Paces

Xavier Response

On 24th June, I posted ("Xavier Support") a copy of a letter which I sent to Jenny Haddrell, Assistant Director-General, Education Queensland, about the future of the Xavier Special Education Unit.

I have received the following response. (Is there someone who might update the Xavier weblog with the latest news?).

Dear Mr Perrin

Thank you for your letter dated 23 June 2008 regarding recent OECD research, conductive education and the work of Queensland's Xavier Special Education Program.

I am pleased that the worthwhile work of the teachers and specialist staff at Xavier Special Education Program is internationally recognised. I have forwarded your letter to my colleagues Mr lan Hawke, Assistant Director-General, Strategic Policy and Performance and Mrs Clare Gardiner-Barnes, Acting Assistant Director-General, Student Services for their consideration. The Strategic Policy and Performance Division oversee the department's research program while the Student Services Division oversee funding and support strategies for students with disabilities.

The Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts has an active program of research which informs evidence-based decision making in policy and program development. I would encourage you to examine the department's research website as it provides information on the department's research and development priorities, research application process and summaries of recent educational related research.

If you have some preliminary ideas or a more developed research proposal I would encourage you to contact one of the above officers. In the first instance, I believe that Mrs Gardiner-Barnes may be the most appropriate contact. She can be contacted on telephone (617) 3235 4172 or by email clare.qardinerbarnesädeta.gld.gov.au

Once again thank you for your interest in Queensland education and the Xavier Special Education Program.

Jenny Haddrell
Assistant Director-General

Still "No Voice"

It seems that Sheffield parents were a little premature in detecting a change of heart in respect of consultation, which I reported a couple of days ago.  Claire sends the following update, which I copy in full.  There is obviously considerable turmoil, but the strong sense that parents have that they are not being properly consulted clearly does not reflect well on the SEN Team. It does not take great wisdom to see that it would be a sensible course to address these consultation concerns and the concerns that parents have that significant changes are being implemented without consultation.  A contributory root cause of the current turmoil is that Sheffield does not have a Strategic Plan for the education of children with special needs. As a Strategic Plan is simply a document that sets out an agreed course of action (What? Why? When? How?) which all stakeholders can share and understand, then it might, (a) not unreasonably, be said that the SEN Team cannot know what it is doing in any planned way and (b) that it is not surprising that other stakeholders are concerned and confused. 

This lack of strategic planning compares poorly with that of the Adults with Learning Disabilities Team, whose consultation during the latter part of 2007 and into 2008, whilst not perfect, was a model that the SEN Team might consider.

It is also unfortunate that this turmoil - and apparent disregard of parents as key strategic stakeholders and partners - should be happening in the inter-regnum between the departure of former Director of Children and Young People services, Jonathan Crossley-Holland and the arrival of the new Director, Sonia Sharp.

Anyway, this is the email from Claire:



UPDATE ON “NO VOICE” CAMPAIGN

 

Thank you to all of you who have supported the “no voice” campaign. The campaign’s focus continues to be insisting on the right of parents/carers to be consulted about changes to special educational needs provision in Sheffield.

 

Unfortunately, the information we conveyed to you in our last email has since proved to be wide of the mark. The CYPD (Children and Young People’s Directorate) are not going to start consultations on the changes to the SEN/LDD service from scratch.  As far as we can understand, they are only going to consult on the fate of the integrated units. This means that they are standing by all the changes that have already been made, (ie delegation of sen budgets to mainstream, absorption of the autism specific service into a generic LDD service, management restructure etc).  We apologise for this misinformation but it is an indication of the difficulties we face in trying to obtain any information whatsoever.

 

In spite of promising the protesters last week, Ms Ludlam, (Director of Specialist Services at Council’s Children Service), has not contacted parent groups to talk.  In view of the lack of communication we have today written to CYPD, asking them to confirm/explain simple factual information relating to the action that the LA has already taken. (Copy of questions asked at bottom of this email).  The questions do not relate principally to future proposals for change, nor do they encompass parent’s concerns about specific changes.  This is because the CYPD has yet to acknowledge that there has, to date, been a need to consult parents.  So, it is necessary for us first to establish exactly what has happened to date.

 

 

HOW YOU CAN HELP

 

We have been overwhelmed by the number of parents, (representing children with autism and other disabilities), who have wanted to support the “No Voice” Campaign.  Below are suggestions for ways you can help:-

1  Write to you MP and your Councillors

If you wish to support the No Voice campaign please write to/attend the surgeries of your MP/Councillors explaining that parents have not been consulted about changes to SEN that have already taken place.  Forward to them a copy of the questions we have asked the CYPD, which are shown at the end of this email.  Ask them to ask the CYPD the same questions. ( Nb we have addressed the questions to Ms Ludlam at jayne.ludlam@sheffield.gov.uk )

 

2  Come to the “Autism Alliance” meeting

We would like to use the support we have received for the No Voice campaign, both from the “autism community” and from parents/carers of children with other disabilities, to establish a permanent campaigning voice.

 

We do not wish, ever again, to find ourselves in this dreadful situation where we are having to fight to hang on to a less than perfect service because the proposed service is much worse.  As parents we wish to be involved, in partnership with the schools, teachers and Local Authority, in “building” services that our children “need” and deserve.  We are, therefore, proposing that we set up the “Autism Alliance” as a permanent campaigning body. Whilst the Alliance’s first task will be to continue with the No Voice campaign, it is our intention that it would ultimately be the campaigning organisation for all issues affecting children and adults with autism in Sheffield.

 

Whilst this body will principally concern itself with issues relating to autism, we are hopeful that parents of children with other disabilities will come to our meetings and either support what we are doing, or consider organising similar bodies with the ultimate goal of creating a “multi-disability” campaigning group.  So, please come to our setting up meeting even if your child does not have autism.

 

We will be holding an open meeting between 7 and 9 pm, on Tuesday 15 July 2008, at the Salvation Army in Psalter Lane to set up the Autism Alliance.  We will write to you again before then with details of some of the issues we will want to address at the meeting.  Please put the date in your diaries.

 

3  Write to the Press

The “Star” published a letter (26.06.08) and a report of the protest (27.06.08) on the “No Voice” campaign.  Further letters in support of the campaign would ensure that more parents get to hear what is happening.

 

4  Petition

A number of people have asked to sign a petition in support of Parents’ rights to be consulted over changes to SEN.  We will shortly be setting up an Autism Alliance website, and will post a petition on-line. Hard copies of the Petition will also be available through the Sheffield Autistic Society newsletter, at local autism meetings, at the Aspergers Conference on 30 June, downloading from the website once it is up and running.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Thanks again to everyone who has supported the No Voice Campaign

 

Please keep in touch.  Let us know about any progress with MPs etc

 

Claire le Feuvre

Phil Cooney

 

 

COPY OF CYPD QUESTIONS TO USE WHEN CAMPAIGNING

 

A  “Learning Difficulties and Disabilities (LDD) Development Paper” – Agenda item 3, 6 June 2007, Council papers

1  Is the above paper the policy document for special education needs in Sheffield?

2  If it is not, please could you tell us what is the policy document.

3  Please can you tell us whether the current policy document has been distributed for consultation to the following:-

(a)  Parent/carers (individual)

(b)  Parent/carer groups

(c)  Mainstream schools

(d)  Special schools

(e)  Integrated Resources

 

  4 In the “LDD Development Paper” you write “ ..all other developments (ie development of city-wide outreach programme/review of integrated resource provision/development of role of special schools/review of SEN transport policy), rely on the need to substantially reduce the link between Statements and funding.”  Since you believe all the policy changes are dependent on each other it would seem that you should have consulted on the proposed policy changes as a whole.  Yet, you seem to be adopting a phased consultation/implementation approach. For instance, you have consulted on the new internal management structure, but not on service delivery. Given this, how do believe it is possible to consult in any meaningful way, since any single change to an individual proposal could render the overall Plan unworkable?

 

5   In one letter about the proposal to re-structure the LDD Services you wrote “The first stage of the process is to create the management structure within LDD Services to enable work to begin on shaping frontline service delivery …”  It is our understanding that management structures should reflect effective service delivery, not precede it, and that planning is a“bottom up” (ie based on the needs of individual children) not a “top down” process.  Please explain why you have not done this?

 

B  Other consultation documents

1  Have any consultation documents relating to the policy document above been distributed?

2  If so, (a) which documents?

(b) To whom have they been distributed?

(c) Please indicate when they were distributed, the closing date for consultation and the outcome of consultation, including which groups have  access to minutes of consultation meetings.

3  We understand that Sheffield Council is to ratify some/all aspects of the LDD changes at their September meeting.  Can you tell us what exactly they are ratifying and can you confirm that none of the action  they are ratifying has already taken place.  For instance, job adverts for posts in the new management structure appeared in the Star this month.

 

C  Delegated funding and Statements

1  Have you delegated SEN funding to mainstream schools?

2  On which date did you do so?

3  What is the formula for the delegation of funds? Please include references to Paper B, “Proposals for Changing SEN Funding linked to Statements”, Sheffield Schools Forum, 19 February 2008, where it appears that delegated budgets will be assessed solely on the index of multiple deprivation, free school meals, mobility and various academic attainment tests.

4  Please explain how delegated funds relate to existing Statements.  Specifically, do Schools continue to receive monies to support individual, named children with Statements?

5  Are Statements still being written for children with special needs.

6  Are school or LA staff advising some parents that they no longer need a Statement?

 

D  The Autism Service

1  Does the autism specific service still exist.  (We understand that there was an early years service, based at Ryegate, and a schools’ service).

 

2  Is the LDD support service now a generic service?

2  If a teacher in mainstream wants advice/support about an autistic child can you assure us that an autism specialist will be available?

 

E  Integrated Resources/Special Schools

1  Please can you indicate where the policy statement is for Integrated Resources and Special Schools?

2  Have you consulted on this?  If so, with whom?

3  What is the timetable for consultation and implementation for proposals affecting Integrated Resources and Special Schools?

Xavier support

I have this week sent the following letter to Ms J Haddrell, Assistant Director General, Department of Education, Training & The Arts, Queensland, Australia.

Whilst fully respecting the importance of the issues Andrew rightly raises and the contributions to the short but important debate that followed, I decided that some sort of action was required.  I had an acknowledgement from the Northern Ireland Assembly re Buddy Bear,  but haven't heard further news as to whether they won the financial backing needed.  I shall be interested to follow the Xavier story further.

Most of all, I would like to contribute to a growing sense of confidence in the international conductive education community that, no matter what our internal and professional debates within conductive education, we can collaborate across the world through the internet in ways that we can barely begin to imagine.

-------------------------------------------

23 June 2008

Ms J Haddrell
Assistant Director General
Department of Education, Training & The Arts
Level 22, Education House
30 Mary Street
Brisbane QLD 4000
Australia

Dear Ms Haddrell

Re: Xavier Special Education Unit

You may be surprised to receive a letter from England in the matter of the future of Xavier Special Education Unit. However, I trust you will not find the communication unwelcome.

My simple purpose is to draw to your attention two very recent scholarly publications from the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, of which Australia is a member nation.

The first, Evidence in Education: Linking Research and Policy (OECD 2007), based in studies initiated by a 1995 CERI report and centering on a series of international workshops held between April 2004 and July 2006, addresses the increasing pressure felt by all within the education community for greater accountability and effectiveness and also the increasing prominence given by governments to evidence-based research in setting education policy and in allocating public resources.

The second, Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science (OECD 2007), the outcome of an international CERI project launched in 1999, aims at encouraging collaboration between policy makers, researchers and the education community “to open new pathways to improve educational research, policies and practices”:

We are all familiar with the importance of peer-reviewed, evidence-based practice in medicine, and the thoroughness with which theoretical and scientific knowledge are fused with professional experience. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of modern medical practice without its emphatic foundation in scientific research across a range of disciplines.

Like medicine, education relies for its theoretical foundation (the understanding of learning and the practice of teaching) on other disciplines, such psychology, philosophy and sociology.

Unlike medicine, however, the theoretical foundation of education is “pre-scientific” – which is to say it lacks as yet either predictive or explanatory power. How children learn is not sufficiently understood to offer a guarantee of educational outcomes. The practice of education is still an art, not a science. The understanding of learning and practice of teaching are not as yet underpinned by a secure base of scientific and theoretical knowledge. This applies as much to the learning and teaching of children in mainstream schools as in special education.

Clearly, one conclusion might be that “more research is necessary”. In the interim, another conclusion might be that for as long as we must depend upon the judgments of professionals and parents as to what works and what does not, we should value, and even celebrate, the schools we have that command the support of these same professionals and parents.

From the late 1940s, a Hungarian physician, Andres Peto, elaborated his theoretical and professional insights into learning and the practice of teaching to create a unified system of education of children with motor disorders now known in the English-speaking world, perhaps losing something in the translation, as Conductive Education. 

The Executive Summary of Understanding the Brain states: “It is possible to take advantage of the brain’s potential for plasticity and to facilitate the learning process. This calls for holistic approaches which recognise the close interdependence of physical and intellectual well-being and the close interplay of the emotional and cognitive” – precisely the position taken by Andras Peto and conductive education.

There is, of course, much more to be said about conductive education as a unified system and, speaking personally, I might well wish to debate theoretical differences with the professionals and parents at Xavier Special Education Unit. Nevertheless, the work at Xavier is internationally known, through conferences, congresses and reports. Their work brings recognition and credit to Queensland and enhances the reputation of Queensland Education.

The OECD, in its reports, confirms both how much in education practice is still to be supported by research evidence and also the challenging but still elusive potential being proposed by neuroscientists.

A bold, innovative and forwarding looking education authority might do a great deal worse that to cherish embryonic education systems and practices which appear to offer ways forward, such as Xavier Special Education Unit; to work in partnership with those committed parents and professionals; and together to seek ways of better integrating the work at Xavier into the mainstream.  Who knows, Queensland Education might consider its most valuable contribution to such a partnership to be funding a post for a full-time conductor and contributing to a research project?

Yours sincerely

Norman Perrin
Chief Executive
Paces Shefield

Hopeful signs on consultation with parents in Sheffield

On Friday morning, I went along to a demonstration by parents of children with autism, who were giving voice to their concerns about lack of consultation on the part of Sheffield Children and Young People Directorate, especially the SEN team, in the implementation of wide-ranging changes in the schooling of children with special needs. I was especially keen to meet the organiser, Claire, with whom I had spoken on the telephone earlier in the week and whom I shall be meeting next week.

I am posting Claire's report of the demonstration, circulated by email, partly in the hope  of giving it wider circulation locally, and partly to share with a much wider community who are struggling with similar issues, something of the flavour of what is currently happening in Sheffield.

(As a revealing aside: a representative of Paces School, which is the only independent non-maintained special school in Sheffield, was not invited by the SEN team to attend the meeting in question.)

Consultation with parents on strategic planning is essential to the implementation of the Government's education policy - for instance as  evidenced in Every Child Matters. (The same is true in adult services strategic planning, by the way). Slowly this message is seeping throughout local authorities and changing embedded cultures of paternalism. As one who is a strong advocate of consultation, partnership and collaboration, I am therefore optimistic that the report below brings hopeful signs, here in Sheffield, on consultation with parents of children with SEN, a road which the City's adults with learning disabilities team has already set out on, led by Richard Parrott, the Strategic Commissioning Manager, with its wide consultations at the draft stage of an extensive Strategic Plan. It is encouraging to see parents once more starting to reach out to each other, beyond the specific disability of our children, and attempting to contribute to real change.

At present, Sheffield does not have a Strategic Plan for the education and schooling of children and young people with disabilities. That is a serious omission which must be addressed by the new Director when she takes up her post.  A strategy is simply a plan. It is difficult to imagine how any local authority, let alone the fourth largest city in England, would wish to proceed to the implementation of education and schooling arrangements for children with disabilities without a plan to do so, to which parents have essentially contributed and which is widely accepted by all those it concerns and benefits.

Small signs - yet cause for some hope that we can move forward. Take a read for yourself.

--------------------------------

Today's parent demonstration went ahead as planned.  The LEA had moved the venue just 20 hours before the meeting, so parents held a protest at the original venue (Salvation Army on Psalter Lane) which was attended by the local press (look out for coverage/photo in local press) and also attended the new venue (Mega Centre) where representatives of Sheffield special schools and integrated units were handed a flyer about our 'No Voice' campaign.  (Copy attached below for your information).

We understand that, in the meeting with Mariam Haque (Head of SEN Sheffield), Jane Ludlum (Children Services) and David Dickinson (SEN Advisor, National Strategies Team), the representatives from the special schools and integrated units of Sheffield, raised the same concerns about failure to consult and the inherent weaknesses of the proposals.

As a result of the parent campaign and the concerns of the teachers and schools Jane Ludlum has agreed to 'tear up' the June 2007 paper 'Learning Difficulties and Disabilities (LDD) Development Paper', prepared by Mariam Haque, which outlined the proposals for change. (See details in 'No Voice' below).  She referred to a 'blank piece of paper' re the future of special education in Sheffield.  The LEA will reconvene work on SEN in September.  A working party, together with a series of sub-committees, will be set up.  We have received this information informally, and are awaiting official confirmation from the LEA about this change of direction.

This is a tremendous result.  Thanks to all parents who have been involved in this campaign.

However, this is just the beginning of our campaign to be consulted in the planning and implementation of improved educational services for our children. We are now looking at ways to organise our campaign (both in terms of creating an Autism Alliance, and in terms of creating an over-arching Alliance of all disability/special needs groups), to facilitate and formalise our role in consultation processes.  So stay in touch!

Claire

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“NO VOICE”

 

The Campaign to stop Sheffield Education Authority making Changes to the Education of Children with Special Needs Without Consultation

 

We are the parents of children with Autism and Aspergers Syndrome, joined at today’s protest by representatives of other disability groups. We are here to draw attention to the changes made to the special education system in Sheffield for all children with special needs. These changes have been made without consulting either parents, the children themselves or (in any meaningful way) the teachers and schools who support the children.

 

It is hard to say exactly what these changes will mean to individual children with autism since there has been no meaningful consultation.*  But it seems that the following changes will, or have already, taken place:-

1. Special school and integrated resource placements will be seen as short-term options for children with autism. The vast majority of children will be expected to spend no more than 1 to 2 years in these provisions before they are placed in their local mainstream school.
2. Mainstream schools will be expected to support the complex needs of all children with autism through a SEN budget devolved from the LA to the school. The new budget does not recognise the financial implications of the existing Statements of Special Educational Needs, (the legal documents that identifies and quantifies the specialist support required for each, named child with autism).  It is the Local Authority’s policy to reduce the number of Statements issued and maintained regardless of the number of children with special needs.
3. Specialist services for children with autism (which are already extremely limited) will be absorbed into a generic service serving children with any kind of disability.  The “autism service” has already been disbanded.

 

Parents, in collaboration with teachers and schools, are the first to recognise that there is a need to improve educational services for children with autism in Sheffield, and that the ideal scenario is for children and young people with autism to be successfully and happily ensconced in their local school and community.  However, the barrier to this ideal is not organisational and structural change within the LEA offices. The real obstacles are the need to recognise that autism is a lifelong developmental condition that impacts on every aspect of everyday life, the need to recognise both the quantity and expert nature of support required to work effectively with children with such a complex condition and the need to understand that effective services are planned round the child, not dictated from some remote office.

 

It is difficult to comprehend how the Local Authority intends to make progress with such a complex matter without involving the real experts – the children themselves, their families and the teachers.

 

* See Sheffield Council papers on Agenda item 3, 6 June 2007, “Learning Difficulties and Disabilities (LDD) Development Paper”.  To our knowledge this paper, which outlines proposals for Council changes to SEN, has not been widely distributed.

Paces School - Ofsted Report: A welcome report.

Paces School was inspected by Ofsted on 14-15th May 2008, and the Inspector's Report published on 9th June 2008.  The report has delighted everyone at Paces and is one in which every single member of the School's staff team should feel justifiably proud. Those of the team who have been with us since the start in 1996/7, who have "kept the faith" during those times when the odds seemed stacked against us, have cause to feel especially satisfied with the Inspector's commendations of the School and, by implication, of their years of exceptional dedication and creative hard work. Without effective leadership, little of real quality is truly achievable. "Quality" has been the one continuous watchword of Gabor Fellner's leadership as Head of Paces School. Hopefully, the dissemination of this report will serve only to enhance his reputation, and that of Paces School, well beyond Paces Campus.

Below, you can read extracts from the Report. If you care to, you can downlead the whole Report.

Before you do so, there is one plain-seeming sentence in the Report, easily overlooked, which represents a real triumph; one that connoisseurs of the history of conductive education in the UK and elsewhere might recognise as a milestone:  "The curriculum provides a good balance of Conductive Education with the subjects of the National Curriculum in both the primary and secondary classes". I leave you to savour that sentence and to enjoy with us our sense of the real achievement of an objective we set out to reach all those years ago.

Congratulations to Gabor and to the staff team.

-------------------------------------
Extracts
Evaluation of the school
Paces High Green School provides a good quality of education for its pupils. The curriculum and quality of teaching are good, and are helping the pupils to make good overall progress in both their educational learning and in their physical development. The pupils benefit from attending a school that emphasises their individual worth and contribution to all aspects of school life. Parents are fully supportive of the ethos of the school, appreciating greatly the work of the teachers and other specialist staff in helping their children to enjoy school, and achieve well in relation to their capabilities. The school has continued to make good progress since its previous inspection and meets almost all the regulations for independent schools.

Quality of education
The quality of the curriculum is good overall. The curriculum provides a good balance of Conductive Education with the subjects of the National Curriculum in both the primary and secondary classes, and a satisfactory link with the six areas of learning in the Foundation Stage class. .... Throughout the school, this integrated curricular approach is giving the pupils good coverage of a range of key literacy, numeracy and language skills appropriate to their abilities and needs. It is also supporting well their physical, social and emotional development.

The quality and effectiveness of teaching and assessment are good. All lessons are very carefully planned to include teaching tasks and clearly identified outcomes that ensure all pupils are suitably supported and challenged in all aspects of their physical, social and intellectual learning. Relationships between teachers, support assistants and the pupils are outstanding throughout the school. All adults show great sensitivity and awareness of the needs of the pupils, but are still demanding and encouraging of them to develop as much independence in their learning as possible; this includes their physical development.

Balls statement on Children's Plan. Commons 11 Dec 2007

As you do, I stumbled across a report on the ATL web site of a statement by Ed Balls ("Balls makes statement on the Children's Plan"). The original is no doubt in Hansard.  Can anyone direct me to any online or other source for following up each of these points made, to check on progress?

1. Teacher Training
£18 million would be available over the   next three years to help train teachers to deal with special educational   needs.   (By the way, don't you just love "deal with" and "deal with special educational needs" as synonyms for "teach" and "teach children"? This from the ATL "the education union for teachers and lecturers").
   
2. Special Needs Review
A review into special needs would lead to a review in 2009.

3. Parent Advisors
  Two new parent advisors in every area would help family education and   help those with disabled children.

Is this not a species of insanity?

I have asked before on this blog, when and where the debate on the education of children with motor disorders such as cerebral palsy is taking place.  I was interested then to read in an email I received this week, the announcement of a "Cerebral Palsy Feature in the July/August issue of SEN magazine" and inviting Paces to buy advertising or advertorial. "The lead editorial will be produced in conjunction with Scope," the email informed me.

It's not often cerebral palsy features in any educational context, so I responded by enquiring about the content and "angle" of the lead editorial. Impressively quickly, I received the following reply: "The lead editorial in the Cerebral Palsy feature will provide an overview of the condition. It will then go into detail about how the educational sector will cope now that more and more children with disabilities, especially those with cerebral palsy, are going into mainstream schools."

This is all I have and it would not only foolish but also quite wrong to prejudge the content before it is published. Nevertheless, I am not encouraged.

Why so?  Firstly, because a professional journal that was proposing to do more than re-hash the traditional "overview of the condition" would be promoting itself by trumpeting "a challenge to traditional views of cerebral palsy in education". That it is not doing so, makes me fear yet another re-hash.  Secondly, "it will then go into detail about ....". About what?  There are some extremely important questions that need addressing:  Why do we in the UK & NI not require our teachers of children with almost any disability, to gain an understanding of the disability before they set foot in the classroom?  Why do we reject the need for pedagogies specific to specific disabilities? Ditto curricula? What can neuroscience teach us? Where is the research? One could go on. These are questions of national and even international importance if we are to bring about necessary change in the education, schooling and upbringing of children with cerebral palsy. These are questions of importance to the children themselves and their families.  Instead, it seems SEN Magazine is proposing to give over rare and valuable space to focus on  ... problems experienced by teachers in mainstream schools; on "how the educational sector will cope now that more and more children with disabilities, especially those with cerebral palsy, are going into mainstream schools". In other words, having blithely followed the yellow brick road of 'inclusion', the only thing it seems worth talking about is what to do with the children now we have got them there. Shouldn't we have thought about this first?

I am not opposed to the inclusion of everyone in all the opportunities open to us all. I am opposed to the notion of "one size fits all, local schooling", (though, of course, now that certain sections of the Labour Party are busily adopting  lotteries as an answer to allocating school places , it is logically impossible for them to advocate all children inclusively attending their local school).  I am opposed to compulsion in education. I am in favour of a definition of "inclusion" that does not argue for compelling sameness, but recognises our diversities (were there not diversity, you would not need to argue for inclusion), puts parents' wishes first and promotes alternatives and choice.

A local primary school is faced with its first pupil with cerebral palsy. They will admit, privately, that they have not a clue how to teach this child (learning difficulties, a touch of autism maybe, some visual impairment, weak fine motor control - but able to manage an electric wheelchair). Sheffield is heading towards the closure of its only specialist school for children with physical disabilities. Barnsley did so some years ago. Doncaster is, I believe, doing so this year. Rotherham I know not of. And all of this is happening before we have any debate on training or pedagogy or curriculum .... and with the result that SEN Magazine can think it appropriate, even important, to have a special feature, not on the needs of these children, not on the wishes of their parents for alternatives nor on the latest research into the education and upbringing of children with cerebral palsy but on "how the educational sector will cope".

Is this not a species of insanity?