By Richard Rieser, taken from Special Needs Jungle
Last Thursday (8th April 2021) the largest education union in the UK, the National Education Union voted, with only one abstention and none against, to build a broad-based campaign to address disability in schools in England and Wales for both students and staff. As well as the MD of World of Inclusion, I am the current Equality Officer in the NEU Hackney District, and moved the motion on behalf of the Disabled Members’ Conference.
I believe this is a great day for the NEU, disabled people, parents of disabled students, and education in general, to achieve unity on such a wide-ranging motion. Clearly, a range of Government policies on curriculum, assessment, privatisation, real-term funding cuts, disproportionate exclusion rates, and failure to implement disability equality duties under the Equalities Act, has meant that disabled children and young people have been let down by the mainstream school system. These outcomes, when combined with race and poverty, have led to multiple failures.