News and commentary on education

Recasting school reports - recognising progress rather than standardised outcomes

Catia Malaquias, Starting with Julius: IncludedEd, 18 December 2016
...  A long list of adverse results in comparison to the “average” learner without much more goes a long way to telling a parent and the student themselves that they do not belong in that learning environment ...

A summary of the evidence on inclusive education

Thoman Hehir, Silvana and Christopher Pascucci and Abt Associates, for Instituto Alana, August 2016

... In this report we sought to identify research that demonstrates the benefits of inclusive education not only for students with disabilities, but especially for students without disabilities, since evidence of benefits for the former is already widely known. This report is the result of a systematic review of 280 studies from 25 countries. Eighty-nine of the studies provide relevant scientific evidence and were synthesized and summarized below. 

There is clear and consistent evidence that inclusive educational settings can confer substantial short- and long-term benefits for students with and without disabilities ...

How schools avoid enrolling children with disabilities
Linda J Graham, Helen Proctor, Roselyn Dixon, The Conversation, 28 January 28, 2016

Children with disabilities are frequently discriminated against in Australian schools. It has been an ongoing issue for years, with reports showing that little has improved since 2002.

Exclusion practices – dubbed “gatekeeping” – include: advising parents to send their child to another school that could better support them; allowing a child to attend a school only on the days that funding is available; and asking parents to pay more so the school can employ support staff or purchase equipment. Although this happens across all school types, it tends to be more prominent in, and easier for, non-government or private schools.

Australia's disabled children at risk of being denied promised funding after counting stuff-up

Matthew Knott, Sydney Morning Herald. 20 December 2016

Students with disabilities could miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars in extra funding because of serious concerns about the reliability of a landmark national audit into the number of school children with special needs ...

• What is the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability?, Australian Government Dept. Education and Training, 20 December 2016

‘Naughty’ classes are wrong: here’s what the research says
Linda Graham, Australian Association for Research in Education, 31 October 2016
A primary school in Victoria made the news recently when it created a separate “naughty-naughty” class for children experiencing learning and behavioural difficulties. It is not the first school to have done this and it is unlikely to be the last ...

Finding support when you least expect it
Inclusive Education Canada, 8 November 2016
In October 2016, Gordon Porter, Director at Inclusive Education Canada, and Debbie met for the first time while Gordon was promoting inclusive education at a series of speaking events in Northern Ontario. Debbie told Gordon he had a significant impact on the course of her life despite having never met in person ...