Inclusive Education in Mainstream Politics - Term Paper Example

Inclusive Education in Mainstream Politics Background The world is coming to a consensus that every child has the right to education. This aspect may prove to be one of the most defining factors in reducing inequality and deprivation across the globe in times to come. Over the years the purpose of education has degenerated into educational activities that are marked by bias and results in deprivation on the basis of rich & poor, race, privileged & underprivileged, ability & inability and medical deficiencies. The movement of inclusive education is attempting to make the correction in this regard. It attempts to regain the fundamental purpose of education i.e. to prepare every child to lead productive and independent lives as citizens and members of the community. The definite advancement of the movement on inclusive education is evidenced through declarations, gatherings, statements and various actions taken by governments across the world in the last century. The issue of inclusive education is characterized by deep rooted conflicts, dilemmas and contradictions. “Inclusive education should be seen as an attempted resolution of a dilemma that is fundamental to mass education systems: the dilemma of commonality and difference. Put simply, such systems have to offer something recognizably common - an 'education' - to learners who are recognizably similar, while at the same time acknowledging that those same learners differ from each other in important ways and therefore have to be offered different ‘educations’ (Dyson & Millward, 2000). It is now universally accepted by think groups and policy makers that children with disability or learning difficulty will ultimately be a part of the main stream, hence their participation in the main stream is earlier the better and an early start in mainstream schools is the best preparation for an integrated life. Some of the major milestones in opinion building on bringing inclusive education in the mainstream of policy making activities include The Universal Declaration of Human Rights ( UDHR, 1948 ), International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ( ICEARD, 1965), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ( ICCPR, 1966), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ( ICESC, 1966), Convention on the Rights of the Child ( CRC, 1989) and Salamanca Declaration, 1994. The Salamanca Declaration under the overall framework of UNESCO has been particularly noteworthy and it is worthwhile looking at some the key declarations which are given below: Every child has a fundamental right to education, and must be given the opportunity to achieve and maintain an acceptable level of learning Every child has unique characteristics, interests, abilities and learning needs, education systems should be designed and educational programs implemented to take into account the wide diversity of these characteristics and needs, Those with special education needs must have access to regular schools, which should accommodate them within a child -centred pedagogy capable of meeting these needs, Regular schools with this inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society, and achieving education for all; moreover, they provide an effective education to the majority of children and improve the efficiency and ultimately the cost-effectiveness of the entire education system" (. http://portal.unesco.org/education) Inclusive Education in UK The successive British establishments were seized with issues associated with the shift in economy from traditional to knowledge work, especially the Labour party when it regained power towards the end of the previous century. Peter Drucker said in 1980 that the centre of gravity has sharply shifted from manual work to knowledge work in the world of work. The British leadership could see the need for a different focus in educational policy and its deployment. That led to efforts in building national competitiveness around workforce competencies and skills. The new age required new skills of the workforce to sustain the national economy. The key was to provide these new skills to the largest portion of the population. A significant number of students were being put in the categories of Students with Special Educational Needs thus depriving them of mainstream education and thus reducing the possibility of this class from associating in mainstream economic activities. Many factors combined together viz. right of children, anti discriminatory movements and building national competitiveness into the decision of Labor Party to bring education in the core agenda for the nation. There have been many visible initiatives and actions in this regard since 1997. Some of these are Labour’s early Green Paper on special and inclusive schooling, the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice , the 2001Special Educational Needs and Disability Act and Strategy for SEN, Removing Barriers to Achievement. Despite generating significant amount of visibility the impact of the drive for inclusive education is quite disappointing on the ground. The drive has been marred by key aspects of the government policy in inclusion that do not have much to do with the spirit of inclusion. They are driven by imperatives that include emphasis on standards & performance of school, resource distribution and preparation of work force for 21st century. Inclusive Education in Mainstream politics Outcomes apart, the move to bring education in mainstream politics is a remarkable step for any government considering its impact on future societies and the immense benefits to its workforce in this global and knowledge intensive economy. The importance attached to education is evident from the speech of Leader of Labour Party, “Since I became leader of the Labour Party, I have emphasized that education will be a priority for me in government. I have done so because of the fact - increasingly recognized across our society - that our economic success and our social cohesion depend on it. An Age of Achievement is within our grasp - but it depends on an Ethic of Education. That is why in my party conference speech I said that my three priorities for government would be education, education and education” (Blair). In the year 1997 the newly elected Labour government introduced the concept of inclusive education in its ambitious plan to transform the education policy of UK. There has been a continuum in Labour thinking on education. As early as 1976 the then Labour prime minister, James Callaghan delivered a landmark lecture at Ruskin College, Oxford where he espoused the cause of 'personality flowering' and the roots of the new initiative of Labour party in education in the year 1997 can be traced to this landmark address Labour policies Since 1997 there has been a series of very substantive and high level intervention in the area of inclusive education. There have been policy documents, framework of actions, laws guidelines creating a sense of comprehensive actions on the part of government on inclusive education. Some of the key policy documents need to be mentioned here to carry the argument further: Green Paper - The earliest document in the early journey of Labour Government’s early journey into bringing Inclusive education in the mainstream of national political agenda was Green Paper on special and inclusive schooling - , Excellence for all children. The key elements included Policies for excellence, Working with parents, Practical support - SEN provision, Increasing inclusion, Developing skills for teachers and Working together “ The main emphasis of the Green Paper is the consideration of developing strategies for improving provision for children with EBD and the importance of raising their achievements” (C Lewis & C Bowpitt, 2000) The 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act - The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 (SENDA) amended the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 which placed requirements on employers and service providers not to discriminate against disabled people but did not include similar requirements for education.  The new legislation repealed the exemption of education from the Act and placed a legal obligation on everyone associated with education of a child. It stated a list of duties, which included a duty on education providers not to discriminate disabled pupils, a duty on responsible bodies to provide arrangements to prevent disadvantage to disabled special education need students. It talked about rights that included the right of children with SEN to be educated in mainstream schools where parents want this and the interests of other children can be safeguarded. The 2001 Code of Practice The policies started taking shape in terms of specific guidelines and The 2001 Code of Practice was one such guidelines issued by authorities. This replaced the earlier code of practice issued by Conservative Government for assessment and identification of special education needs. The 2001 Code of Practice looked promising as it did not subscribe to the earlier view of special education needs based on the shortcomings of the individuals. It created a collective responsibility and actions for addressing special educational needs of a child. Initially the Act seemed to be creating fresh methods of identifying special education needs where it rejected the medical model of identifying special educational needs. The implementation of the act brought out the inherent weaknesses where many loopholes were noticed It was seen that “ The subsequent difficulty in specifying what constituted a ‘special educational need’ led inexorably to a growth in statementing and special school placements as this meaning was negotiated in practice by powerful pressure groups” (Armstrong Derrick Reinventing ‘inclusion’: New Labour and the cultural politics of special education 2005) Other steps, which followed subsequently like a Programme of Action, National Curriculum, Disability Rights Commission Code of Practice, seemed to reinforce the resolve of Labour Government to bring inclusion in education. Essence of Inclusive Education Getting back to the basics of inclusive education will make one understand the shortcomings in the approach or intension of the inclusive education agenda in UK. The most important aspect is creating a positive atmosphere in society, school and neighbourhood about an inclusive culture where diversity in people is respected and tolerated. There is a need to address steps to gradually build up a society which values the presence of so called deficient children and these children are helped and encouraged in their pursuits by the normal population. A high emphasis is needed on provision of pre- and in-service training of teachers and other staff to upgrade the necessary knowledge, skills and more importantly the motivation level to adapt to the needs of inclusive education. A basic condition for this is to develop a positive school atmosphere, i.e. active and supportive managers/principals/headmasters. This implies close cooperation with and active participation by parents/relatives and the society at large. The already existing special staff should assist with identification and assessment of educational needs, guidance and counseling, social, psychological and health services, including supply of specific teaching devices and materials. The entire agenda of inclusive education is to be seen with a focal point of society and life. Inclusive education is the concrete step towards building a future society where eve one, specially the underprivileged in terms of physical, mental and financial deprivation start living and learning together right at the initial step i.e. schools. A successful inclusive environment at school will foster a culture of empathy, collaboration that will go a long way in creating a society with similar values. The schools are required to have child-centered and life-centered attitude rather than than subject-centered attitude. In accordance with this, inclusive education should be comprehensive and taking in account the total needs of children throughout childhood and youth. Emphasis is to be on changing the mind set of agencies and authorities associated with inclusive education deployment. They have to be shown the bigger picture of creating a new model society through inclusive education and how they are important contributors to the same. Aligning through training of staff at all levels involved in education is perhaps the most essential part of transformation processes. The Wider Context of Inclusive Education in UK The seeds of success and failure of inclusive education can best be appreciated when one sees the forces and realities of the bigger context i.e. social, Political and economic. The society is characterized as a liberal democratic society. Due to historical reasons the society comprises of ethnic groups from third world countries i.e. Caribbean, Asians and Africans making a significant part of the society having huge difference with respect to the majority in terms of income level, culture and values. The government is decided by elections and the party having majority gets the opportunity to govern. Traditionally the two main parties have their loyal voters and a small percentage of fence sitters swing their votes to decide the fate of the parties. So there lies an inherent reluctance to take a radical step in the governance so that the fence sitters are not disenchanted. The true implementation of inclusive education is a radical step and the inherent political realities might have resulted in the weaknesses of the inclusive education drive in UK. Over the years the society is run on welfare state philosophy where local bodies are deeply entrenched in their roles towards administering services. Regarding the education service LEAs, faith groups and the private sector taken together are at the center stage of carrying out the policies at the grass root level. The forces and variations associated with local factors are numerous and the same is reflected in the varying degree with which the agenda of inclusion has fared across the country. The policies needed to address these aspects it it really wanted to make significant headway in the successful deployment of inclusion agenda. The other wider context is the new age economy, which is globalized, and more importantly has shifted towards knowledge-based work. The traditional education and training needed drastic overhaul to safeguard the national economic interests. labour force is in dire need for a shift towards knowledge work. The vanishing of geographical boundaries in the context of business and economy has created a very disadvantageous condition for developed nations including UK. The third world populous nations like India and china are having a lobour force which is skilled and too many in numbers and thus they are available cheap and in abundance. The key to these labour force is their intense association with education in their efforts to achieve a good living standard. That is why the Inclusion policy has an overriding bias towards performance of the education system in line with the national needs and the spirit of inclusion looks to be compromised against the overriding need to create a workforce which meets the demand of the times.. The gaps in the policies The policies do not acknowledge that the true goal of inclusive education is ultimately creating a inclusive society which is cohesive, tolerant and harmonious. The inclusion policy is trying to build that society. With the ultimate goal ascent from the various policies it is natural that the adopted policies have not yielded the desired result. The policies did not address the powerful but less apparent factors which play a crucial role in the success of such policy i.e. social factors, interst groups, cultural and ethnic issues, inequality etc. The inadequacy of the policies are evident from following facts: The special schools continue to exist despite several years of inclusive education agenda and a series of interventions, policy, action framework, Acts, guidelines etc. The figure stood at 1.1 percent (National Statistics, 2003d). The local condition variability is evident from the audit commission reports which provided figures for spread of inclusive education across the country and found that the variations are quite large. The governmental policies and interventions failed to address this important aspect and the inclusion agenda was left to the vagaries of local factors i.e. authorities, faith groups, private sector, cultural and racial factors Though there has been reduction in the number of special schools but that is quite marginal considering the intent and apparent efforts of the government. The figure stood at 97,700 in 1999 to 93,900 in 2003 (National Statistics, 2003d). The results do not commensurate with the visibility of Inclusion policy of the government and point out deep misalignment of the policy with the real issue to be addressed. In fact it can be said that the policies and subsequent actions on the part of the government suffered from inherent flaws. It failed to reach up to the core of the issue and only ended up tinkering with this issue of mammoth importance and significance for future society of the nation. As the inclusion policy could not make a dent into the roots of the problems, the concept of special schools got embedded in the mainstream schools. The agencies i.e. schools, authorities found ways and means to beat the system. There appeared many kinds of groupings, segregation within the mainstream schools. The concept of special school took another form rather than disappearing. Mostly these special groups were in the mainstream schools itself but in some cases there have been different locations for such special groups. Government figures show that some 32,000 students (0.34 percent) children were educated in so called special groups far from the mainstream school. In practice it seem that only the language has changed, from special schools to special groups but the malaise stayed in the system. The espoused dream of the Labour leadership remained a myth. The idea that a child with special educational need starts coping with his life right at the beginning of his life at the school stage did not take strong roots on the back of Inclusion policy. It is ironical that in the name of inclusive education policy which had a stronger emphasis on performance element, the schools started practicing screening on the basis of fancy words like aptitude etc. to create groupings and in a sense certain policy elements like performabilty and responsibility put on school bodies for the same sabotaged the very essence of inclusion agenda. The surveys and measurements have brought to the notice that the gap in performance between the high performers and low performers has not changed. The inclusion agenda really could not take off in this regard. The core spirit of inclusion agenda is bringing uniformity in the education of every child irrespective of their background, race, culture and other differentiating factors. So the target children for the Inclusion movement did not get any respite and continued to be discriminated for the weaknesses they are not responsible for. The much hyped new education policy failed to break the jinx for these deprived children, they continued to be away from the mainstream. This is indeed a very dismal performance of the education policy. These children deprived from mainstream education will continue to be away from the mainstream of the society in the entirety of their lives. This will result into such children being a massive liability on the society and in many cases they may become a source of discomfort or unrest for the entire society. Poor conceptualisation and even poorer implementation will lead to a state where society will pay dearly. These hidden cost to society will far outweigh the cost which could have been incurred in case of a fair and true implementation of the inclusion education agenda. Conclusion The freer world in the era of ICT is moving in a definitive manner towards creating a society where every child gets an equal opportunity to educate himself or herself. The efforts of individuals, groups, bodies get reflected in the work done by UNESCO. There has been a plethora of activities on this front of inclusive education, The activities can be seen across the world from developed countries to developing countries to extremely poor countries. The factors associated with birth in the form of poverty, disability and other such factors which prevent a child from joining the mainstream right from the school stage has been recognized as the key to many significant social problems and more importantly injustice to a child. The popularity of the movement can be judged by emergence of thought leaders, social groups, volunteers, bodies around the issue of inclusive education. The labour government led by Tony Blair made a remarkable beginning by bringing education in the mainstream of politics a hitherto unheard of thing in the past. Politicians around the world and in the history have never shown much interest and priority to education. The political concerns have been arisen more by the economy being threatened by emergence of a new world order where some developing nations are building up competitive edge in many areas of business and economy. Though inclusive education spirit is not market driven, it is more human driven and attempts to create a fair and just society and emphasizing the right of every child of educating herself in the mainstream school. Labour party put the agenda of inclusive education at a very high level of its priorities. That is reflected from the number of key interventions it took in the form of policies, programme for action, Acts, Guidelines for implementing inclusive education. The inclusive policies of New Labour (U.K.) go no further than to redress the traditionally defici-driven discourse is indeed very close to the realities. Some of the evidences are as follows: The special schools continue to exist despite several years of inclusive education agenda and a series of interventions, policy, action framework, Acts, guidelines etc. The figure stood at 1.1 percent (National Statistics, 2003d). There have been very wide fluctuations in the deployment of inclusive education on basis of local factors. The reduction in the number of special schools is quite marginal at 97,700 in 1999 to 93,900 in 2003 (National Statistics, 2003d). The special schools have shifted to within the mainstream schools, sometimes at different locations which is evident from mushrooming of different segregation of groups within the mainstream schools. Ironically the performance level of the schools in UK has improved significantly as given in OECD report. The gap in performance between the high performers and low performers has not changed. The results on the ground are a complete mismatch vis a vis the positioning of inclusive education agenda done by the government. The core issues could not get addressed and the goals of inclusive education look far from being achieved.. The special schools are taking different garb i.e. special segregation/groups within the ambit of mainstream schools. The statistics also do not support the effectiveness of the inclusive education agenda in UK One wonders whether it has been a true intent of the policy makers to implement inclusive education policy in true spirit or the underlying driving force has been to prepare the work force for the national imperatives rather than individual imperatives The key focus is on performance of the entire school system where students are equipped to perform better in the skills and education needed for their respective economic activities. There are very clear policies along with guidelines and Rules where the performance of students has been made the responsibility of the schools. This has brought in clear accountability on the schools on the performance part of the education system. These things have in fact harmed the inclusive education movement. The difficult children as categorised by the schools based on performance potential have been subjected to segregation under different groups. The mission of bringing every child in the mainstream is still quite far from being achieved. The accountability aspect of school performance enforced on the schools and related authorities have led to a situation where children having lower potential for performance are undesirable as they will bring down the overall performance indices of the schools. Such formidable roadblocks to inclusive education prevailing at the ground level will not help in achieving the much visible Labour Party’s stated gaols on inclusive education. The factors inhibiting the inclusion movement are to be carefully identified and addressed. The policies are to be modified accordingly to address broader issues for success of inclusive education. The aspects include social, cultural, awareness to teachers and students and reduction in variation on local factors. What is ultimately required is real and concrete measures rather than use of words in policy documents for making true progress in inclusive education movement. All the stakeholders are to be enthused on the issue viz. children, teachers, parents, authorities and the policy makers to implement inclusive education agenda in true manner. References http://portal.unesco.org/education http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_01/uk/education.htm - Breaking down the divide By Cynthia Guttman, UNESCO Courier journalist. http://www.isec2000.org.uk/abstracts/papers_l/lewis_c_1.htm Towards An Inclusive School: A Whole School Approach to Managing Challenging Behaviour, C Lewis & C Bowpitt http: inclusion.uwe.ac.uk/csie/ukedlaw.htm http://inclusion.uwe.ac.uk/csie/studnts02.htm http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/teaching/disability/thinking/medical.html Derrick Armstrong Reinventing ‘inclusion’: New Labour and the cultural politics of special education Alan Dyson, Published in David Mitchell, (ed.) (2005) PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS? THE STORY OF INCLUSIVE EDUCATION IN ENGLAND Read More