Introduction
The History of inclusive education has come along way in the UK, the education Act of 1944 categorized children with special educational needs by their disabilities as uneducable and was given special education in separate schools. The 1981 education act together with the Warnock report of 1978 completely changed the conceptualization of the special educational needs as it was known then and brought about the special education needs (SEN) and the integrative concepts which latter came to be known as an inclusive approach. This was an approach based on common education for all children without discrimination (Westwood 2011).
Several other acts and legislation have been instituted since then, which have made a significant progress towards the aim of trying to include all children in the same educational framework (Goodley 2010).
According to EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010, children with disabilities are one group that is widely excluded from the mainstream schools and are missing out on quality education. Disability can be recognized as among the least visible yet it is the most potent factors of marginalization in the education system. The UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights which was released in 1948 has legislations on provision for education for all children. In 2009 the United Kingdom ratified the Convention on the Rights of people living with disabilities. This ensures that the people with disabilities can access both the primary and secondary education just like the rest in the community, without any discrimination (Westwood 2011).
The convention places an obligation on all the development partners to ensure international cooperation and that education is inclusive and accessible with people with disabilities. The millennium development goals will be impossible to achieve without quality education for children with disabilities. Inclusion of children with disabilities is aimed at those children who are enrolled in school but are excluded from learning or those children who are enrolled but could participate if the schools were more flexible to meet their needs (Westwood 2011).
The need for Inclusive education
An inclusive culture will help to enrich the school community with the different experiences, different gifts and perspectives. There is always the a presumption that inclusive education is just about putting the disabled or those who have special educational needs in the mainstream schools. There have been serious calls on the government to show some concern by enrolling the children with disabilities and those with special educational needs in the main stream schools and ensuring they get quality education that meet their needs. This will imply a progressive extension of capacity to regular schools to accommodate provision of services for these children with wide range of needs (Hodkinson and Vickerman 2009).
There are those who have argued that this children with disabilities and those with special educational needs could benefit more if they were attended to in a special environment that is different from the regular schools, but this has been found to be just a another discrimination. This kind of categorization will have a signifacant effect on the educational system as a whole. After all the people with disabilities and those with special educational needs are a minority in the community, and it doesn’t make sense to separate them from the other children in the mainstream schools (Terzi, 2010).
Inclusion is commonly linked to children living with disabilities and those with special educational needs and this has a close relation with exclusion which is a temporary or permanent exclusion of children with bad behavior for disciplinary purposes from the school premises. Thus the mention of inclusion to some of the school administrators creates the impression that all the behaviorally difficult children should be admitted once again. The number of children excluded permanently from schools for disciplinary reasons in the UK is relatively higher compared to other countries in continental Europe (Rose 2010).
Inclusion and participation
In inclusion there have been attempts to increase participation of students and to focus mainly on special needs and disability; there has been some argument that this approach ignores other ways where the participation of the student may be enhanced. (Goodley 2010). Inclusion should involve overcoming all sorts of exclusionary tendencies, and reducing exclusion which involves looking for ways that will increase participation.
Exclusion can be seen as involving discrimination that could be institutional or personal. Inclusion can be seen as steps taken to reduce all manner of discrimination on the basis of class, gender, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and family or faith background. Disciplinary exclusion should be understood in connection with the preceding interactions and events, the approaches of teaching, the nature of relationships and the learning in the school. The disciplinary exclusions informally done, for instance, sending a pupil home or expelling a student from school for disciplinary reasons have distorted the perceptions of the formal inclusion and exclusion (Farrell 2010).
There is growing trend to view exclusion in education as abroad way of overcoming discrimination of the disadvantaged and the vulnerable groups. This can be seen in the government and quasi government organizations. Teachers, for example, are required by the statutory inclusion to be concerned with overcoming all types of discrimination in their schools. To achieve an inclusive culture in schools will have to go beyond running of workshops and making decisions on bullying or offering training on diversity to the staff. It goes more than just developing statements that talk about inclusion. An all inclusive school culture will always require a total shift in the attitudes of stakeholders and developing practices and policies that will reinforce the behavior of inclusiveness. Inclusion should be seen as not just words but real actions that encompasses the participation of all (Graffiths and Clark 2008).
Why the inclusion
The idea of inclusion has become very necessary because the world in general has changed in the past few centuries, people all over the world are re examining the moral values in the society and the stereotyped thinking have been exposed because of globalization and there are both international and national guidance on inclusion. Several advocates of inclusion have argued that without inclusion, then it would mean we are putting more value on some people than on others and this is unethical. Exclusion is seen as a way of barring students in participating in curricular, cultures and communities of the local schools. The idea of viewing the difference in the students as problems has been cited as a way of limiting learning opportunities of the students (Terzi 2010).
In March 2008, the Lamb inquiry was established under the Chairmanship of Brian Lamb to investigate the ways in which the confidence of parents in SEN and how it might be improved. The inquiry found among others that parents with children in need of SEN would want to see their children happy, to live in a safe environment and to achieve their potential through education. The findings of the inquiry were that the education system and society as whole does not place enough value on achieving the best outcomes for children with SEN and the disabled children. In 2009, it was found that the number of pupils in England having SEN was 1.6 million, which is approximately 20% of the total population in school (Tutt 2010).
According to Florian (2007) segregation of schooling for the disabled is in itself a violation of the basic human rights for the disabled. The right to Education should be without any discrimination at all. Besides, academic achievements should not be the main aim of schooling, but a way of enhancing morals and personal development. When it is understood as such then there is every reason for inclusion.
The current special schools evolved from health managed training centers, which were set up when the disabled were viewed as defective or people to be pitied and the mentality that created them is what needs to be questioned. Today’s social values have progressed and people with various disabilities are increasingly respected and accepted in the society as people and it no longer makes much sense to maintain separate institutions of learning for the small minority. The mainstream schooling has undergone different changes so there is no reason at all for separate institutions for the tailor made provision of learning. The disabled children should not be deprived the opportunity to grow up, learn and develop with the other children. Maintaining separate schools for the disabled is keeping them at the margin of the society. The disabled adults argue that segregated education is not appropriate because it perpetuates the stereotyping and disempowering the disabled children (Tassoni 2007).
There are people who argue that children with disabilities will be bullied if they joined mainstream schools. But studies have shown that pupils with special educational needs were also bullied in the special schools and therefore it doesn’t make sense to argue that the pupils would be bullied in the mainstream schools. Even in the outside the school there is bullying in the community. Besides, the schools that have included disabled pupils in their schools have realized that children are more accommodating than actually anticipated and that it’s only the adults who are making stereotype assumptions (Allan 2008).
The justification for inclusive education is that inclusive schools are in a position to develop ways of teaching that are capable of responding to the individual differences and benefits of children. The result of this is that the schools will be able to change the attitudes and the stereotypes. Besides, its is less cheap to put up and manage a school that educate all children simultaneously rather than setting up various categories of schools for different children (Westwood 2011)
Who are the disabled
A disabled person can be defined as anybody with a long term impairment which could either be mental or physical which hinders the daily activities of the individual. Disability should be understood as the experience resulting from interaction between the impairments of the people and the inflexible structures around them. When viewing the disability of people it is the environment which should be focused on and not the characteristics of the person (Hodkinson, 2011).
The disability Rights Commission has come up with the disability equity duty which is aimed at the public sector; this is a legal duty requiring all primary and the secondary schools in England and Wales to follow in order to ensure that all the disabled in the community are respected and treated equally. The duty does not require immediate changes to the structures of the buildings in the environment of the disabled but merging the equality of the disabled persons into a culture in schools that is practical. The disability rights commission has defined disability to include diseases such as cancer, HIV, Diabetes and many other conditions such as sight impairment, learning difficulties among others (Ganer 2009).
The government last year announced that from 2013, those seeking disability allowance (DLA) will be subjected to new strict medical assessment to reduce dependency and to promote a working culture. The government estimates that it will save ₤1.4 billion by 2015 through the move since many will be turn away in the process. Approximately 2.9 million people are eligible for the DLA which is three times as much as it was, when it was first introduced about 18 years ago (Hodkinson 2011).
Conclusion
Inclusion is about all the learners and taking action to remove all the barriers that hinder participation and learning, it also involves removing and eliminating all manner of discrimination and promoting equity. The barriers that hinder learning and participation of different groups and individuals are a multiple of factors that come into play and not just one factor. To counter this problem it is necessary to take a holistic approach.
Thinking has now moved from the narrow idea of inclusion as a way of and overcoming and understanding a deficit and its widely accepted as concerning issues such as ethnicity, class, gender, social conditions, health and human rights that embrace universal involvement, participation, achievement and access (Baldock, Fitzgeral and Kay 2009). Every child is entitled to efficient and appropriate education in the mainstream school. In the UK, the advocacy for inclusion of children with disabilities in the mainstream school has been active since the early 1980’s (Farrell 2010).
All successive governments have been criticized of failing to do enough to realize the objectives of the policy. Lack of political will to enforce the policy, have been cited as the main reason why there has never been much advancement as earlier envisioned (Baldock, Fitzgerald and Kay 2009). According to Florian (2007) inclusion in schools should not be viewed as a separate issue from the inclusion in the society, because the idea of inclusion in schools is away of preparing the students for the future life in the society as adults. If they interact in school they will develop moral values that will be useful latter in the community activities. If the inclusion in schools is successful then the inclusion in the society in future will be successful as well.
Reference List
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