions between teacher and child, ways in which children are grouped and provided with opportunities to learn together. The active involvement of parents is also essential.
In some ways, we can think of integration as based on a medical model in which the aim is to identify deficits in order to try to remediate them. Inclusion is based more on the social model of disability in so far as it is concerned with ways in which the social and educational environment can be modified to enable children to participate fully in the life of the school and of society.
For the present purpose, we can assume that a government has made a commitment in principle to promote inclusion, perhaps with reference to the Salamanca Declaration (UNESCO 1994) or other international instruments but that progress towards inclusion is slow and fraught with dilemmas and difficulties.
In the UK, we now have a strong policy framework based on inclusive principles and values, together with some additional funding (Mittler 2000). Furthermore, all mainstream and special schools and colleges of further education have had some 8 years to develop their inclusion policies. On the other hand, there is a great deal of variation among the 200 or so Local Education Authorities who have to administer complex special needs legislation and continue to provide specialist services (such as educational psychology) while delegating some 80 per cent of their funding direct to schools. There are also great variations between schools within the same LEA, sometimes in the same neighbourhood or street.
We can consider examples of possible changes under a number of inter-connected headings. These are not mutually exclusive, nor are they in order of priority.
Removing obstacles to inclusion
Assessment and decision making procedures can be firmly based on the initial assumption that all children will be educated in ordinary schools. The aim of assessment is to identify obstacles and difficulties for each child individually and then try to agree on a programme of action to address these.
Individual Inclusion Plan
An individual inclusion plan is not the same as an individual educational plan which is normally concerned with helping children to reach specific developmental and educational targets. Drawing up an individual inclusion plan goes beyond traditional assessment of the child's needs and difficulties by asking what kind of environmental changes would be needed to enable the individual needs of a given child to be met in the ordinary class of the local mainstream school. This needs to be followed by a decision on the removal of these obstacles and a time table for doing so.
For example, some children will need wheelchair access to classrooms, recreational facilities and toilets; others will need modifications to the curriculum, supported access to the curriculum through computers and communication and information technology; others will need the personal support of a teaching assistant in certain classes or activities.
Reviewing all children in special schools
A similar approach can be applied for all children now in special schools or segregated provision. Many children were sent to special schools at a time when it seemed impossible for regular schools to meet their needs. Today, many more ordinary schools are educating children who would have been rejected without consideration ten years ago.
All children in special schools should therefore be regularly reviewed with a view to exploring all possible means of meeting their needs in more inclusive settings. This again assumes the preparation of an individual inclusion plan. Some children may already be ready for planned transfer to a mainstream class, provided the appropriate supports and the necessary funds and staffing resources can be made available. Others may need a longer period of preparation.
Developing inclusive policies
Developing policies for the future of special schools
Although there is general agreement that the work of special schools is changing and must change much further, there is considerable uncertainty in most countries about the future role of special schools. Some argue for a policy of phasing out all special schools over a period of time on the grounds that the continued existence of special schools is inconsistent with inclusion. In the United Kingdom, the government is committed to retaining special schools as part of a broad spectrum of provision and in order to enable parents to choose a special school placement for their child if that is their considered opinion.
The number of special schools in the UK fell by some 15 per cent in the period 1986-1996 (from 1405 to 1191) though the number of pupils attending special schools has remained at just under 100,000. One Local Education Authority has closed all but one of its special schools (the London borough of Newham) and there are very large variations in the proportion of children in special schools, even between adjacent LEAs. In England and Wales as a whole, some 1.2 per cent of all pupils of school age are in special schools but the figures vary between 0.32 and 2.6 per cent between LEAs in different parts of the country.
In contrast to these figures, some 60 per cent of all pupils with 'statements' of special educational needs are now in mainstream schools. These pupils are guaranteed additional resources by the LEA after a full multi-professional assessment. Many of these children would undoubtedly have been sent to special schools in the past but their needs are now met in mainstream schools with the help of additional funding provided by the LEA through the statement.
These huge variations reflect the lack of clear policy leadership by the government on the role of special schools in the future. Even so, the government has required all Local Education Authorities to clarify their inclusion policy as part of their overall Education Development Plan. These plans are subject to inspection by the Office for Standards in Education. A similar requirement is placed on all schools, whether mainstream or special.
Links between special and mainstream schools
The UK government is also in strong support of collaboration between special and mainstream schools. A CD ROM has been produced with useful examples of different types of collaboration (Department for Education and Employment 2000).
In fact, collaborative links between special and mainstream schools can be regarded as a distinctive feature of UK practice over the past 20 years. Well over 80 per cent of special schools are currently involved in link schemes. These have been well researched by the National Foundation for Educational Research in a series of reports over a long period (Jowett and Moses 1988; Fletcher-Campbell 1994; Fletcher-Campbell and Kington 2001). These reports would repay study in countries such as Japan with a strong special school system, since they go beyond mere description and include critical evaluation of the limitations of the link systems that have been developed.
In a typical example, a special school with under 100 pupils with severe and profound learning difficulties will arrange for some 8-10 pupils to attend classes in a neighbouring primary school for an average of three hours a week. The pupils are accompanied by a teacher or more probably by a teaching assistant. They usually go individually rather than as a group and are likely to attend classes in literacy and numeracy, physical education and dance, art and social activities. Special schools also use sport and swimming facilities, as well as curriculum materials, especially computers. Some mainstream pupils also spend similar periods in special schools.
The most recent evaluation (Fletcher-Campbell and Kington 2001) concludes that the more successful link schemes reflect positive attitudes on the part of both sets of teachers, resulting in joint planning and clear thinking on the nature and aims of the links and whose needs were being served. However, they conclude that
" the scope of the activity was relatively restricted in terms of time and numbers of staff involved. So long as links are regarded as optional extras and are not embedded in the plans of every special school and every relevant mainstream school, there will continue to be a divide between two forms of provision and dialogue will remain at the level of counting pupils on roll, rather than discussing effective case management". (Fletcher- Campbell and Kington 2001).
This research also confirmed earlier studies which showed that a typical special school in the UK only returned one child a year to mainstream provision. Although there are many reasons for this, it seems likely that numbers could increase if the annual review of each child's progress involved representatives from mainstream schools and included an analysis of the changes that would be needed to enable individual children to be satisfactorily educated in mainstream schools.
Dual placements
One possibility is to register all new children with SENs on the roll of a mainstream school, even though they may need to attend a special school temporarily. This can be the child's neighbourhood school. The aim is to develop an individual inclusion plan which is tailor-made to the needs of the individual child in relation to the stage reached by the local school in meeting his or needs and, indeed, those of others in the community.
Special Schools as Resource Centres
As long ago as 1978, the Warnock Committee referred to special schools becoming 'resource centres' (Department of Education and Science 1978) but the concept of the resource centre is not well understood or defined.
In addition to the link schemes already described, a school can act as a resource centre by recruiting staff for outreach work.. This might involve supporting their own pupils in spending increasing period of time in mainstream schools or supporting mainstream pupils who are in danger of exclusion to special schools. In either case, they are using their experience in special education to support inclusive practice.
Their very presence in a school can help to create positive attitudes to inclusion by reassuring their mainstream schools that specialist support is available. On the other hand, the presence of specialists can have the opposite effect to what is intended if such staff act as 'experts' and leave other teachers with the conviction that special training and special school experience are necessary to teach children with special educational needs.
The point to stress here is that special school staff may be competent in their own setting but may lack the tact, sensitivity and consultancy skills needed for working with colleagues. Training, supervision and support are essential.
Similarly, special schools can act as resource centres to mainstream schools in demonstrating specialist equipment, curriculum materials or particular methods of teaching - eg small steps, curriculum adaptation or differentiation.
School Clusters
In a densely populated area, schools can benefit by creating structures and mechanisms for collaboration; this is often described as 'clustering' (see Lunt et al., 1994 for detailed studies and recommendations). A typical cluster may consist of ten or more primary schools, at least one secondary school and one or more special schools. The schools can agree to work together to improve the quality of provision for all pupils with special educational needs within their catchment area. For example, they can join forces on school-based training, share ideas on individual educational planning and in general on moving forward to more inclusive practice. Clearly, the presence of one or more special schools can greatly increase the scope for sharing specialist skills.
Special classes
Many mainstream schools, especially in the United States, have special classes, often containing children with learning difficulties or behaviour problems. Such classes have been heavily criticised for some time, mainly on the grounds that they contain a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic children, that they provide an inferior education and that their pupils lack opportunities for inclusion into ordinary classes (Lipsky and Gartner 1997). What was once seen as an opportunity for integration is now under criticism for providing an unnecessarily restrictive environment for children whose needs could be met in ordinary classrooms in a more inclusive system.
Resourced mainstream schools
In some areas, Local Education Authorities select a small number of mainstream schools who are given additional financial and staffing resources to include a number of children with special educational needs who would in other circumstances be sent to special schools. In general, these children attend the ordinary class, though they often have a resource room for specialist work or one to one teaching. Additional members of staff are appointed to support mainstream staff as well as the child in accessing the curriculum and participating in the whole range of school activities.
This model can provide good quality education and support but has the obvious disadvantage of distance. A child not attending the neighbourhood school is missing out on social opportunities of going to school together with other local children; furthermore, a disproportionate amount of time may be spent in travelling between home and school.
One version of the resourced school model involves closing all special schools and relocating all special school pupils to carefully selected mainstream schools. A model along these lines was proposed by Mittler and Farrell (1987) some 15 years ago but can be criticised as involving unnecessary segregation.
The proposal involves closing a special school and relocating all pupils in special classes of up to ten children, together with their teaching and support staff and equipment to carefully selected and resourced primary and secondary schools in different areas of a town. The head teacher and deputy head teacher would play a key management role in coordinating the work of teachers, support staff and links with mainstream provision and other agencies, such as health and social services. For example, out of 80 children in a typical special school for children with severe learning difficulties, 40 could be transferred in classes of ten to four different primary schools; another 30 to three secondary schools and ten older students to a college of further education.
Although some of the children would initially be in their special class, each child would have an individual inclusion plan involving increasing periods of contact with the rest of the school. Some children might be ready to spend a substantial amount of time in mainstream classes, provided they and the class teachers had appropriate support. Others might need more time. On the other hand, some mainstream school may not be ready for more inclusive practice.
Changes in mainstream schools
The most fundamental pre-requisite for inclusion is reform and restructuring of ordinary schools and of the education system itself. This involves a reform of the curriculum so that it becomes accessible and relevant to the whole range of pupils in the community, not only those with disabilities. Since the Salamanca Declaration of 1994, this process is better understood; moreover, as we have seen, the education of children with disabilities is increasingly seen as an integral part of the Education for All movement which aims to improve the quality and accessibility of schooling to all children who are in any way excluded or marginalised. An excellent international resource is provided by the UNESCO Open File on Inclusive Education (UNESCO 2001) which consists of support materials for managers and administrators and draws on the experience of a range of countries in moving towards inclusive practice.
The restructuring of ordinary schools involves change at a variety of levels. In the UK, these include:
Some of these initiatives are still at an early stage; some have been in place for some years; others have hardly started (Mittler 2000). An Index for Inclusion has been sent to all schools to enable them to carry out a self-evaluation of progress and problems in developing inclusive practice (Centre for Studies in Inclusive Education 2000).
It is difficult to assess the strength of either the support or the resistance to inclusion. Although many more children with special needs are being educated in mainstream schools, it is clear from research that many teachers have serious reservations about accepting children with intellectual disabilities and strongly believe that children with difficult behaviour should be sent to specialist provision (Croll and Moses 2000). This view also finds expression among educational psychologists (Lunt and Evans 2002) who express doubts about the ability of ordinary schools to meet the whole range of educational need in a neighbourhood.
Inclusion is a long process, a road to travel rather than a destination but much can be done at every level to work develop more inclusive practice at every level. Clearly, the classroom of the ordinary school is the starting point and end point for such a journey.
References
Centre for Studies in Inclusive Education (2000) Index for Inclusion:
Developing Learning and Participation in Schools. Bristol: CSIE.
http://www.inclusion.uwe.ac.uk
Croll, P. and Moses, D. (2000) Special Needs in the Primary School: One in Five? London: Cassell.
Department of Education and Science (1978) Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People. London: HM Stationery Office.
Evans, J. and Lunt, I. (2002) Inclusive education: are there limits? European Journal of Special Needs Education, 17,(1), 1-14.
Fletcher-Campbell , F. (1994) Still Joining Forces? A Follow-Up Study of Links Between Ordinary and Special Schools. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research.
Fletcher-Campbell, F. and Kingham, A (2001) Links between special and mainstream schools: a follow-up survey. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs 1, (3) (www.nasen.org)
Jowett, S. and Moses, D. (1988) Joining Forces: A Study of Links between Special and Ordinary Schools. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research/Nelson.
Lipsky, D. and Gartner, A. (1997) Inclusion and School Reform: Transforming America's Classrooms. Baltimore, Md.: Paul H. Brookes.
Lunt, I., Evans, J., Norwich, B. and Wedell, K. (1994) Working Together: Inter-School Collaboration for Special Needs. London: David Fulton Publishers.
Lunt, I. and Evans, J. (2002) Inclusive education: are there limits? European Journal of Special Needs Education, 17 (1), 1-14.
Mittler, P. (2000) Working Towards Inclusive Education: Social Contexts. London: David Fulton Publishers. (Japanese translation 2002, Tokyo University Press)
Mittler, P. and Farrell, P. (1987) Can children with severe learning difficulties be educated in ordinary schools? European Journal of Special Needs Education, 2, 221-236.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (1994) The Salamanca Declaration and Framework for Action. Paris: UNESCO.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (2001)
Open File on Inclusive Education. Paris: UNESCO.
www.unesco.org/education/educprog.sne
*Emeritus Professor of Special Needs Education, University of Manchester UK. Peter.Mittler@man.ac.uk
Inclusion: theory and practice
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03/03/2003