Inclusion for all children? So last century.
In the 1980s and 1990s educational inclusion was an unquestioned public ideal : education for all children in their local schools, all of the time and for the whole of their school careers. No matter what their level of school attainment or behaviour, no matter what developmental difficulties they might be experiencing as the result of disabilities, they should all be able to access the same academic curriculum in the company of their peers. Withdrawal from class for extra help or attention off ended this ideal, and separate classes and separate schools for certain children were anathematised as ‘segregated’, the whole matter being one of inarguable human rights.
So high was the moral ground held by the ideal of educational inclusion that it was hard even to discuss the issue.
Critical comment was rare and there was little serious public debate. Academics kept their heads down and there was very little critical research. In practice, of course, the ideal was often honoured in its breech, and many, many people grumbled about it – mainly in private – not just teachers but also parents and the pupils who lived with its implementation. Slowly and inexorably the ideal became social policy, central and local government and schools swung into line with this dominant policy meme, and special schools began to close or to merge.
In the 21st century a major new factor emerged: widely published, articulate public questioning of both the ideal and the practice of total educational inclusion and, unforeseeably only a few years ago, the political consensus on total inclusion has cracked.
The first and most powerful public advocacy for reform came from media reports by educated parents of disabled children. Some of this was from parents already well versed professionally in public communication; some recounted through journalists. In common they vividly expressed the horror and frustrations common to many less able to publicise their concerns, at the incompetence and negative attitudes met in trying to extract from ‘the system’ the skilled, specialised educational services of their choice. Particular attention was directed towards the often Kafkaesque process of ‘statementing’. Such stories won the total support of the media. So did parents’ personal campaigns against local education authorities and the more public campaigns that emerged from these, such as the Special Schools Protection League and the independent special schools that some parents set up in despair at ever achieving official help. The system itself mustered no public response – or if it did then the media simply ignored it.