Inclusion is not up for debate

As Marsha Forest said many times ‘ Inclusion is not up for debate’

And that’s true in the sense no headteacher ever stood up and said to a parents’ evening ‘We’re not an inclusive school and relationships don’t matter to us here” No politician ever based their manifesto on the position that they were for the few and not the many (whatever their private thoughts!)

So there an important sense in which we don’t need to defend inclusion – instead make them defend segregation – it’s a hard hat to wear…

If segregation were a drug/medication it would have been withdrawn form the market many years ago.

The evidence in favour of inclusive education as a predictor of better later life outcomes for disabled people is overwhelming and has been available for decades. So we still get very impatient when professionals say they are guided by ‘evidence based practice’ – well not in this arena it seems…

 Read more on the research.