Tomorrow I am going to a meeting at the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh. There will be three different speakers at this meeting and one of them will be ENABLE Scotland talking about their IncludED In The Main?! Campaign. I have just read the report from this and some of the facts and figures that they have discovered are really surprising to me.
ENABLE have looked at the bullying of disabled children in mainstream schools and how these people feel now that they are out of school. ENABLE have said that placing disabled children into mainstream school is not always the best for the child as it can equate to bullying. They have published a report that has twenty-two steps for the journey to inclusion. These steps include recommendations that suggest it may not always be best for disabled children to attend mainstream schools. They have several reasons (which they call their steps) for this. One of the most important (in my opinion) recommendations that they have is to embed lessons on learning difficulties into the curriculum. Many disabled children feel lonely at school with 62.5% saying that other people do not understand them. ENABLE have developed resources for teaching these lessons and they will be available in schools this year. Teachers will be also be getting training to help deliver these lessons. Hopefully, once these resources are introduced into schools they will help children to understand different learning disabilities and help to reduce disabled children’s feelings of loneliness and being misunderstood.
Another of the recommendations that ENABLE have in this report is that teacher training does not adequately prepare teachers to teach children with different learning disabilities. However, they also go on to say that teacher training cannot prepare teachers to be able to teach every child’s disability for each different learning disabilities as every child is different. This means that there needs to be continued professional development throughout a teacher’s career where they can receive training to different disabilities as well as have specific staff to help the child. ENABLE found that 30% of education professionals felt that there were not enough specific CPD for teaching young people who have learning difficulties. ENABLE also think the Named Person will help to support families of the children and the children with learning difficulties. The Named Person will make sure that families have the correct information, support and access to the right help. To develop this point further, another of ENABLE’s recommendations is for the Scottish Government to commission training courses on several areas including learning disabilities and Positive Behaviour Support. The main issue for providing this support is also not enough additional support staff and classroom assistants. Nearly 71% of educational workforce felt that there was a shortage in support assistants and that more were needed. I think if there were more support assistants then teachers and schools would be able to support all children with learning disabilities.
These are just a few of the twenty-two recommendations that ENABLE have said are the steps to inclusion for children with learning disabilities. I think that these recommendations show what needs to be done to help children with learning disabilities to feel like they are no difference to any other child. I am looking forward to discovering what is said on this topic at the meeting tomorrow.
References
ENABLE Scotland, (2016). IncludED In The Main?!. [online] North Lanarkshire: ENABLE Scotland. Available at: http://www.enable.org.uk/includedinthemain/Documents/IncludED%20in%20the%20Main%20-%2022%20Steps%20on%20the%20Journey%20to%20Inclusion.pdf [Accessed 27 Mar. 2017].
