CYP Now has teamed up with the Churchill Fellowship to publish a series of articles summarising key findings from studies undertaken worldwide by Churchill Fellows (see below). This is an abridged version of Making Inclusion “Normal”: Comparing the development of inclusive education in Finland and New Brunswick, Canada by disability rights activist Tara Flood. Tara was the director at the Alliance for Inclusive Education (Allfie) – from 2006 until 2019. It campaigns for the right of all disabled pupils and students to be included in mainstream education.
WHY INCLUSIVE EDUCATION?
In an inclusive educational setting, disabled and non-disabled pupils and students are welcomed and valued, feel safe and confident that they will be supported to develop their talents, pursue their aspirations and make a contribution to the school while achieving their personal goals.
Inclusive education providers adopt attitudes, approaches and strategies that ensure no learners are excluded or isolated from mainstream educational opportunities. Disabled pupils and students work alongside their peers on mainstream courses with flexibility of teaching and inclusive pedagogy and curriculum, learning and assessments that support all pupils and students to reach full potential.
Separating disabled pupils and students from their non-disabled peer-group is discriminatory. It limits individual life chances and produces an unfair and unjust society.
WHY NEW BRUNSWICK?
I chose New Brunswick in Canada because for many years it has had a very good reputation for being inclusive and is well known across the inclusive education movement as taking the brave political decision in the late 1980s to close all its special schools in pursuit of a fully inclusive education system. I also visited Finland for the Fellowship, but this article focuses on New Brunswick.
UK CONTEXT
According to UK government statistics around eight per cent of children and young people are disabled as defined by the Equality Act 2010. For the purposes of this report I focused on the English education system. The UK has taken some proactive measures to end institutional discrimination, including the Equality Act 2010 and in England the Children and Families Act 2014 (which replaced the Special Education Needs and Disability Act), but it has stopped short of creating and embracing an inclusive education system.
Since 2014, the number of disabled pupils and students in special schools has increased by 24 per cent. This is a clear retrogression in terms of ensuring an inclusive education system.
The UK’s long history of institutionalising disabled children and young people into special educational settings has proven resistant to change. Successive governments, “special education” providers, some education professionals, medical and allied health professionals have maintained the myth that “special is best for some”. Yet decades of evidence have shown that segregated education disadvantages disabled pupils and students by producing lesser learning and social outcomes in a “low expectations” environment.
NEW BRUNSWICK CONTEXT
New Brunswick has nearly 40 years of experience of a fully inclusive education system. It is predominantly a rural province with only about half the population living in urban areas, mostly in Moncton, Saint John and the capital Fredericton. The population of New Brunswick is approximately 760,000 and is currently one of the poorest provinces in Canada, with a per capita income of $28,000 and is also one of the smallest provinces.
Education is a provincial matter so is controlled by the government of New Brunswick. The New Brunswick education system is also bilingual and is split into seven school districts – each is managed by a superintendent who has a number of responsibilities including the day-to-day operation of schools, the district budget, oversight of the district performance report and the placement of students.
INCLUSION IN NEW BRUNSWICK
Early work on inclusion in education started in the local education authority (school district) based in the town of Woodstock in the early 1980s and was led by Gordon Porter. He was a former school principal put in charge of developing a comprehensive approach to serving students with learning challenges in local schools as well as closing special schools and integrating the students who attended them into regular schools.
In 1986, the government introduced the New Brunswick Education Act, better known as “Bill 85” to change the Schools Act. Bill 85 not only legislated for inclusive education, but also outlawed the segregation of disabled pupils and students. This new law put New Brunswick ahead of any other province in Canada, and among leaders in inclusion around the world.
As part of the planned closure of the special schools across New Brunswick, some teachers from special schools and/or special classes within mainstream schools were transferred into the mainstream school system to support regular teachers who until then had little experience working with disabled pupils. This commitment started to fade in the early 1990s as schools struggled to realise inclusion and instead students experienced different degrees of integration. In 2013 Policy 322 was introduced to clarify “the requirements to ensure New Brunswick public schools are inclusive”.
LEGAL FRAMEWORK
Policy 322 helpfully re-defines schools and places of education as “common learning environments” – “an inclusive environment where instruction is designed to be delivered to students of mixed ability and of the same age in their neighbourhood school, while being responsive to their individual needs as a learner, and used for the majority of the students’ regular instruction hours”.
Schools in New Brunswick also have to follow closely the principles and practices of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This means that the curriculum, teaching practices and strategies, and student assessment are designed from the outset to ensure that all students can learn and actively participate in regular education programming.
Inclusive education in New Brunswick works, not perfectly, but it is a reality for all pupils because there is no legal alternative – there is no segregated provision. Bill 85 and subsequent policy documents are focused on enhancing inclusive practice in schools and providing support, training and resources to build the capacity and confidence of teachers and support staff.
Changing the law in New Brunswick to outlaw segregation and create the framework and resources for inclusion to happen has been the “game changer”.
SCHOOL INCLUSIVE LEARNING
In New Brunswick thanks to UDL, differentiation of the curriculum and class activities is at the heart of the education system. The principle behind UDL starts with the learning needs of the majority of pupils and students being met by developing accessible learning programmes, services, practices, and learning environments. When this measure alone is insufficient to meet the needs of an individual pupil or groups of students, accommodations are required. These are universal – therefore available to any/all students.
INCLUSIVE FOCUSED SUPPORT
Access to support is often determined by the diagnosis of an impairment or health condition. For example, in New Brunswick, the Ministry of Education and Early Childhood Development now guarantees 20 hours of school support per week to a child with an autism diagnosis. This guarantee was created with the best intentions to ensure that children with autism labels get the support they need at an early stage, but the result is a spike in the number of children being diagnosed as autistic because parents may see this as a route to securing 20 hours of guaranteed support.
There is always the danger, as is true of the UK, that the more a disabled pupil/student is identified as needing individualised learning, the more likely they are to be away from the mainstream classroom or school. The New Brunswick description of a common learning environment is helpful here because it allows for the flexibility of learning to happen in a variety of places within a school, with the focus on supporting pupils and students to access additional learning opportunities to enhance their participation in “inclusive learning”, not as a replacement.
REAL-LIFE INCLUSION
Park Street Elementary School has a classroom with a range of seating options including sit-down individual and group desks, standing desks, floor mats, car seats, comfy seating and a couple of exercise bikes. The principal of the school, Rien Meesters explained that this is about providing pupils and students with choice and encourages them to make decisions. The static exercise bikes help those students to burn off excess energy to be in a better frame of mind for participating in learning. The school has also found that the bikes work well for students with labels of autism because it helps them focus their attention.
CONCLUSION
Teachers need the training and continuous professional development opportunities to use inclusive teaching methods and the confidence to welcome a diversity of pupils and students, whatever their learning difference and style, into their classrooms. We need to support head teachers to become transformative leaders for change. Schools, colleges and universities need legal and regulatory frameworks that ensure they are accountable to their communities but allow them the flexibility to be creative in developing a broad and balanced curriculum that reflects the diversity of their pupils and student communities, grounded in principles of inclusion and equality.
Families need confidence that their local school will not only be welcoming of their child, but also that the school has the resources and knowledge to support the child to participate in learning.
Lastly, we need to find new ways to mobilise the voluntary and community sector to challenge their local education providers to become inclusive and to better reflect the diversity of their community.
New Brunswick was an affirmation of what Allfie has been saying for many years – that inclusive education requires the ending of segregation.
- Making Inclusion “Normal”: Comparing the development of inclusive education in Finland and New Brunswick, Canada from www.wcmt.org.uk/sites/default/files/report-documents/Flood%20T%20Report%202018%20Final.pdf
ABOUT THE CHURCHILL FELLOWSHIP
The Churchill Fellowship is a national network of 3,800 inspiring individuals whose mission is to find the world’s best solutions for the UK’s current challenges.
Up to 150 Churchill Fellows are funded each year to visit the world’s leading practitioners and projects on a topic of their choice – from social policy to healthcare to education and more – and bring back new ideas for their communities and sectors across the UK.
Any UK adult citizen can apply, regardless of qualifications, background or age. Fellows are chosen for their potential as change-makers, not their past track record or status.
-
Find out about fellows and their ideas at www.wcmt.org.uk
