Education links

Tomorrow sees most NSW students return to school for the second half of the 2016 school year. These links about various aspects of school education for students with disabilities, and Down syndrome in particular, have come to our attention recently:

Hearing, learning and Down’s syndrome

Stuart Mills, Special Educational Needs (SEN) Magazine, May/June 2016

Stuart Mills looks at the effects of hearing impairment on children with Down’s syndrome, and what teachers can do to help ...

Children with disability are being excluded from education
David Roy, The Conversation, 30 May 2016

Governments in Australia, New Zealand and the UK are failing children with disabilities by not providing necessary learning support and by allowing issues to permeate without intervening. Schools are deliberately disregarding disability standards through rejecting school places, denying the opportunity of access to activities and offering minimal, if any, support to children with disabilities.

And research shows that this is becoming more of a concern ...
Thinking about Literacy and Intellectual Disability

Aaron Johannes, 101 Friends, 31 December 2013

One of the most powerful parts of the work we’ve done over the last several years has been a) realizing how illiteracy affects people with disabilities and b) witnessing their inclusion in conversations about their lives in some of our work using graphics and plain language, dialogues and story-telling and, more recently, theater and music. Several times people have gotten quite emotional about feeling, finally, part of conversations and empowered to the point where they can participate ...

“Inclusion really does make us all better”: Tips and success stories from Beth Foraker

The Inclusion Lab (Brookes Publishing), 9 February 2016

We asked Beth a few questions about successful inclusion, and then she shared two wonderful, personal success stories—one of them featuring her own son, Patrick. Read on to learn from one of the most passionate and knowledgeable inclusion advocates in the online community!

• Note - this post is part of a series Fair Is Not Always Equal…Now What?

 Federal Government?

Family Advocacy, 14 July 2016

... beyond answers on the allocated funding, we need our government to face up to the fact that Australia is failing to make progress toward true inclusion of our children with disability in schools ...