Human Rights and School Change: The Newham Story

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EC 309 408

Jordan, Linda; Goodey, Chris

Human Rights and School Change: The Newham Story. New

Edition.

Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, Bristol (England).

ISBN-1-872001-25-4

2002-00-00

51p.; See ED 397 595 for previous edition.

Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE), New

Redland, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16

1QU, England, United Kingdom (10 British pounds). Tel: 0117-

344 -4007; Fax: 0117-344-4005; Web site:

http://www.inclusion.org.uk.

Reports Descriptive (141)

EDRS Price MF01/PC03 Plus Postage.

*Change Strategies; *Civil Liberties; Civil Rights

Legislation; *Disabilities; *Educational Change; Educational

Legislation; Elementary Secondary Education; Foreign

Countries; Government Role; *Inclusive Schools; *Policy

Formation; Program Development

*England (London)

This report recounts the process of desegregation of the

education service in the London (England) borough of Newham. It shows how

inclusion in the borough began and was sustained by an understanding of

inclusion as a human rights issue. It charts the steps which brought about

the closure of most of the authority's separate special schools and units

over an 18-year period (1984-2002). This publication covers the early days of

council policy making, the consultations and compromises, and how those

seeking change responded to concerns while keeping their vision in focus.

Individual sections address key points, achievements and constraints, history

and origins, the arrival of the policy, implementation of the policy, moving

onwards, comments and concerns, and a 1996-2002 update. The authors conclude

that, if there had been a stronger national strategy to counter deeply

embedded prejudices and fears about disability, progress toward inclusion in

Newham and elsewhere would have been faster. They urge the borough to take a

lead in pursuing national legislation that will establish inclusion as a

human right. A time chart, a closure chart, and a list of sources and useful

addresses complete the report.

(DB)

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made

from the original document.

Human Rights and School Change: The Newham Story

Linda Jordan

Chris Goodey

2002

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.

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CSIE

Centre for Studies on

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Inclusive Education

an independent education centre

supporting inclusion

challenging exclusion

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Now

Human rights

and school change

the Newham story

LINDA JORDAN AND CHRIS GOODEY

CSIE

Centre for Studies on

Inclusive Education

an independent education centre

supporting inclusion

challenging exclusion

Published by

Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education

New Red land

Frenchay Campus

Coldharbour Lane

Bristol BS16 1QU

tel 0117 344 4007

fax 0117 344 4005

websites inclusion.org.uk and csie.org.uk

Registered charity 327805

Registered company 2253521

VAT no. 587 2498 84

Text Linda Jordan and Chris Goodey

Illustrations Sally and Richard Greenhill

Design Susan Clarke for Expression, IP23 8HH

Price £10.00 (incl. UK p&p)

ISBN 1 872001 25 4

First published 1996

This new edition published 2002

CSIE 2002

contents

introduction

key points summary 6

a commitment to change 8

Philosophical roots

achievements and constraints 9

Sharing the vision

Resourced schools

history and origins 12

Eight special schools

Parents' perspective

The integration working party

the arrival of the policy 16

A fight worth having

Human rights and equality

implementation of the policy 19

Integration steering group

The closure programme

From special school to support centre

Meeting concerns

Development plan

Involving disabled adults

Deaf culture

Training drive

Support for parents

Educational achievement

moving onwards 28

International links

From integration to inclusion

Designing for inclusion

Developing local expertise

comments and concerns 32

Cause and effect

Community pressure

No going back

1996-2002 update and reflections 35

time chart 42

closure chart 44

sources and useful addresses 45

index 46

`The level and types of

involvement varied but

significant numbers of

people felt this was a fight

worth having.'

'By reminding everyone that

there was a plan to end

segregation because of the

human rights of children and

young people, it was always

possible to gain some level

of agreement about the way

forward.'

introduction

The Newham Story is an account of the desegregation of the education service

in the London Borough of Newham. It shows how inclusion in the Borough

began with, and was sustained by, an acknowledgement of inclusion as a

human rights issue and a commitment to change. The authors, Linda Jordan

and Chris Goodey, were among leading figures in the transition from exclusion

to inclusion. They chart the steps which brought about the closure of most of

the Authority's separate special schools and units over ten years 1984-94,

and a further special school in 1999. With one special school still remaining in

2002, the authors report on the need to re-affirm inclusion as a human rights

issue.

In the 18 years since Newham's working party published its findings, ordinary

schools have undergone major changes which continue to be developed today,

bringing benefits to all pupils, both with and without disabilities or difficulties

in learning. Inclusion in Newham is understood as an ongoing process which

began with a policy commitment to end segregation but does not end only with

the closure of special schools.

The Newham Story covers the early days of council policy making, the

consultations and the compromises, how those seeking change responded to

concerns and how they kept a vision in focus. It describes the building of the

mainstream support network, staff development, and pupil achievement.

Difficulties occurring in an education reorganisation which is widely recognised

as 'major social change' are carefully noted, as are ways of working to tackle

them. The contributions of parents and disabled people emerge as an

important catalyst in the moves towards de-segregation.

The authors quote extensively from interviews with parents and from council

policies and reports. As well as using their personal experience and first-hand

knowledge about progress towards inclusion in Newham, they also give their

comments and concerns about national trends. This is a new edition

containing some amendments to the original and an additional section which

updates developments and provides further reflections.

According to the authors, if there had been a stronger national strategy to

counter deeply embedded prejudices and fears about disability and learning

difficulty, progress towards inclusion in Newham and elsewhere would have

been faster. In their view, national strategy on inclusion is weakened by

'contradiction, confusion, flexibility, and conditionality'. They believe Newham

has a duty to children and families in the rest of the country to demonstrate

what can be achieved and they call on the borough to take a lead in pursuing

national legislation that will establish inclusion as a human right.

Linda Jordan was a member of Newham council from 1986 to 1994 and chair

of its education committee from 1988 to 1994. A teacher in special and

mainstream schools from 1982 to 1996 and head of SEN services in the

London Borough of Hackney from 1996 to 2002, she is now a Support Team

member of Valuing People, the national strategy for improving the lives of

people with learning disabilities.

Chris Goodey was chair of SPINN, the Newham Support Network for parents of

children with disabilities from 1984 to 1998, and was part of the group which

contributed to the early trials of the CSIE Index for Inclusion. He teaches social

sciences for the Open University, and researches and writes on the history of

psychology.

key points summary

policy Newham Council started the de-segregation process with a policy

commitment which recognised segregated special education as 'a

major factor causing discrimination', as well as recognising the rights of

children, whatever their needs, to learn together. A mission statement

said the goal of the borough's inclusive education policy is to make it

possible 'for every child, whatever special educational needs they have,

to attend their neighbourhood school.' A 2002 review of the inclusion

strategy has also raised the need for the council's initial view of

inclusion as a human rights issue to be reaffirmed.

progress In the ten year period 1984-94, the number of special

schools in the borough was reduced from eight to two and a further

special school was closed in 1999. The number of children in

segregated special education has dropped from 913 in 1984 to 94 in

2002 (56 in Newham's last remaining special school and 38 sent out

of borough).

constraints Newham made progress towards desegregating special

education within existing legislation, despite initial concerns and

opposition from some teachers and parents of children in special

schools, and within the context of national educational developments

which were not regarded as supportive.

compromises Setting up resourced schools was very much a

compromise in response to parents' concerns about local schools not

having developed sufficient experience and confidence to meet needs.

According to the authors: `If you have a vision the important thing is to

try to achieve it rather than to fail to do things along the route which do

not immediately look like the ultimate goal'. A 1995 council review of

special education made clear that

with certain exceptions resourced

schools were very much a half-way house on the road to a fully inclusive

system and should begin to be phased out.

school change Integration of special education into the mainstream

was regarded as a matter of radically changing schools rather than

fitting children into the existing system. An independent report

commented that having to cater for children with significant learning

difficulties helped schools make better provision for all pupils.

pupil achievement There is no evidence that including all children

has had a detrimental effect on standards. Newham's examination

results improved considerably during the de-segregation period and

pupils who were once labelled as having severe learning difficulties

are now passing exams. When the inclusion policy began in 1986, the

LEA average for GCSE A*C passes was 8% and in 2002 it was 42%.

parent leaders Parents played a major role in the de-segregation of

special education by refusing to send their children to special schools.

And they continued to press for major policy change to enable all

children to attend mainstream schools even when it became clear the

most active parents were likely to achieve their individual demands

without it.

involvement of disabled people Newham's consultative

committee on disability issues consistently supported moves to end

segregated education. A disabled person co-opted to the education

committee was able to put the voice of disabled people and this

became particularly important in discussions on the closure of the

Newham School for the Deaf.

parent support Staff from Newham's independent parent support

network backed parents in situations where mainstream schools did not

initially welcome disabled pupils and also provided regular feed-back to

the council on any problems. Occasionally the council had to remind

schools of their legal duties but even the most intractable situations

usually improved once children were in schools and were seen for

themselves and not as a label.

inclusion as an ongoing process There is widespread recognition

in Newham that developing an inclusive school system is a major social

change and that even when all special schools have closed this process

will continue. The authors say: Some Newham schools are fully

inclusive and understand what it means; others realise that they still

have a way to go and some are struggling'.

funding Since Newham set up a system of funding schools to be

inclusive in 2000, the number of new statements of special educational

needs issued has fallen to an extremely low level.

a commitment to change

Philosophical roots

The London Borough of Newham has taken the first important step along

the road towards inclusive education. Ending the segregation of disabled

people is a change requiring fundamental shifts in the way that people

think and what they believe in. However, change is possible and

segregation can be stopped. Where the change has been made it can

clearly be seen to improve the health of schools and colleges and to make

for better experiences for everybody. We hope that by telling some of

what has happened in Newham during the past 18 years it can be shown

that ending segregation requires one very important ingredient the

commitment to do it. Once a community decides to end segregation, the

rest is much easier. Examining how schools are run and looking at how

they can be changed for the better is challenging but it is also

invigorating.

During the 18 years 1984 to 2002 the number of children attending

segregated schools has declined dramatically in Newham. In 1984 there

were 711 pupils attending eight special schools and three separate classes,

and 202 attending out borough special schools. Today there are 56 pupils

at one special school in the borough and a similar number placed outside,

including children in residential placements who are a joint responsibility

with social services.

Newham Council's aim can be summed up by the following 1995 mission

statement:

The ultimate goal of Newham's Inclusive Education policy is to

make it possible for every child, whatever special educational needs they

may have, to attend their neighbourhood school, and to have full access to

the curriculum and to be able to participate in every aspect of mainstream

life and achieve their full potential.

This mission statement may sound unexceptional. But for tens of

thousands of children and adults with disabilities in many other

education authorities it is the assertion of a civil right which for them still

requires a major struggle to achieve. The important first step that

Newham has taken is that de-segregation has been firmly stated as

council policy and is well under way. The job now in hand is to make all

schools genuinely inclusive, in line with the mission statement.

achievements and constraints

Sharing the vision

When people visit Newham to 'see' inclusive education in practice, it is

difficult to know what to show them. Should they go to one of the

Victorian buildings which have taken children from their community

during the past 18 years and maybe have six or seven children with

statements, perhaps half of whom probably would be in a special school

in another borough? Or should they go to one of the mainstream

resourced schools taking children from a wider catchment area who may

be deaf or autistic, as well as those children with statements who live

locally? Usually people need to see both, because both show some

excellent examples of inclusion.

It has to be explained that if you have a vision the important thing is to

try to achieve it rather than fail to do things along the route which do not

immediately look like the ultimate goal. To get over 100,000 people

(children, families and workers in the borough's education system)

sharing a vision of inclusion, sharing an understanding of the vision and

then all willing to work hard to achieve it is not an easy task. Even if the

whole process were to begin again, it is not easy to see how things could

have been done differently. Working with an imperfect system with over

a 100 years of history and traditions is not like starting from scratch. You

have to work with what you have got.

And there certainly have been constraints, as always happens when you

are actually doing something rather than talking about it. In the early

1980s there were very few people advocating an end to all segregated

education

at least in the public arena. The 1981 Education Act had built

in conditions in its integration section, which could be used to resist

integration by anyone who was even slightly concerned about what was

happening in Newham. Legislation makes closing a special school quite

difficult. The council had to confront a predictable series of situations:

petitions to the then Department for Education and Science, meetings

with ministers, judicial reviews in the High Court, threats of physical

violence against members, and visibly disabled children being pushed to

the front of the public gallery at education committee meetings to try and

sway public opinion against de-segregation.

The increasing autonomy of schools and the opportunity for grant

maintained status brought in by subsequent education legislation acted

against creativity and progress. In this context it was absolutely essential

to be clear about what the aim was and why it was being done. It meant

being opportunistic and seizing any chance to take inclusion forward. To

get from A to B in this case had to be a process, even though many people

would have liked to move faster. To end segregated education overnight

would have required different legislation and probably a different social

context.

Resourced schools

Setting up resourced schools was very much a compromise, though some

of these schools provide excellent models of inclusion and the children

are in mainstream classes in all of them. Parents of some of the children

attending special schools simply would not have allowed their children to

have gone to the local school. This is especially true for the parents of

autistic children and children with multiple disabilities. They felt that all

schools just did not have the confidence and experience to meet the

needs of their children, and in some cases they would have been right.

However, over the years, more schools have gained confidence and the

time when all parents will be happy for their child to go to their local

school is getting nearer. One of the problems of creating resourced

schools is that it does nothing to get rid of the labels that children are

given.

The most positive group in the whole debate has been the local pupil

population, and they have been an under utilised resource. Often

problems perceived by adults were solved by children

even children of

nursery age. Over and over again children have made comments like:

`She's my friend, I just help her'. The children have not developed the

fears and prejudices that hinder many adults and certainly even older

pupils are much more open to change than many adults. There are many

testimonies to the positive effects that a policy of inclusion has had on

Newham schools. The developments have taken part during an era when

raising standards has been very much to the fore. There is no evidence

that including all children has a detrimental effect on standards.

Newham's examination results have improved considerably over these

years and some pupils who started their school careers in mainstream

schools over a decade ago and would then have been labelled as having

severe learning difficulties are now taking and passing public

examinations.

It is difficult to talk about frustrations and failures. On one hand they

exist all the time everywhere and on the other hand they do not matter. A

major area of frustration concerns pupils with emotional and behavioural

difficulties. The government introduced the requirement for local

educational authorities (LEAs) to educate pupils with these difficulties

otherwise than in school and to provide referral units at a time when

Newham had already made arrangements for them in mainstream. The

council had closed its secondary special school for children with

emotional and behavioural difficulties, the primary school equivalent had

turned itself into a support centre and a good system of mainstream

school support had been established. Although Newham's mainstream

arrangements largely pre-empted the new government requirements, they

did make future planning in other authorities more difficult. Since then,

new legislation on exclusions has had an on/off effect.

Another difficulty is when a parent reports on a negative experience with

a particular school. This still happens, of course, and it has to be dealt

with within the mainstream school. Until all special schools are closed

some people will still believe that there is 'somewhere else' for a particular

pupil or group of pupils. A school may have developed really well and

suddenly there will be a major problem to work out. However, most

people realise that developing an inclusive school system is a major social

change and that it is a long term project. Even when all special schools

have closed the process of building an inclusive system will continue.

Some Newham schools are fully inclusive and understand what it means;

others realise that they still have a way to go and some are struggling.

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history and origins

Eight special schools

The London Borough of Newham was created in 1964 from the old

boroughs of East and West Ham, where Labour had been the dominant

political force since the time of Keir Hardie. There had always been strong

commitment to supporting the most vulnerable members of society and

to putting as much money as possible into services. And one of the

consequences of this commitment was the development of a number of

special schools and high levels of segregation. By the early 1980s there

were more than 700 pupils in eight special schools, a high proportion for

a relatively small geographical area. A further 200 attended special

schools outside the borough.

At the time Newham was proud of its segregated provision: it was seen as

a sign of its caring philosophy. But the borough was also proud of its

commitment to comprehensive education. In this overwhelmingly

working class borough there was strong support for reducing inequalities

and improving the life chances of all young people through the education

system. The opposition to selective secondary schools, the development

of community education and mixed ability classes all stood in stark

contrast to the segregation of children with disabilities.

In the 1970s, Newham Council had the foresight to support a voluntary

organisation, the Newham Parents' Centre, which worked to increase the

involvement of parents in the education system. There was also a close

working relationship between the education department and the department

of educational psychology at the local polytechnic (now the University of East

London). When the 1981 Education Act introduced changes in placement

arrange/bents for children with disabilities and/or difficulties in learning,

Newham Parents' Centre in conjunction with the polytechnic ran courses for

parents on the implications of the new legislation. At the same time parents of

mainly young children in the area, hearing about the Act, were beginning to

question the practice of automatically placing children labelled as disabled in

certain special schools.

Parents' perspective

Newham Health Authority, like most in the country, had a very

influential role in educational placements for children with special

educational needs and parental testimonies back this up:

The paediatrician came round when L. was six weeks old and said 'there's a

full time place at X (special) nursery when she's two'. They were so

negative. She was only that young, and they were pre-conceiving and pre-

judging what she was going to end up like.

When E. was one month old I was visited by the borough paediatrician with

special responsibility for children with disabilities. She said that E. would be

going to a school for 'severely educationally subnormal children' and that a full

time (special) nursery place would be hers at the age of two: weren't we lucky?

It's like when Dr Y. came round when he was first born. She did mention that

there will be a special school for him to go to immediately he's two ...

I just

couldn't take that in. I know I screamed at her.

-1

Parents also felt sickened because it seemed the purpose of a

psychological test was to demonstrate a child would fail.

It was amateurish, really. The bloke didn't know how to conduct it, how to

set out a test. I suppose that was because (inclusion) had never been done

before ... the attitude was: look this is absurd. This boy can't go to an

ordinary school, he'd be too disruptive

look he can't even pull a pyramid-

shaped thing out of a bag'. They was dead against it.

Parents hoped that the 1981 Act might mean children being seen as

individuals rather than medical specimens. In April 1983 Newham

Parents' Centre arranged for parents to meet a senior member of the

education committee. The mood of this meeting was definite, with

confident parents assuming that the new legislation meant the end of

segregation and asking questions such as: 'Our children are not going to

special schools

what are you going to do about it?'. The councillor who

met them took a positive attitude, and said that she too agreed with

integrated education. She said that she would raise the issue at the next

education committee meeting.

At this meeting the committee were considering a report about the 1981

Education Act and the implications for the council. This very long report

was all about the new assessment and statementing procedures, with only

one brief statement about 'integration':

Members will no doubt wish to take steps to ensure that the spirit of the Act

is implemented in terms of the support of children with special educational

needs in mainstream schools. Serious consideration will have to be given to

the support and integration of such children and a report will be prepared for

a subsequent meeting of the committee ... it is unlikely that in future many

of these children will be recommended for education in ordinary schools

unless more resources are made available. The staffing of special schools in

Newham is well above the national average and government guidelines, and

it is not acceptable that a child should be moved from the security and

support of a small special school to an ordinary school, or to begin their

studies in an ordinary school unless teaching staffing ratios become more

generous.

The councillor who had met with parents explained to the committee

that many parents in the borough were expecting a more positive

response on integration, and that it would be necessary to develop a

policy. The meeting agreed on the establishment of a working party to

develop a council policy. It was to consist of councillors, parents,

education officers and teachers. The integration working party met

between November 1983 and September 1984 on seventeen occasions.

There were some very difficult meetings.

The integration working party

The membership of the working party represented the entire spectrum of

the special education debate. It was probably unusual to set up such a

broad based discussion group to work out a policy. During the many long

meetings there were major rows but despite the difficulties it was a very

important process. A preliminary report was drafted and sent to all

schools and governing bodies in Newham for consultation. The most

important outcome of these consultations was that nobody said that

integrating special education was a bad thing. This was at least a good

starting point. The working party was split and it was not possible to

produce a single final report. Two reports emerged: 'Report A' was signed

by the two councillors, one of the five parents in the working party and

four teachers, three of whom worked in special schools and two of whom

were headteachers. 'Report B' was signed by the other four parents

(including the chair) and supported by one councillor.

Report A sounded like so many reports that have been written about

integration: Any alterations to the present situation should represent

improvements or have clear potential for the improvement of educational

arrangements for all pupils including those at present attending mainstream

schools. We are anxious that integration when it takes place should be of

educational worth. Poorly conceptualised and implemented integration is

more harmful than no integration at all.

The report made comments about various things which would facilitate

integration and concluded:

The possibilities of special educational

provision being made on an integrated basis within a mainstream context of

neighbourhood mixed ability comprehensive schools should be developed.

Furthermore we feel that provision for pupils in ordinary schools with less

serious special educational needs and special educational provision for

children of nursery and pre-nursery age (1-5) are areas requiring attention

and resources.

Report B on the other hand said:

Integration means the education of all

pupils, handicapped and non-handicapped together, in their neighbourhood

school. We assume it to be obvious that integration must be a process, and

not something that can happen overnight, without careful planning. This

does not mean, however that the process cannot begin now. We advise the

council to instruct its officers to take steps immediately towards this aim,

and recommend that the process should be well on the way within five years.

Our chief concern must be the improved education of our pupils. We

envisage that integration will (a) improve the education of pupils with

complex and severe special needs, through access to a wider curriculum and

a more normal social environment, without any loss of support from

specialist teachers, and (b) improve the education of all children in the

borough, by educating them in acceptance of peers who are 'different' and

have different needs.

This report was criticised by the signatories of Report A as an 'urgent total

integration approach'.

The education committee's response to the two documents was to try to

amalgamate them and the end result was yet another consultation

document which tried to please everybody. The committee meeting

which decided on this new compromise document had been packed with

members of the public. A large number of them were special school

teachers and some parents of children attending special schools; there

was also a lobby of pro-integration parents. The education committee

members realised that they had a major issue on their hands. Instead of

grasping it they preferred to agree to a document which said everything

and nothing.

Despite its shortcomings, the compromise document did recommend

that a pre-school service be established to facilitate the integration of

young children with a range of disabilities and learning difficulties. This

service was to be made up of a Portage service and pre-school peripatetic

teachers who would support children in mainstream nurseries, including

social services day nurseries. In addition a pre-school advisory teacher was

appointed.

It was clear to the parents who had been active that it was probably going

to be possible for their own young children to go to mainstream

nurseries. But it was also clear that there was not going to be a major

policy change to enable all children to go to mainstream schools or for

segregated provision to close. It was obviously not acceptable to have a

situation where the children of active parents who were perceived as

troublemakers were admitted to their local schools and others were still

segregated.

Irr

the arrival of the policy

A fight worth having

By late 1985 those people determined to change things realised that there

was a massive job to do. The proposal by some people in the borough that

it should work towards ending segregation challenged fundamental

attitudes and beliefs. Many teachers seemed genuinely frightened by the

prospect of having children with disabilities in local schools. The main

frustration for parents and disabled adults in the borough was the lack of

a sense of urgency on the part of people with no personal experience.

Some took the attitude that it was all right to take very many years, no

matter that another generation of children and adults would be

segregated from their brothers, sisters and communities for substantial

parts of their lives. And there was also a lack of understanding of the

effect on whole families, particularly on siblings, of the segregation of a

family member. The need to become even more involved in a campaign

to end segregated education became obvious. The level and types of

involvement were varied but significant numbers of people felt this was a

fight worth having.

The campaign took a significant turn when one mother decided to use

the new procedures to transfer her son from a school for pupils with

severe learning difficulties to the mainstream (this was unheard of then).

The family had reluctantly agreed to allow their son to go to a special

school two years earlier and then came to realise this had been a mistake:

Then we had the battle to get John out, I thought that if I don't win this I'm

going to go under. Six foot under. I really felt like that. And I thought, you

know, I'm just a hairdresser, who's she? Why would they let my son come

out of the special school into an ordinary school?

This particular child had only ever been issued with a 'transitional

statement' under the 1981 Act and therefore the family asked for a full

assessment of his special educational needs. During this process the

parents realised that their son's needs were being assessed from the point

of view that a segregated place was right for him, and that most of the

professionals giving the advice believed that he should remain at the

special school. However, the mother questioned and queried at every

stage of the assessment procedure and made appointments to see all of

the professionals.

They can be questioned, and they are not always right. I can remember when

the paediatrician done John's assessment, right? To get him out of that

school. He said to me, 'His limbs are really good, his muscle tone's

excellent, eyesight very good, he can kick a ball'. He sat John down and he

done some squares - you know, putting things in a square and a round ring -

and he done them all fine, and when I came out the paediatrician said, 'Oh,

he's doing really well'. But when he actually wrote the report, that was a

different story altogether. It said on the report that the boy's muscle tones

need to be worked on even more, you know, lots more special help was

needed, it was all negative. And that's when we questioned him - because

he told me one thing as a mother, but actually on that report he wrote

something completely different. And it was because I was going against the

grain. I was trying to get my John out of the special school into an ordinary

r-At

school, and he believed that handicapped children should be in a special

school because that's how it always was, even to the point of him having to

make things up. But we questioned it, and we fought it, and we won.

In early 1986 the local Down's Syndrome group asked to see the director

of education and he agreed to a meeting. There were about ten parents of

young children at the meeting and they told the director that they and

many other parents expected their children to go to their local

mainstream schools and that if this did not happen they would not be

going to school at all. The director was very supportive and said that each

child would be individually assessed but that he could see no reason why

they would not be able to go to ordinary schools. There was a long

discussion about the role of the local health authority and the attitudes of

some headteachers and others in the borough. However the parents came

away from this meeting feeling fairly positive, at least about their own

children.

Parents who were members of the local Labour party successfully lobbied

for integrated education to be a commitment in the 1986 party

manifesto. One of these parents, who had been a member of the

integration working party, decided to stand at the local government

elections in May 1986 and succeeded in becoming a member of the

council and later chair of the education committee. Several parents

sought office as school governors, either as parent governors, local

authority representative governors or as co-optees. Two parents were

elected as parent representatives on the education committee. More

parents decided to seek individual mainstream placements for their

children, and through Newham Parents' Support Network people began

to attend meetings together and support each other through the

assessment procedures. Things were beginning to develop in a significant

way. At the same time an increasing number of families were moving to

Newham because they realised, from the publicity surrounding the

debates about integration, that they might have a better chance of

getting a mainstream placement.The first family who moved in 1985 had

a child with spina bifida; they were determined to fight for their child's

rights but felt more comfortable in an environment where they were not

alone.

Human rights and equality

After the 1986 council elections equal opportunities became a major

policy direction for Newham. The Greater London Council (GLC) had

been abolished and Newham, like many other London councils, was very

keen to continue the GLC's equalities work. Newham wanted to ensure

that the council's policies did not discriminate against minority groups

and that positive action could be taken to enhance the lives of people

who faced discrimination. Because discrimination against people with

disabilities was considered alongside other equality issues it became

possible to discuss integrated education in the context of human rights

and equality rather than restrict it to matters of educational placement

alone.

In the Autumn of 1986 the lead members of the education committee

wrote a short policy statement which they took to the full Labour group.

This was all of the Labour members of the council and in fact at that time

it was all of the council, since all 60 members were Labour. Not everyone

at the meeting agreed with the policy but nobody could argue against the

principles:

The London Borough of Newham believes in the inherent equality of all

individuals irrespective of physical or mental ability. It recognises however

that individuals are not always treated as equals and that people with

disabilities experience discrimination and disadvantage.

The Council believes that segregated special education is a major factor

causing discrimination. We therefore believe that de-segregating special

education is the first step in tackling prejudice against people with

disabilities and other difficulties. They have been omitted from previous

Equal Opportunities initiatives and it is now obvious that our aim of

achieving comprehensive education in Newham will remain hindered while

we continue to select approximately 2% of school pupils for separate

education.

It is also the right of pupils without disabilities or other difficulties to

experience a real environment in which they can learn that people are not all

the same and that those who happen to have a disability should not be

treated differently, any more than they would if they were of a different

ethnic background. It is their right to learn at first hand about experiences

which they will possibly undergo in future, either themselves or as parents.

De-segregating special education and thus meeting the needs of

statemented children in mainstream schools will also contribute, by the

entry of expert qualified staff into mainstream schools, to improved

provision for the considerable number of children who already experience

difficulties.

The general atmosphere of the meeting was: 'If you can do it great

but I

doubt it'. Some people could not envisage how children perceived as

having severe disabilities could possibly go to ordinary schools. Others

had been involved over many years in the establishment of the special

schools and felt very attached to them. They too could not imagine how

integration could work. However nobody voted against the policy. It went

through the education committee and the full council. There was a lot of

interest in it from within Newham and in neighbouring boroughs. It was

official council policy and the next step was to turn it into a reality.

implementation of the policy

Integration steering group

By early 1987 an integration steering group had been set up and it was

agreed that the following first steps would be taken in order for the

integration policy to be implemented:

1 The appointment in January 1987 of an advisory teacher who will co-

ordinate support teaching for statemented pupils in mainstream schools.

2 A teacher will be identified in every school who will act as a point of

liaison between the school, the new advisory teacher and any other

school involved with the needs of a statemented pupil.

3 How to identify and assess special educational needs will be a priority for

teacher in-service training.

4 A project team of officers from the education department will be set up to

progress policy. This team will prepare feasibility reports on all aspects of

the policy, including resource implications. The team will work in

conjunction with a steering group of members of the education committee

which will include one parent representative and one teacher

representative.

Following the preliminary compromise report on integration it had

already become more usual for children to be supported into mainstream

nurseries if they had been receiving Portage and their parents had asked

for mainstream. From 1987 with the implementation of the integration

policy this pre-school service gradually expanded to become a support

framework across the full 3-16 age range covering general learning

support, a service for behaviour difficulties and a service covering sensory

impairments.

In 1987 it was also agreed to give the local Further Education College

(then under LEA control) extra money to make better provision for all

students with disabilities. Alongside it, a new and inclusive sixth-form

college was established when secondary schools became 11-16 in 1992.

Making inclusive provision at the extreme ends of the age spectrum was

of special strategic importance.

Once the new integration steering group had completed its initial work

enabling children to be supported in mainstream schools, it became clear

that the closure of special schools had to be tackled. The officers assured

the members of the steering group that the then Department for

Education and Science (DES) would not allow more than one special

school to be closed at a time and that there would be a much better

chance of success if it could be shown that things were being done in a

planned way. They also made the members aware of the legal

requirements for consultation and that the closure of a special school was

a time consuming and long process. Some members felt that it would take

too long to achieve integration if only one school could close at a time.

However, it was essential to co-operate with the officers as they had to

deal with the schools and do much of the leg work.

The closure programme

It was not difficult to decide which special should be the first to close.

Regent School, a secondary age school designated for children with

emotional and behavioural difficulties, was meant to have a roll of 60 but

the local education authority had been placing few children there.

Attendance rates were very poor and morale was low. The long standing

headteacher had left and a new head with fresh ideas had not been able to

turn the school around. Most of the staff were temporary.

In late 1987, having made the decision to close Regent, the integration

steering group's officers and members established a timetable for

consultation. There were also discussions about the alternative provision

which would need to be set up. The preferred option for everybody was

that the remaining pupils would transfer to their local secondary schools

and that in future pupils would remain in their local schools and be

supported there. The resources of the special school would be used to

create a team of support teachers and assistants who would work with all

the secondary schools to meet the needs of the children with statements

who had emotional and behavioural difficulties.

However there was some concern about whether the DES would consider

this an adequate alternative provision and whether the secondary schools

themselves might prefer to have specially 'resourced' provision located in

two or three schools and a smaller amount of support available to the

other schools. It was therefore agreed that several ordinary schools who

had particularly high numbers of pupils identified as having behavioural

difficulties would be asked for their views on having additional on-site

resources in order to meet the needs of a number of statemented pupils

with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

The deputy director of education and the chair of the integration steering

group attended the governing bodies of two of the schools. These were

very difficult meetings. Although only provisional proposals were being

discussed, the governors and the staff were horrified at the prospect of

taking pupils who were attending the special school. Although they were

told that the number of pupils transferring would be very low and for

them would only be three or four pupils, there was serious consternation

at the thought of being seen as a school taking 'EBD' students. This was

an example of the damage that segregation does to a community. There

were images of hundreds of disturbed youngsters storming over the walls

to wreak havoc.

The reality was that the new set up would enable them to better meet the

needs of pupils they already had. Ironically this made the job of the

steering group much simpler. Because the secondary schools had rejected

the idea of taking groups of pupils and becoming 'resourced' schools for

pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties, it was easier to justify

allowing pupils to go individually to their local schools. The staff working

at Regent School were more or less resigned to its closure and most of the

permanent teaching staff were enthusiastic about mainstream support

work.

At the parents' consultation meeting for the closure of Regent only two

people turned up. They said that they had come to say that they were

really pleased that the school was to close and that all of the parents they

knew felt the same. The Department for Education and Science agreed the

closure, and it took place in July 1988. The new support service for

children with emotional and behavioural difficulties began working in

September 1988 with ten full time teaching staff and a number of support

assistants. The team expanded, and was later included in the delegation

of the special needs budget.

From special school to support centre

There was also a special school for primary aged children who had been

identified as having emotional and behavioural difficulties. The staff

had already started to work with mainstream schools to support

children who otherwise would have been referred to them. The school

produced its own development plan and turned itself into a support

centre. Gradually more staff did outreach work and all children newly

referred were only taken into the special school on a part time basis,

remaining on the roll of their mainstream school and attending there at

least one day a week. This work has continued to evolve and today there

are no children attending the centre on a full time basis; the number of

referrals has decreased steadily and the situation is currently under

review.

The next special school to close, Lansbury, was an all-age school

designated for children with moderate learning difficulties. The

integration steering group had already been discussing strategies (of

which the school was aware and largely against) when the pupils had to

be moved out of the current building because it was unsafe. The decision

was taken therefore to move the secondary age children into a

neighbouring mainstream secondary school and the primary age children

into a mainstream primary where there were spare rooms. Lansbury

retained its legal status as a separate special school with its own staff and

governing body. Lansbury school building was declared unfit for use

while discussions continued about its future. Six weeks after the pupils

had moved the hurricane of October 1987 destroyed the original

Lansbury building.

The children who had been located in the secondary school occupied a

couple of rooms and operated very much as a school within a school.

Gradually there was some integration of children into certain lessons and

it became obvious that the children should become part of the secondary

school. This may sound easy enough but it took months of negotiation.

Eventually, in 1988, the 'unit' became part of the school and merged with

its special needs department; the children joined mainstream classes. The

basis of the agreement between the secondary school and the local

education authority was that there would be additional staff on site to

meet the needs of a number of children with statements who had

learning difficulties. It was the expectation that at first the children would

be transferred from Lansbury but subsequently from the school's

catchment area. Lansbury was redesignated a primary-age school and the

steering group then set about planning its closure.

Meeting concerns

It had become clear during consultations about the secondary section

that there was much more concern about the closure of Lansbury than

there had been about Regent. Some parents were worried that their

children were being abandoned to mainstream schools which in some

instances had already failed these same children. When these parents saw

that the teaching and other staff were against the closure they became

even more worried. There was a campaign to prevent the school from

closing. During the consultations it became clear that some parents were

very concerned about their children going to their local schools with

support from teachers who did not know them. They wanted them to

continue to be with staff who had worked with them over a period of

time. This was especially true of parents whose children had been

diagnosed as autistic or having severe communication or language

disorders. The idea of establishing `resourced' schools emerged. It seemed

much more acceptable to the parents that their children might be able to

go to a mainstream school with a group of other children from the special

school and some familiar staff, and that the mainstream school could

build expertise and knowledge.

Primary schools in the borough were invited to express an interest in the

resourced schools idea. One school agreed to be a resourced school for

children who had communication difficulties or were autistic, and

another agreed to take children who had language disorders. The local

education authority agreed to buy in extra speech therapy time so that

the children attending these schools would have guaranteed access to

speech and language therapy. Although many parents were happier about

this, some were still opposed to the Lansbury closure. Members of the

education committee were heavily lobbied not to agree to it; some of

these members expressed doubts and needed a lot of reassurance that the

alternative arrangements were good. In any case the parents who wanted

a special school might exercise their right to request such a placement.

There was still another special school in the borough designated for

children with moderate learning difficulties. Alternatively, parents could

request an out borough placement.

In the end, the education committee agreed to close Lansbury and this

took place in July 1991. Some children transferred to their local schools,

some went to the new resourced schools and some to a different special

school. The staff from the special school were offered either transfers to

the resourced schools or to the learning support team. Five years after the

start of the integration policy the number of special schools had been

reduced from eight to six.

Development plan

The opposition to the closure of Lansbury school created much more

public debate than the closure of Regent or the introduction of the

original policy statement on integration. There had been articles and

letters in the local papers and a lot more discussion in schools and

organised groups within the borough. Questions were repeatedly put to

education committee members asking about future plans and about

whether all of the special schools really were going to close. The

integration steering group therefore decided to produce a development

plan to show that there would be continuous changes and school closures

but that this would happen gradually and in a planned way.

This development plan was agreed by the education committee and

published in 1989, helping to make clear that the integration policy was

here to stay and that the consequences of not segregating children meant

that the special schools would close. The ten-year plan showed which

developments would take place each year from 1988 till 1997, and how

by 1997 provision would be made within mainstream schools for all

children and that all of the special schools would be closed or their

closure planned.

Involving disabled adults

Disabled adults within Newham had played an important role in the

development of special education from before 1986. When parents had

first started to make their voices heard about segregation a local group

called 'Action and Rights' made contact and gave their support. In 1987

the council established the 'Newham Access and Disability Advisory

Group' (NADAG ). This was a consultative committee open to all groups

and individuals living or working within the borough. The committee

was consulted on matters across the council's responsibilities. Its

recommendations were sent straight to the council's policy and resources

committee. This group consistently supported the moves to end

segregated education. Many of the people who attended meetings had

been to special schools themselves and spoke of their experiences. The

committee was asked to nominate disabled people for co-option to other

council committees and there was therefore a co-optee on the education

committee from NADAG. This person was then able to put the voice of

disabled people on education issues. This was of particular importance

when there was opposition to the closure of special schools and became

particularly important when discussions began about the closure of

Newham School for the Deaf (Tunmarsh School).

The provision for deaf and hearing impaired children in Newham was

somewhat erratic. There was a special school which had both a nursery

and provision for pupils from 11-19 years. From the age of 5 until 11,

however, children were bussed out of the borough to attend a school in a

neighbouring borough. These schools were all 'regional provisions'. In

addition Newham had two 'units' for children with hearing impairment

one attached to a mainstream primary school and one to a mainstream

secondary school, where much withdrawal took place. The school for deaf

pupils, although providing for profoundly deaf children, was in the

'oralist' tradition. Use of sign was strongly discouraged, although the

pupils signed in the playground. There was disquiet about teaching

methods among some staff members and when a new head was

appointed in 1987 a policy of 'total communication' was introduced

making use of a combination of sign language, lip reading, residual

hearing, body language, and facial expression. However many staff

members were not proficient even in the use of Sign Supported English.

The steering group considered all of these issues and was advised that the

provision for deaf children should be on the basis that British Sign

Language (BSL) was their first language. The group visited Leeds

education authority because it had a reputation for having progressive

provision, and decided to consult on establishing a similar service in

Newham.

Newham School for the Deaf had been considering its future at governing

body and staff meetings. It was obvious in the context of the integration

policy of the borough that there would need to be changes. The

governing body and the education authority established a working party

specific to deaf issues. There was agreement to change the name of the

school and to introduce some community classes especially for parents,

including BSL, and to a limited amount of integration for a few pupils.

However it soon became obvious that in order to establish a

comprehensive service for deaf students based on equal opportunities and

bi-lingualism, the school would have to close.

Deaf culture

There were differences of opinion within the deaf community about the

nature of special education. Some people believed that deaf children

should not be segregated from their hearing peers and that they should

grow up as part of mainstream culture. Others were saying that

mainstream education would destroy deaf culture. The problem was that

the special school was not really able to develop deaf culture, mainly

because the staff were all hearing and not competent BSL users. The

alternative was to create a service that could build, develop and preserve

deaf culture within the mainstream, and this was what the council

proposed to do. Meetings were held with parents, staff and with the deaf

community. The idea of resourced schools again emerged as the favoured

option. Parents were again saying that they would regret the loss of

expertise of the staff from the special school and that they would feel

happier if their children could go to one school. Deaf adults were

adamant that there needed to be a strong deaf peer group within a

mainstream school.

It was therefore agreed by the council to base the secondary provision at

one secondary school. In the first instance this would mean that when

children reached the age of 11 they would transfer there from the out

borough special primary school. The mainstream secondary school

already had some provision for hearing impaired pupils and was happy to

extend the work that it was doing. A primary school agreed to become the

Newham base for the provision for deaf children of that age. The nursery

children transferred there from the special school and stayed once they

reached five, rather than going to the out borough special school. In this

2 6

way within six years all deaf children would be in mainstream. Of course

anyone attending the out-borough special school had the option of

transferring to the new mainstream service.

It was also made clear that if a deaf student would prefer to attend their

local school rather than the resourced school they could. A new head of

service was appointed to bring together all parts of the provision into a

coherent whole and to help build the bi-lingual ethos. There was a great

deal of training to be done and new staff to be appointed. On the whole

funds were transferred from the segregated to the inclusive provision,

though some extra money was spent. It was necessary to employ

communicators, interpreters and deaf adults to work in mainstream

classes. The special school closed and the new service became fully

operational in 1992 although a lot of work was going on before this.

As had been the case with the closure of Lansbury, at the meetings with

school staff, parents and deaf adults, it was necessary to keep re-stating

the reason why the council was proposing to close the school. The basic

principles could easily have got lost in the confusion, anger and passion

that was generated. By reminding everyone that there was a plan to end

segregation because of the human rights of children and young people, it

was somehow always just possible to gain some level of agreement about

the way forward.

Training drive

Alongside the energy being put into the closure of special schools and

making alternative arrangements, the other real business was proceeding:

children were starting

and staying

at their local community schools.

There had been a drive on training, both for staff and governors. The

education authority, in conjunction with a local university, established a

diploma course for teachers focusing on meeting the needs of pupils with

severe learning difficulties in the mainstream. Teachers were also

encouraged to take a variety of courses which would help them with the

integration process. From 1988 when schools were required to take five

training days a year the authority directed each school in the borough to

designate at least one of their days for integration. On these days, when

schools were looking at the basic issues, officers, advisers and members of

the education committee took part. Many of these sessions were not easy

and were often spent with people rehearsing their fears about what was

going to happen.

Obviously the best training was actually having children and young

people in the schools but there was always a sense that the adults wanted

some formal training first. The governor training unit produced a module

for governors. Although this course did cover the law and technical

issues, it was much more about the history of segregation and looked at

discrimination and inequality. This proved to be very successful and

school governors were on the whole a positive force in the moves towards

ending segregation.

Support for parents

As the process launched by the first three closures gathered pace, the

education authority realised that it could not monitor everything going

on all the time in all schools and knew that it would take a long time for

every school to be welcoming to every pupil. It was therefore important

that parents had support when things did not go well. At the beginning of

the assessment process parents were sent a letter giving not only the

name of an officer in the LEA who they could speak to, but also the name

of a person at the Parent Support Network based at Newham Parents'

Centre (a precursor of the named person concept).

The support network had developed from the early days of discussions

about integration and the 1981 Act. The project was funded largely by

sources independent of the council and had two (later three) full time

workers. Parents could therefore enlist their help with advice about the

assessment procedures and statementing but more importantly, had an

alternative source of support if their local school was not welcoming. The

workers at the network had regular meetings with the LEA and were able

to give a regular information bulletin about what problems were

occurring and where.

The problems were all really about attitudes. Often staff were scared about

taking children. They would talk about resources and facilities and

probably had no idea what it felt like to be the parent who was feeling

hurt and offended about the way their child was being perceived.

Sometimes parents found another school with a more welcoming

attitude, but many realised that the policy would only develop if schools

took their responsibilities seriously. This was much more feasible within

the framework of the borough policy and with the support network there

to help. Sometimes more concerted action was necessary and the LEA had

to remind schools of their legal duties. Even in the most intractable

situations once the child was in the school and was seen for themselves

and not as a label, things usually improved.

Educational achievement

Another big issue at the time for Newham was raising educational

achievement for all children. The examination results in the borough were

very low and the education committee was very concerned to improve the

situation. In 1987 the council commissioned an independent inquiry into

achievement. The inquiry by the National Foundation for Education

Research (NFER) reported in April 1989. Many integration developments

had taken place during the course of the inquiry and the report said:

Many schools have found that being obliged to cater for pupils with more

serious learning difficulties helps them to make better provision for pupils

with lesser difficulties already in the school.

The report made many helpful recommendations in the area of special

needs and integration, none perhaps more so than the following:

Support services should give high priority to institutional development and

to enabling schools to carry out the whole-school reform that is necessary if

they are to cater adequately for pupils with special needs. The needs of

individual children must not be ignored, but time has to be found to promote

the requisite curriculum development and staff development within schools.

It had been clear from the beginning that the integration of special

education into the mainstream was more about radically changing

schools than fitting individual children into what already existed. It was

also becoming clear that integration had implications beyond school;

that young people who had been to their local school were not going to

want to attend a day centre or other segregated institution when they

were 16 or 19.

Another recommendation made by the NFER inquiry was that the council

had too many policies. Teachers reported that they were inundated by too

many initiatives and some felt that the policies were politically motivated

rather than educational. It was obvious that a new way of looking at

integration was necessary; that it was not another initiative, alongside

anti-racist and anti-sexist policies or community education; that all of the

initiatives belonged together as a whole. It was not healthy to have to

keep developing new policies for each group of children being identified

as excluded, whether they were refugees, children from homeless families

or whoever.

moving onwards

International links

In the Autumn of 1989 a new director of education was appointed. He

had been the authority's chief inspector for two years and was very

committed to the ending of segregation. He had also been very involved

in the development of anti-racist education. He put a lot of effort into

bringing together the various policies and in communicating with

schools about them and their implementation. In May 1991 the chair of

the education committee attended a conference organised by Bolton

Institute of Higher Education. The conference was on 'Inclusive education

and Community Living'. The speakers at the conference were a team from

North America who had experience of working to end segregation. They

were from a variety of backgrounds and worked in school systems as well

as with excluded adults living in institutions and on the streets. All

members of the team had practical experience.

The conference provided a more robust framework for conceiving the

ending of segregation. 'Inclusive education' was a much more accurate

way of describing what was being attempted in Newham than

'integration', and extending the concept beyond school and into the

community and adult life was very helpful. The conference was repeated

in Cardiff the following week and other people from Newham attended.

The two people who organised the Bolton and Cardiff conferences said

they were organising a study visit to Canada and asked whether any

delegates were interested in looking at a school system there which had

developed as fully inclusive. The director and chair in Newham were

invited because at that time Newham was seen as the most advanced local

education authority in terms of integration. A party of twelve from

Britain and Ireland made the trip in October 1991 and joined groups of

people visiting from various locations in the USA. During the week the

visitors saw a school system in which every child with a disability or

learning difficulty attended the school that they would have attended if

they did not have a disability. It was one of only a small number of school

systems in Canada which had taken this approach. A lot of useful insights

were taken back to Newham and two of the Canadians visited Newham

the following spring and did some work in Newham schools.

From integration to inclusion

By now the term 'inclusive education' had come into general use and it

helped everyone to focus more on what needed to happen in all schools

rather than on the narrow but necessary focus on the closure of special

schools. The implications of the policy were also explored with the local

health authorities and with the other departments of the council. Social

services in particular adopted policies with much more of a community

focus. This was obviously necessary because of the 1989 Children Act and

the Community Care legislation, but Newham had its own agenda of

community living with a growing number of young people who had not

been segregated and who would have expectations of services in the

future which would have to be met. During the early 1990s there was a lot

of excitement among the people who had worked hard to bring about

change. Results that had not been expected began to be seen. Children

whose parents had been concerned primarily with the social and moral

aspects of inclusion were achieving far more than anyone had expected.

Teachers were beginning to apply for jobs in Newham citing the inclusion

policy as a main attraction.

The teachers' unions were able to sign an 'Agreement on Inclusive

Education' with the LEA. The agreement states:

In entering into this agreement the parties believe that inclusive education

is in the best interests of the borough's pupils/students who have special

educational needs. They consider that it will lead to an improvement in the

educational provision for these pupils ... It is recognised that a

comprehensive system of inclusive education must cater for the needs of all

pupils and students within the London Borough of Newham.

Designing for inclusion

In September 1992 two new primary schools were opened, Cleves and

North Beckton. They both had been designed to be completely inclusive.

In addition North Beckton had facilities such as a hydrotherapy pool and

physiotherapy room to meet the needs of pupils who traditionally

attended Elizabeth Fry, the special school for children with physical

disabilities. Cleves had additional features which would be seen as

appropriate for children labelled as 'profoundly and multiply disabled'.

From the experience of the previous special school closures it was clear

that if Elizabeth Fry was going to close, it would be necessary to

demonstrate to parents and staff that for those children whose parents

did not choose their local school there would be one offering better

facilities than were available in the special school. This was probably even

more true for those parents whose children were multiply disabled.

Once the two new schools opened it was then possible to immediately

discuss the closure of Elizabeth Fry and the two schools for children with

severe learning difficulties including multiple disabilities. From then on

children assessed as having these needs had the option of going to their

local school or to Cleves or North Beckton. At the same time a secondary

school was made fully accessible, so that when Elizabeth Fry closed the

secondary age pupils would be able to choose between their local school

or the newly adapted resourced school. Minor (and some major) access

works had been carried out at most of the secondary schools over the

years but Elm was now being spent to make one school as accessible as

possible, considering it was an already existing building. During the

process a fire had occurred at the Elizabeth Fry and the insurance money

was available to be spent on these access works.

The director of education left in mid-1992 and a new director was

appointed. A commitment to inclusive education had been a major

requirement for the job and the new director had that commitment. In

December 1992 the education committee agreed to close another special

school, Gurney. This was the borough's other school for pupils with

moderate learning difficulties and its roll had decreased considerably over

31,

the six years since the integration policy had begun. However, it had a

particularly strong historical following, and some people were determined

that it would not close. Officers felt that lessons should be learned from

the experiences of previous school closures and that this time there

should be more consultations. These took place at a very early stage with

every interested party. In the planning it was not felt appropriate to create

resourced provision for these children as by now so many children with

learning difficulties were attending mainstream schools that there was

sufficient expertise in all schools.

However such was the campaign against the school closing that it was

again necessary to identify at least two primary and two secondary

schools to take some children transferring from Gurney. Identifying these

schools was not easy. By now schools were much keener on the inclusive

model and did not really feel it appropriate to be taking children who

they felt should be going to their local community schools. However four

schools did agree to take a group of children each and a closure proposal

was put before the Secretary of State. Eventually the school was allowed to

close officially in July 1994, although virtually all of the children had

transferred to other schools long before that date.

While this was all going on the Elizabeth Fry special school was working

with the newly resourced mainstream schools to develop a plan to

transfer their pupils. As usual all the pupils had to be re-assessed and

discussions held with parents. This happened during 1993/94 and the

special school was empty by July 1994. The education committee then

agreed to close the school and sent its proposals to the Secretary of State,

who agreed them. Elizabeth Fry had been a source of considerable and

vociferous opposition to the integration policy for a number of years, but

in the end this transition was achieved without great controversy. Perhaps

because four schools had closed already it was clear what the policy

meant, and that the council meant what it said.

At the same time (1994) plans were underway to make provision in the

borough for blind children. The practice had been for them to attend a

special school in a neighbouring borough. As from September 1995 two

primary and two secondary schools were resourced to take blind children

and a new support service was established.

Developing local expertise

After 1986 the educational world outside of Newham's integration policy

did not stand still. There were several Education Acts bringing in local

financial management; opting out with grant maintained status; national

curriculum and testing; league tables and worst of all the relentless need

to make budget cuts every year. But despite these new arrangements

which had the potential to discourage the fainthearted, the development

of inclusive education continued. The 1995 review which contained the

inclusive education mission statement quoted at the beginning of this

booklet also set out the framework for future development. It said:

There is an increasing expectation and acceptance that the vast majority of

pupils with [statemented] special educational needs will attend their local

school and that most schools will develop their own expertise and good

practice in supporting all pupils, with extra support, usually from peripatetic

teams, where additional specialist help is required.

The review acknowledged that resourced schools were a necessary

compromise in order to make it politically possible to close segregated

institutions but that with certain exceptions they were only a halfway

house on the road to a fully inclusive system and should begin to be

phased out. It also opened discussions about the future of the two

remaining special schools, both for children with severe learning

difficulties.

comments and concerns

Cause and effect

When the debate about ending segregated education began in Newham

in the early 1980s there was a sense that if something was not sorted out

quickly Newham would be left behind in developing inclusive practice. It

came as a great surprise to the parents on the integration working party,

when visits were made around London, that little seemed to be

happening elsewhere either. A few years later, it came as even more of a

surprise to see that the development plans for the new London

authorities which were to take over following the abolition of the Inner

London Education Authority (ILEA), did not include proposals to move

towards ending segregation. People from Newham were asked to speak at

conferences to try to convince these new inner London authorities to take

this golden opportunity. The failure to adopt clear de-segregation policies

at that time means that today many councils have equal opportunities

and even anti-discrimination policies for people with disabilities

but

continue to segregate disabled children, even when their parents are

requesting a mainstream placement. Well-intentioned people have failed

to see that segregation in education is both a cause and effect of the

discrimination that they want to end.

As time has passed, it has become clear that the progress towards

inclusion across the country is very slow, and in some areas non-existent.

Newham is visited by a stream of academics, practitioners and parents. It

has been featured in many radio and television programmes and in the

press. When people visit Newham they see ordinary schools and

sometimes one wonders quite what they are expecting to see.

The difference in Newham is that there are a few more children in each

school who have a perceived difficulty with learning or a physical

disability than there would be in other areas. Supporting children to learn

is simply what good education is about and yet it seems so difficult to

achieve.

Parents from all over the country are in touch with the borough,

especially with Newham Parents' Support Network, and also with LEA

officers and members asking for advice on how they can secure a

mainstream school place in their own area. It is amazingly difficult to

advise parents from other authorities. It is unacceptable and it seems to

make no sense that their own LEA wishes to forcibly segregate their child,

yet if they lived in Newham their child could go to a mainstream school.

Some policy makers from other boroughs get angry at the mention of

Newham. On more than one occasion, parents have been told by their

local education department or education committee member that what is

going on in Newham is not 'really integration'. One chair of an education

committee remarked that his LEA had a good record on integration

because the proportion of 'statemented children' attending special

schools over a four-year period fell from 80% to 50%. However, he did not

add that during the same period the hard numbers of children actually

attending special schools had increased from 620 to 680. It is difficult to

understand such remarks except as a kind of defensiveness about being

unable to support all children going to ordinary schools. Newham still

seems to be the only LEA in the country with an overt, stated policy to

end all segregated education and regrettably very few people with the

power to change their own systems are prepared to share what has been

learned. In Newham there is a full commitment to working towards the

goal of a de-segregated system.

Community pressure

During the years alliances have been formed across the country and

internationally. There is a network of people across the world working for

the same end and it is exciting that Newham is very much part of the

network. Many communities in developing countries are struggling to

establish inclusive systems in circumstances which should make those

who oppose it here feel ashamed of themselves. Fortunately there is at last

a growing awareness of the human rights issues. The 1989 UN

Convention on the Rights of the Child which supports inclusive

education is widely acknowledged by people working with children and it

is now common to see it on the walls of day nurseries and playgroups.

Perhaps if policy makers will not willingly develop their systems to end

segregation, eventually the pressure for change will come not only from

parents and disabled people but from the wider national and

international community.

The case for inclusion has been made. Certainly most LEA policies about

special needs and special needs reviews acknowledge that inclusion is a

good thing. Most claim that the LEA has a policy of placing children in

mainstream schools 'wherever possible'. It is exceedingly rare

if it

happens at all - for anyone to argue against the principle of inclusion.

The problem with inclusion is wanting to actually do it.

More and more parents are asking for mainstream placements and in

many cases they are securing them often at the expense of a lot of pain,

time, energy and conflict. The families who are experiencing this pain are

those whom society generally seeks to help and support. The stories that

some people tell about their struggle for inclusion do not seem to be

consistent with a caring society. There are also children out of school all

over the country because their LEAs will not agree to mainstream school

places, and their parents will not agree to segregated school places. This

system of educational apartheid is continuing even when South Africa

has managed to end racial apartheid.

Everywhere in this country there are examples of inclusive education in

practice which some people, when they have not seen them, will say are

not possible. The problem is that not enough people with the power to

make the changes have the will to carry them through. The legal

framework is already there to end segregated education. The next step is

to want to do it. After that, the rest is much more straightforward, with

lots of examples for guidance and lots of willing people to help. The

important goal, nationally, is to continue reducing the number of

children in segregated provision. This is real progress and should not be

confused with reducing the proportion of statemented children who are

3 5

segregated by increasing the overall number of statements. In Newham

the proportion of children statemented relative to the total school

population has not increased.

No going back

Once segregation has ended it will not be long before we look back in

horror at what we used to do to children and to ourselves. Children have

the right to be together. They have the right to be part of a community.

Children whose brothers or sisters have a disability share their lives with

them. Why should they be torn apart when they go to school? Children

with disabilities need as many friends as everyone else and they need the

same experiences as everyone else. To deny them the same ups and downs

of ordinary school life is to deny them their humanity. This past decade

has seen a very slow start and Newham has taken that first important step

to make a policy commitment to end segregated education in separate

special schools and units.

"---.7.411""

.1111

NO'

Ar.

MP'

1996 =2002

update and reflections

This section gives an update on aspects of change in Newham since the

original report was written in 1996.

In addition, the authors offer recent reflections on progress and change with

inclusion in the borough.

UPDATE

Resourced schools

The concept of resourced schools, which emerged from the consultation

on the original school closure programme, had always been seen as a

transitional measure. They were a means to the end of closing special

schools but not in themselves a goal, except perhaps in the case of

provision for deaf students. The secondary school initially resourced to

take deaf children was not local to the primary resourced school. Once

the system became established, the primary children wanted to transfer

with their friends to the link secondary, and in 1998 this secondary

school was resourced for deaf students, who now began to transfer there

from the resourced primary school.

Over the period 1996-2002 two new secondary schools have been

designed and built to include all children, as have the several new

primary schools. The building of the new secondaries coincided with the

closure in 1999 of Beckton special school for children with severe learning

difficulties. One of them was resourced to take students with profound

and multiple disabilities. This enabled some of the older Beckton students

to transfer to a mainstream secondary school, while children transferring

from the corresponding resourced primary school had the same school

earmarked for them. However, something similar happened as with the

deaf students. Children also wanted the opportunity to transfer to the

geographically linked secondary school, with their friends, so that this

linked school too is now accustomed to taking children with profound

and multiple disabilities.

Otherwise the amount of resourced provision at the secondary schools

has gradually reduced as more children transfer to their local secondary.

At primary level, the schools resourced earlier on to take children with

language difficulties and moderate learning difficulties have now been

phased out. This, and the fact that all the time new children have been

entering their local schools, means that a majority of them are now going

to their local schools.

Inclusion charter and audit

It was clear from the beginning that not all local schools had the same

attitudes as each other to the children who were now coming there and

whom most teachers had not experienced previously. This coincided with

the move towards local management of schools (LMS) and grant

maintained status (GMS), both of which made LEAs nervous of being

perceived as trying to tell schools what to do. In spite of this a first major

attempt to improve the welcome given to children and to teaching

practice in all schools came in 1997, when an Inclusive Education Charter

containing a list of basic principles and beliefs was drawn up by the

authority and schools invited to sign up to it. With it came money for

them to undertake research and training of their own, and an Inclusive

Education Audit. This was a set of ethical and practical guidelines which

drew together the best experiences from the most welcoming schools and

enabled the rest to develop inclusive practices within and beyond the

classroom. Two of its co-authors also went on to contribute to the

development work and trials for the Index for Inclusion, written by Tony

Booth and Mel Ainscow. Newham's Charter and Audit however turned

out not to be the whole answer to the problem of varied attitudes from

schools, as we shall see.

Statementing and delegation of budgets

Like other LEAs, Newham was coming under government pressure to

delegate its special needs budget. At the same time, by 1999 it had become

clear that the continuing reliance on statements to categorise children and

release resources was at odds with the vision of inclusion. Newham had a

relatively high number of statements, so that money, which could have

been spent on inclusion, was being spent instead on the bureaucracy of

the statementing procedure. The LEA decided to devise a combined

strategy on delegation and statementing. It was in a unique position to do

this. It was able to look at how schools could be funded to meet the needs

of all their children on the assumption that every school had a number of

children with significant disabilities. The closure of special schools meant

that even potentially unwelcoming mainstream schools had less of an

assumption than they otherwise would, that there was some separate

place where certain children 'would be better off'. And the fact that the

vast majority of the special needs budget was being spent in the

mainstream sector meant that statements were becoming superfluous,

although it was recognised that this depended on careful monitoring of

the way the budget was being spent in individual schools.

From April 2000 the borough introduced a system of funding schools to

be inclusive. In addition, it set up cluster groups of schools to manage

budgets collectively for students with 'exceptional' needs greater than a

school would normally encounter even given the presence there of

students who previously would have been in special schools. This has

encouraged schools to see the budget and the students identified by it as

their own responsibility. The number of new statements issued has fallen

to an extremely low figure.

Policy update and review

One of the really important milestones in Newham's policy being

acknowledged as positive was in 1999, when it simultaneously headed

two league tables: one was for having the lowest percentage of children in

special schools in England, the other was the Department for Education

and Employment's (DfEE) table of local authority areas with the most

improved GCSE results over a four-year period. There was a lot of media

71-

publicity which focused on how including all children has a positive

effect on improving education for everybody. These improvements have

continued. When the inclusion policy began, in 1986, the LEA average for

GCSE A*-C passes was 8%, in 2002 it was 42%, and in no year since league

tables were introduced, have the results decreased. Perhaps even more

importantly, A-G passes have risen to among the highest in the country.

In 1999 the Ofsted inspection of Newham LEA was a significant success,

inasmuch as it remarked about achievement that Newham 'serves the

country well, in demonstrating ... that it is possible to successfully

challenge the assumption that poverty and ethnic diversity must

necessarily lead to failure.' In respect of inclusion, it said 'Much of what

the LEA does is well done and in some respects a model for others to

... It has successfully implemented a policy of inclusion of pupils

with special educational needs,' acknowledging that Newham has the

lowest percentage of children in special schools of any authority in the

country, and that the policy is not particularly expensive 'because its

additional expenditure on mainstream support is more than offset by

much lower expenditure on special school places.'

The specific weakness was seen as being that 'the LEA knows too little

about the impact of the strategy on pupils' attainment and/or whether

the attainment and progress of pupils has or has not risen as a result of

the strategy.' One of its recommendations therefore was to 'evaluate the

impact of [the] inclusive education strategy on the attainment and

progress of all pupils', in spite of the fact that the report elsewhere stated

that the rise in GCSE results was the fastest in the country. The inspection

team also felt that there should be some separate provision for children

with emotional and behavioural difficulties at secondary level, based on

the observation of some children in schools, even though it commented

on the steep fall in exclusions in a positive tone of voice, and on the

inclusive provision for emotional and behavioural difficulties as

'outstanding'.

The LEA did not respond initially to these recommendations, aS it was

clear that pupil achievement was rising across the board as the national

statistics proved. However, in 2002 the LEA decided to invite external

consultants to conduct a comprehensive review of the inclusion strategy.

Discussion groups were held with people representing all sectors of the

education service, parents and students. Out of these discussions came

the sense that the overwhelming majority of people in the borough

recognise that Newham is at the forefront of policy about inclusion and

are positive about being involved, and that inclusion really is about all

children being included in mainstream schools. Head teachers too,

tended to see inclusion as a social justice issue. Teachers felt that inclusion

had fostered creativity and made them more skilful and able to learn from

each other. Many parents had been worried about the review taking place;

after so many years of inclusion being accepted and the norm, was there

now some question being raised about it? However, the external review

has been used to find out ways of improving and taking forward the

inclusion strategy, as well as reassuring Ofsted on their specific questions

about achievement. People taking part in the review particularly raised

issues still needing to be addressed:

that there are still some schools not as welcoming as others

that there needs to be constant attention to improving the quality of

experience for each student

that ways must be found of ensuring that teachers rather than support

staff take full responsibility for all students

that the Council's initial view of inclusion as a political question of

human rights needs to be reaffirmed, so that it does not become merely

an administrative issue.

RECENT REFLECTIONS

Strong leadership

People from Newham are nowadays asked to speak around the country on

the theme of lessons learned from the Newham experience. It is now

nearly twenty years since people in the borough decided to interpret

positively, the 1981 Act's duty on LEAs to integrate. There are young

adults emerging from this system who have had full social lives, have

participated in further and higher education and have begun living

independently, who would not have done so if they had spent their

school years in a segregated setting. For those coming after, inclusion has

been the norm. This has meant that younger families have not had to

fight for their children to be included. Any child born or arriving in

Newham has for a number of years been directed by the LEA to a

mainstream school. Of course, occasional placements still break down.

But generally the outcomes stand in stark contrast to what still happens

across most of the rest of the country (see CSIE's statistical report LEA

inclusion trends in England 1997-2001).

What has been learned from this experience? Change occurs when people

with a vision have an opportunity to use their power positively and to

recognise where power lies. Change also occurs when they are prepared to

take chances and to be opportunistic. We have learned that people

respond to strong leadership; most people are nervous about change and

being seen to go against the grain, but if there is strong leadership, people

respond positively. The majority of people respect the setting out of a

strong, radical vision, enabling other people to take leadership roles at

different levels and in different settings. Many people felt enabled to

articulate views that they previously felt might be thought lunatic or

wacky; the policy gave people permission to be at the cutting edge. We

have learned that schools that include all children from the community

are better schools all round: they focus much more on children as fully

individual humans and cope with issues of bullying, friendship and

mutual caring, as well as being able to raise academic standards, often

more quickly than other schools.

Everyone involved in the implementation of the policy is also acutely

aware that we could have done so much more, and quicker. It is difficult

to be an island of inclusion in a sea of traditional practices. Newham is

not in fact an island, and it is subject to an array of external pressures,

which impede progress.

Embedded prejudices

The chief of these pressures is that people with disabilities, and

particularly those with severe learning difficulties, really are seen by

society in a very negative light. There are deeply embedded prejudices

and fears, which reflect the fact that society at large has a value system

ranking disabled people at the bottom. Also deeply held by the majority

of people, are huge assumptions which we learn from the day we are

born, but which we do not recognize because they are so hard to confront

and think about. This is best illustrated by the testimony of families. They

are aware that everybody they meet assumes that they are unhappy about

having a disabled child or family member. It is outside most people's

conceptual framework that a disabled person might be of no different

value to anyone else, or that it is only because of society's current

preoccupations that we even think disability is an issue. This

rather than

any financial or administrative problem

is what makes it such a big deal

to include. We should never underestimate the prejudice and thus the

battle that we are engaged in.

If there had been a strong national strategy to counter some of this

prejudice, things would have happened faster in Newham and elsewhere.

The national strategy has been not just ambiguous but disingenuous:

develop inclusion but do not close special schools

children should be in mainstream schools but some children should

not

declare a national aim to further inclusion, but provide no leadership

from the top, no strategic initiatives, no national development and

support

publish a Green Paper and White Paper proclaiming support for

inclusion, but provide no targets or requirements for LEAs to decrease

segregation, and at the same time, add something about a need for

special schools to continue.

Contradiction, confusion, flexibility, conditionality. The Ofsted report on

Newham also displays this, acknowledging that inclusion is a good thing

in a good LEA and yet demanding evidence that it works, as if it could be

good if it did not work. The debate lacks any philosophical rigour, because

it is informed by the deeply embedded prejudices of each person in the

system, especially at the top. Parents across the country still have to face

offensiveness and abuse if they want mainstream education. They are

scandalously made to feel they are being difficult; they offend against

society by having a child it does not like in the first place and then being

made to feel ungrateful if they say that two hours a week of art in the

local secondary school is not enough.

Disability, far more than any other topic, proves that power is unequally

distributed in our society. There is no transparency about where it lies

and how it can be acquired. This is not in any way offset or challenged

by our democratic political system. The deeply embedded prejudices

among workers in human services hold back the best intentions, while

people who love their children and want them to have a normal life in

the community will eventually just get into role and put up with the

status quo.

In view of these external pressures, is there something that Newham

should have done differently? The specific goal all along has been that

every child is in the school they would have been in if they didn't have a

disability. The standard criticism of Newham's policy around the country

is that it has been unplanned. But you do not achieve a goal by having a

complicated and detailed plan, because you learn along they way. If you

make mistakes along the way, it throws you off course because the set

plan is no longer valid. The many integration plans developed across the

country in the 1980s were huge complex documents, in which you could

not get to step 100 because when you got to step 2 something there went

wrong and threw you. First steps have to be absolutely crystal clear and

simple, like the vision itself.

Tackling new questions

One mistake in Newham was that at a certain point after the first step of

closing special schools, once the great majority of students were in

mainstream, more was not done. Even at the stage of updating this report

(late 2002), it is always important to focus on what needs to be done next.

But with the aid of the LEA's review these questions are now being

tackled, and it may have been a good thing that some of them were not

tackled in the beginning because it may have affected the simplicity of

the operation.

Perhaps influenced by the threat of grant maintained status (GMS),

Newham did not act quickly enough on the realisation that the crucial

responsibility lies in the senior professional positions, that new heads and

senior LEA officers coming fresh into the borough needed to be inducted

and disabused of the assumptions bred in the more prevalent

segregationist practices outside. It did not realise early enough that

'special needs' training preserved a mentality of separateness and that all

training needs to be holistic. It relied too long on a policy of natural

wastage for placements in out-borough schools and Newham's one

remaining special school (both of which have been admitting students

whose parents have demanded it, in spite of the initial recommendation

of mainstream), as well as for part-time 'special' placements of children

with emotional and behavioural difficulties and for out-borough special

school placements.

Natural wastage in these small numbers of students has indeed happened,

but this neglect of the practical need to keep taking the positive vision

forward has only recently been directly addressed. Together with the

other anomalies, it should have been tackled earlier as a way of removing

the last disincentive for recalcitrant mainstream schools to take

responsibility for all students. Meanwhile many senior health

professionals remain largely unsupportive, as one might expect given the

medical profession's vested interest in genetic technology, which

disseminates a dislike of certain people through the belief that they ought

not to exist. These are issues that simply cannot be dealt with by detailed

administrative plans.

Newham must continue taking things forward because it owes a duty to

children and families in the rest of the country to point out what can be

done. In addition, leading members, officers and professionals, as well as

parents who now take the system for granted, need to become aware of

this duty, of the deep philosophical gulf between practice in Newham

and in most of the rest of the country, and of the need therefore to take a

lead in pursuing national legislation that will establish inclusion as a

human right.

time chart

developing inclusion in Newham

1972

Newham secondary schools become

comprehensive.

1983

In response to the 1981 Education Act,

the council accepts the principle of 'integration'

and establishes a working party to develop a

policy.

1984

Pre-school service established to support

children into mainstream nurseries from Portage.

1984

Integration working party unable to agree

and produces two reports.

1986 Council agrees first Integration Policy.

1987 New structure for supporting integration

established. (Co-ordinator for supporting

children in mainstream schools, Learning

Support Service, Integration Steering Group.)

1987

Education Committee agrees the closure

of Regent Special School for pupils aged 11-19

with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

1988

Secretary of State agrees the closure of

Regent Special School.

1988

New secondary Behaviour Support Team

to work alongside Learning Support Service.

1988

Education Committee agrees the closure

of the secondary section of Lansbury Special

School for pupils with moderate learning

difficulties.

1989

Development plan for integration.

1991 Secretary of State agrees the closure of

Lansbury Special School in its entirety. Resources

relocated to the Learning Support Service and to

'resourced schools'.

1991 Education Committee agrees the closure

of Tunmarsh School, formerly Newham School

for the Deaf, catering for nursery and secondary

pupils.

1992 Secretary of State agrees closure of

Tunmarsh School.

1992

Education Committee agrees the closure

of Gurney Special School for pupils aged 3-19

with moderate learning difficulties.

1992

Policy changes from 'Integration' to

'Inclusive Education'.

1992 Provision now made in the Borough for

all deaf pupils at mainstream schools. New Bi-

lingual (BSL) Service established.

1992 Eleanor Smith Special School for pupils

aged 5-11 with emotional and behavioural

difficulties stops taking children on roll and

becomes a primary behaviour support service,

supporting mainstream schools and taking a

small number of children on a part-time basis.

Eleanor Smith remains a school technically (to

be reviewed).

1992

The majority of the primary age children

from Elizabeth Fry Special School (for pupils aged

3-19) with physical disabilities and complex

medical conditions transfer to mainstream

school.

1993/4

Secondary age pupils from Elizabeth

Fry Special School transfer to mainstream school.

Education Committee agrees the closure of

Elizabeth Fry.

1994 Secretary of State agrees the closure of

Gurney Special School.

1994

Secretary of State agrees the closure of

Elizabeth Fry Special School.

1995

Provision for blind children made within

the borough at mainstream schools (previously

children attending out-borough special schools).

1995 Review of Inclusive Education

recommends:

1 Remaining two special schools, Beckton and

John F. Kennedy (both for pupils aged 3-19

with severe learning difficulties) to

amalgamate. Planning for this to begin

straight away.

2 The number of young people attending the

amalgamated special school to diminish and

its role to be reviewed.

3 Eleanor Smith Special School to continue as a

primary support service supporting schools in

meeting the needs of primary aged children

with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

1995 Some children with severe learning

difficulties already transferring to local

mainstream secondary schools.

1999 Secretary of State agrees closure of

Beckton Special School.

1999 Ofsted inspection of Newham: a

significant success with Ofsted saying the LEA

serves the country well ...' and is a model for

others to follow. The 'successful' implementation

of Newham's inclusion policy was not particularly

expensive 'because additional expenditure on

mainstream support is more than offset by much

lower expenditure on special school places.'

1999 Newham simultaneously headed two

national league tables: i) the LEA with the lowest

percentage of children in special schools and

ii) top of the DfEE's table of LEAs with the most

improved GCSE results over a four year period.

2000

From April 2000 the borough delegated

its special needs budget, and used this to

introduce a system for funding schools to be

inclusive.

2002 LEA review of inclusion in the borough.

Local people called for, among other things:

reaffirmation by the council of inclusion as a

political question of human rights, not merely an

administrative issue.

closure chart

phasing out eight special schools

(Pupil numbers for schools 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are

given for 1984 at the start of the de-segregation

campaign. Pupil numbers for Schools 7 and 8 are

1996 figures.)

School 1 1988 Secretary of State agrees the

closure of Regent Special School (62 pupils ).

School 2 1991 Secretary of State agrees the

closure of Lansbury Special School (78 pupils).

Resources relocated to the Learning Support

Service and to `resourced schools'.

School 3 1992 Secretary of State agrees the

closure of Tunmarsh School (61 pupils).

School 4 1992 Eleanor Smith Special School (75

pupils) stops taking children on roll and becomes

a primary behaviour support service, supporting

mainstream schools and taking a small number

of children on a part-time basis. Eleanor Smith

remains a school technically (to be reviewed).

School 5 1994 Secretary of State agrees the

closure of Gurney Special School (123 pupils).

School 6 1994 Secretary of State agrees the

closure of Elizabeth Fry Special School (89 pupils).

(In addition to closing six special schools by

1994, Newham had also phased out one separate

class for children with partial hearing (17 pupils)

and two separate classes for children with speech

and language disorders (40 pupils).)

School 7 1995

Review of Inclusive Education

recommends Beckton Special School (46 pupils)

and John F. Kennedy Special School (53 pupils) to

be amalgamated into one special school.

1999

Amalgamation plan dropped and Secretary of

State agrees closure of Beckton Special School in

the same year.

School 8 2002 Role of John F. Kennedy School

(56 pupils) under review.

sources and useful addresses

SOURCES 45

National legislation

1981, 1993 and 1996 Education Acts and Special Educational Needs and

Disability Act 2001 (available from HMSO, London).

Newham Council policy documents

Reports on 1981 Education Act to Newham Education Committee and

reports from the Integration Working Party, 1983-85; Integration Policy

Statement,1986; Integration Development Plan, 1989; Agreement with

Teacher Unions, 1990; Review of Inclusive Education Strategy, 1995,

Consultation Document; Strategy for Inclusive Education 1996-2001; The

Inclusive Education Charter 1997; the Inclusive Education Audit 1998;

and Inclusive Education Strategy 2001-04 (all available from Newham

Education Department).

International policies

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (available from

UNICEF, 54, Lincoln Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3NB); Salamanca

Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education

(available from UNESCO, Special Education Programme, 7 Place de

Fontenoy 75352 Paris 07-SP). A free summary of these and other

international documents on inclusive policy and practice is available

from CSIE.