ALTER – European Society for Disability
Research
4th Annual Conference, Paris, 2-3 July 2015
Questioning contemporary societies
through the lens of disability
Disability, education and participation: a critical
analysis of recent policy developments in England
Felicity Armstrong
Institute of Education, University of London
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Outline of presentation
• Brief overview of wider policy context in
relation to Disability
• Education policy in relation to ‘special
educational needs’
• The Children and Families Act 2014
• Reversal of trend towards greater inclusion
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Disability: the policy wider context
• Disabled people in England are currently at the
receiving end of the most vindictive cuts in public
expenditure.
• Cuts in Personal Independence Payments (PiP)
are leaving people in poverty and unable to have
the support they need to live independently and
with dignity
• Government and media attack on ‘dependency’
and obsession with distinguishing ‘faux’ and
‘genuine’ disabled people.
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• Introduction of Work Capability Assessments
(WCA) in 2007
• Partial privatization of services,
e.g. Lucrative contract given to ATOS, then MAXIMUS
(£600,000,000) to assess ‘capability for work’.
• Many complaints of harsh treatment, tests held in
inaccessible buildings, damaging and
inappropriate decisions
• WCA described as ‘’the biggest single social policy
failure of the last fifteen years”.
(Senior economic advisor to the cabinet)
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‘Disability’: a malleable category?
• ‘Disability’ revealed as a social construct in the
context of the neo-liberal agenda
• The state expands or shrinks the disability
category in response to economic and social
change. (Roulstone, 2015)
• Many disabled people are losing their ‘disabled’
status as a means by government of reducing
costs
• Many wrongly declared ‘fit for work’ and their
benefits reduced. Very limited possibilities of
finding employment.
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Why is this wider context relevant to
education?
It demonstrates:
• The partial privatisation of public services and the
shrinking role of the state
• The orchestration of a shift in cultural attitudes towards
disability – sharpening of notion of the ‘deserving’ and
the ‘non-deserving’
• The obsessive commitment to the use of assessments
and measurements to categorize and sort human beings
• The increasing dominance of the medical model
All of these features are to be found in current education
policies.
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VERY brief background to education
policy
• 1944 Education Act - introduced 11 ‘categories of
handicap’ (focus on ‘deficits’)
It drew in large numbers of disabled children
(previously in ‘hospitals’ or other institutions)
into the education system for the first time
(i.e. 1944 Act widened participation)
• 1970 Education (Handicapped Children) Act
completed this process. ALL children became part
of the education system and attend school.
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Introduction of the term “Special
Educational Needs” (1981 Ed. Act)
• The Warnock Report (1978), leading to the 1981 Education
Act, challenged dominant assumptions about the nature and
terminology of, for example, ‘maladjusted children’..
‘mentally retarded’ etc
• The 1981 Education Act introduced the term ‘special
educational needs’ and new terminology which was intended
to move away from the medicalised and deficit-driven
language of the past, such as ‘handicapped’, ‘mentally
retarded’, ‘deaf’ etc , adopting the terms ‘emotional and
behavioural disorders’, ‘learning difficulties’, hearing
impairment etc.
• Introduced ‘statements’ of special educational need.
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Problems with ‘SEN’ terminology
Terminology of ‘special educational needs’
(SEN):
• has become a homogenising mega-category,
which labels children and young people
negatively
• Has not replaced medicalised labels which
continue to dominate the field of special
education
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The Children and Families Act 2014:
main proposals relating to special educational
needs
The Act
• replaces statements and learning difficulty
assessments with a new birth- to-25 Education,
Health and Care Plan, which covers provision for
young people in further education and training.
• offers some families personal budgets so that they
have more control over the support they need
• sets out plan to give children, young people and their
parents greater control and choice in decisions and
ensuring needs are properly met.
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The Act:
• requires local authorities to involve children, young people
and parents in reviewing and developing provision for those
with special educational needs, and
• to publish a ‘local offer’ of support which sets out the
provision and support available.
• It aims to improve cooperation between all the services that
support children and their families and particularly requiring
local authorities and health authorities to work together
• It replaces existing category of ‘social, emotional and
behavioural difficulties emotional’ with the new category
‘social, mental and emotional health (SMEH)’.
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Some criticism of the new Act
•
It emphasizes co-operation with and between health and
local authority services – rather than focusing on the need to
transform education structures, cultures and practices.
• It uses the homogenising term ‘special educational needs’
uncritically
• The Birth- to-25 Education, Health and Care Plan presents the
risk of marginalising children and young people by identifying
them at birth and holding and grouping them within a ‘special
educational needs’ label and identity throughout their
growing up. It puts them on an ‘SEN’ pathway from birth.
• Crucially, there is no mention of “inclusion’ or “inclusive
education”
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Trend towards increasing numbers of
children attending special schools
• Between 1983 – 2007 proportion of pupils in special
schools steadily fell from around 1.7 per cent in 1982
to approximately 1%
• This trend levelled off and then continued to rise
from 2007 onwards.
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Numbers and percentages of children
attending special schools
number
•
•
•
•
•
•
attending
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
91,830
92,270
93,230
94, 275
95, 915
101,590
% of pupils
1.1%
1.1%
1.2%
1.2%
1.2%
1.2%
(DFE, SFR, 2012)
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• Successive governments have supported
continuation of special schools.
• Mainstream schools sometimes reluctant to accept
students deemed to be ‘low attaining’ or possibly
disruptive.
• Increasing numbers of schools are ‘selective’.
• Many parents prefer their child to attend a school
where there are small classes, therapists and a
protective environment.
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Reasons behind the increase in numbers attending
segregated schools?
First, it is not possible to understand the ‘special needs’
system in England as separate from the wider context of
education policy and its effects.
• Increasing emphasis on testing, inspection and
performance in schools
• Many schools increasingly less willing to welcome children
who might present difficulties in learning and not reach
government attainment targets.
• The introduction of Academies which are publicly funded
but operate outside the control of local education
authorities. Academies have greater freedom over the
curriculum, finance and teachers’ conditions of
employment.
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• The introduction of Free Schools which are also funded
by central government but they are set up by charities,
groups of parents, trusts and other groups. They can
set their own curriculum, class sizes, admission criteria,
• An important and hidden growth in private schools
which ‘cater’ for children who local authorities find
difficult to place. These schools charge massive fees
(sometimes over £100,00 per year). The cost is often
met by local authorities. i.e. public money goes into
the lucrative private sector.
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Other barriers to inclusion
• Processes involved in identification and
categorization leading to labeling – (although we
have to recognize the reality that these processes
are often an integral part of setting up support
and releasing funding.)
• A lack of resources and the failure to use existing
resources effectively for inclusion in support of
learners and their particular requirements such
as the provision of speech and language therapy
and physiotherapy in mainstream schools
• School, cultures which do not support equality
and celebrate diversity
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Parallel processes going on outside and inside the
education system, which undermine the rights of
disabled people:
• System dominated by assessment, categorization,
re-categorization
• A failure to listen to the voices of disabled people
• Government and media rhetoric which is
undermines inclusion and the rights of disabled
people.
• Encroaching privatisation of parts of the welfare
state and the education system
• Hidden and bureaucratic mechanisms which
allow the growth of practices which contradict
Equality legislation.
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