Inclusive Education

Harry Daniels, Philip Garner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136361999
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume provides overviews and approaches to inclusive education from around the world. It defines the philosophical, political, educational and social implications of "inclusion", and maps out the dilemmas facing its successful implementation.

Section II
Dilemmas for inclusive educationSystems in reformulation

5. England and Wales: competition and control - or stakeholding and inclusion

Gary Thomas and John Dwyfor Davies

The new inclusivity in England and Wales: what is it?

The last few years in England and Wales have seen a dramatic change in political outlook. In less than a decade, competition and aggressive meritocracy have given way to co-operation and stakeholding. Inclusivity was one of the central planks on which the Labour government, newly elected in 1997, based its election campaign, and its most recent discussion paper on the future of special education (DfEE, 1997) promotes inclusion and encourages creative thinking about inclusive education.

This new notion of inclusivity is in contrast to the predominant political ethic of the 1980s, which was given academic credence by the economic doctrines of Hayek, Friedman and others. Hargreaves (1982) saw those as a manifestation of egoism, which has deep roots in northern European thought. The meritocratic, individualistic and competitive thought associated with that tradition provided ample justification for segregation. By contrast, in the new philosophy, which sees all members of society as stakeholders, it is natural to see schools as places where all are welcomed, and where duty is felt to all.

It can be argued that current ideas about inclusion have their roots in the ideas of the early twentieth-century English socialists of Fabianism. Fabianism placed an emphasis on the eclectic rather than on the synthetic, concentrating on practical detailed reforms and the rejection of grandiose theoretical speculations; indeed, their ideas had much in common with those of the 'New Left'. The purpose of education, according to Sidney Webb, was to develop 'the most civilized body of citizens, in the interests of the community as a whole, developing each to the "margin of cultivation'" (cited in McBriar, 1966, p 208).

The theme of community and collective belonging is echoed by Tawney, another of the forebears of the 'New Left'. Tawney (1964) linked the notion of belonging with the question of inequality in a civilized society and his reasoning is also relevant when thinking about the organization of education. He did not deny that people are born with different abilities. However, he asserted that a civilized society strives to reduce the inequalities that arise, both from these inherited 'givens', and from the society's own organization. The organization of institutions such as schools should lighten and reduce the inequalities that arise from birth or circumstance, rather than exaggerate them: 'While [people's] natural endowments differ profoundly, it is the mark of a civilized society to aim at eliminating such inequalities as have their source, not in individual differences, but in its own organization' (Tawney, 1964, p 57).

Does this view support inclusion? Some might say not. Those who favour an education system incorporating and employing special schools might argue that special schools do succeed in reducing circumstantial differences. However, existing inequalities between children cannot be compensated for simply by the physical and teaching resources they are given at school. Those inequalities lie more importantly in the opportunity, or lack of it, to do the same as other children: to share the same spaces as other children, and to 'speak the same language' as other children. Reducing inequality is thus about more than providing money and better resources; it is, rather, about providing the chance to share in the culture of the school.

Rizvi and Lingard (1996) make the point that redistribution by itself is not sufficient to achieve social justice. Their thesis is that redistribution on its own obscures, and thereby perpetuates, injustices in existing institutional organization. Emphasizing redistribution could mean merely shifting resources into special education, and this would not achieve the changes required if social justice is to be achieved. Roaf and Bines (1989) make a similar point: an emphasis on needs in special education detracts from a proper consideration of the rights of those who are being educated.

Social justice cannot therefore be achieved simply by the redistribution of resources, based on an assessment of need. Achievement of social justice does not come about simply through the removal of inequality.

Inclusion is driven by values. The values currently shaping political thought in England and Wales have emerged in different circumstances at different times in other parts of the world — a communist local government system in Italy; the social democracy of north-west Europe, and particularly Scandinavia; the civil rights agenda in North America; and, more recently, social justice as a theme across the world. In England and Wales, new thought about social justice is expressed in the ideas of stakeholding and inclusion.

Inclusion as an ethic of organizations

Most discussion on inclusion in education concentrates on curriculum, pastoral systems, attitudes and teaching methods, but there is a further dimension to the idea, which goes beyond these school-based considerations. This is the wider notion of inclusion in British society; the notion of inclusion is not unique to education. Indeed, the recent popularity of inclusion as an idea in education probably depends at least in part on its harmony with the popular notion of an inclusive society, in which each member has a stake. Commentators (including Hutton, 1995; Kay, 1996; Plender, 1997) have begun to discuss the meaning of this new inclusiveness. There is a notion of reciprocity in their discussion — a recognition of mutual obligations and expectations between the community and institutions such as schools, in such a way that these institutions are reminded of their responsibilities and public duties. The duty is to the community that, as a whole, finances them, not merely to the academically inclined students.

There is an unwritten mandate in the inclusive, stakeholding ethic, says Plender (1997), to take account of social costs and benefits that are never priced in the market. In this process, the role of state and individual is downplayed, while the role of intermediate institutions (like schools) is reinforced.

These commentators have proposed some mechanisms for making stakeholding and inclusion real in a commercial environment. At the heart of these mechanisms is the requirement that managers take financial account of their actions. Behind inclusion and stakeholding is the recognition that everyone shares in both the fruits and the damage produced by society's intermediate institutions (such as businesses and schools). These institutions must be obliged therefore to pay the price — literally — for adhering to practices that are anti-social. Commercial businesses will have to take account of the hidden costs of their less acceptable practices, such as restricted opportunity for employees, pollution of the environment, or whatever. At the moment, they may create damage through these practices, without having to pay for it.

This logic applies with equal force to schools. The social costs of segregation, many disabled people would argue, are high. The cost of exclusion and segregation is the stigmatization and alienation of a section of people who would otherwise be able and willing to take a fuller part in their society. Yet, neither schools nor those who administer the education system locally have had to bear the costs of such educational exclusion. In a society in which a stakeholding ethic takes hold, there should be increasing pressure for an obligation on schools, for whom these costs have in the past been invisible, to appreciate them and pay for them.

Therefore, to the curricular and social principles that educationists may wish to see embodied in the policy and practice of a school claiming to be inclusive, a broader set of principles might be added. These principles might be imposed not only by the direct stakeholders in the school (teachers, parents and students), but also by those in the local community, and in society at large, and recognized by politicians and the legislature. They relate to what Mason (1995) calls the 'intentional building of community'.

Inclusion and assumptions about difference and 'special need'

A central difference between inclusion and integration lies in assumptions about difference. 'Integration' has usually been used to describe the process of the assimilation of children with learning difficulties, sensory impairments or physical disabilities into mainstream schools. In fact, following the 1981 Education Act, the use of the term 'special educational needs' has usually specifically excluded other children — for example, children whose first language is not English. The key aspect of inclusion, however, is that children who are at a disadvantage for any reason are not excluded from mainstream education. This represents a modernizing of the term 'special needs' that is surely more consistent with the spirit of the Warnock Report (DES, 1978). The Warnock Committee recommended a fluid definition of 'special need', whereby categories would be abolished, and a child's needs would be defined as and when they arose.

Children's difficulties at school may arise from a wide range of factors related to disability, language, family income, cultural origin, ethnic origin or gender, and inclusive logic implies that it is inappropriate to differentiate among these. As Young (1990) makes clear, the existence of supposed groups forces us to categorize, and the categories encourage a particular mindset about a group; in reality, the groups in question are 'cross-cutting, fluid and shifting' (p 45). Assumptions about disadvantage and oppression rest on these categorizations where, in fact, they may not be warranted.

Meekosha and Jacubowicz (1996) make the similar point that there is no discrete class of people who are disabled, and that people with disabilities are as heterogeneous as people in general. The agglomeration of all disabilities alienates disabled people from other minorities. And the stressing of a minority status emphasizes the presumed vulnerability of the group in question, rather than the inadequacies of the system, which is supposed to be supporting.

'Inclusion' does not therefore set parameters around particular kinds of supposed disability. Rather, there is a fundamental principle of acceptance behind inclusion; this principle is about providing a framework within which all children — regardless of ability, gender, language, ethnic or cultural origin —can be valued equally, treated with respect, and provided with equal opportunities at school. Accepting inclusion means moving from what Roaf (1988) has called an 'obsession with individual learning difficulties' (p 7) to an agenda of rights.

Inclusion and the comprehensive ideal in England and Wales

The comprehensive ideal has a long tradition in England and Wales. As Booth (1995) has noted, one cannot separate the struggles of those who were at the forefront in promoting integration from this comprehensive tradition. Many campaigns for integration have been about individual children — to integrate a child with Down's Syndrome in one school, or a child with cerebral palsy in another, for example — and such struggles continue to this day. The Special Educational Needs Tribunal, recently set up for England and Wales, was established partly to resolve the tensions that emerged between LEAs and parents over the placement of children.

These struggles of individual children and their parents are mostly ad hoc and uncoordinated challenges to the system in England and Wales, which still defends the need for substantial segregation, even of children with only 'moderate' learning difficulties or physical disabilities. However, the broader aim of helping schools to become more inclusive demands that there be responses from schools and local authorities on a more significant scale. For real inclusion, the change has to be in the system and not just in the individual school.

The difficulties with which inclusive schools currently contend are of a similar nature to those facing schools in the 1960s, as they prepared to move from selective to comprehensive schooling. At that time, the systems and curricula of the schools had to be re-thought, in order to cater for children of a broader range of ability.

In the 1960s, LEAs and schools responded to the comprehensive challenge with varying degrees of success. The changes relating to inclusion are similarly inconsistent in their degree of success, since a whole new mindset is required to make those changes. Some local authorities are, in effect, implementing only re-placement policies, where a child is moved from a special school to the mainstream, perhaps with the support of a learning support assistant. The term 'maindumping' has been used to describe the worst examples of this process — where children are moved from special schools to mainstream schools without adequate preparation or resources. Many schools, in fact, have accepted disabled children only on the basis of 'assimilation' — that is, children are welcome only if they can benefit from what is already on offer.

Some local authorities have more sophisticated schemes, in which 'outreach' support is provided by specialist teachers who visit the mainstream Sometimes, under the guidance of a forward-thinking headteacher, a special school has moved from its special location and re-formed on the premises of its local neighbourhood school. There are some published accounts of such developments — Wilson (1990), the head of a school for children with severe learning difficulties, describes just such a development; 'Bishopswood' (CSIE, 1992) contains an account of a school for children with severe learning difficulties that moved in its entirety to a mainstream institution; and Hrekow and Barrow (1993) recount another example....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Section I: Defining special education in a democracy — inclusive education
• Section II: Dilemmas for inclusive education
• Section III: Dialogues on inclusive education
• Index