SPECIAL SCHOOLS - LONDON CALLING

24-01-2007

Campaigners for Birmingham's threatened special schools will be lobbying the Council's lifelong learning scrutiny committee today. In the meantime, we've discovered that parents in the London borough of Lewisham have been fighting a similar battle. Valentine Pelka shares some of their campaign strategy.

In July 2006 my local council in Lewisham announced a review of its Special Educational Needs and came up with four proposals to be considered during a period of ‘Informal Consultation'.

As a parent of a special needs child whose school was threatened with closure under one of these options, I was naturally concerned.

Along with many other mums and dads, I wrote countless letters and e-mails to the Local Education Authority asking for clarification, only to be met either with silence or a curt reply that no decisions had as yet been made.

Some parents suspected the council's motives and began their own independent investigation.

What they unearthed was a paper trail dating back to November 2005 which clearly showed that seven and a half months before the LEA began its consultation, they were already implementing their ‘preferred option' - the one which would have meant the end of my son's school. Worse still, it appeared they were setting it up to look as if it was failing.

The documentation clearly shows that the LEA halted the referral of pupils to Key Stage 1 and then promptly turned round and declared that as demand for places at entry level was low they would no longer be referring pupils to Key Stage 1!

Further evidence of their agenda to weaken the Primary Department and prepare it for closure came at the beginning of July 2006 when they abruptly cut £80,000 of funding which meant that the school's five Primary classes were reduced to four.

I don't know if any of this strikes a chord with parents in Birmingham, but this much I have discovered - the review of Special Educational Needs is happening right across the country in response to New Labour's dogmatic headlong push towards its favoured policy of ‘inclusion'.

This despite the legion voices of some of the most eminent child psychologists and educational experts in the country who warn of dire consequences if the Government continues to insist that ‘they know best'. Where have we heard that before?

So we find ourselves asking the question - why the suddendesire for‘Inclusion'? Is it, as they claim, to help children with complex needs to reintegrate into mainstream society? Or is there a slightly less noble motive operating behind the scenes?

One possibility being considered in this Borough is that this has more to do with there being a General Election less than two years down the road. That particular theory works like this -

1. Gordon Brown is struggling with a huge budget deficit at present.
2. The new Chief Inspector of Schools, Christine Gilbert, reported in June last year that the Mainstream Sector was failing 3.3m children.
3. Elsewhere in her report she showed that 54.5% of mainstream schools achieved a ‘good' or ‘outstanding' award in their Ofsted reports. The corresponding figure for Special Schools was 78%.
4. New Labour's instinct when confronted with a problem is to throw money at it. The NHS is a classic example of this.
5. If Gordon Brown throws money at the Mainstream Sector he will find himself going into a General Election with a gaping hole in his finances so he greedily eyes the SEN budget to plug the gap.
6. An aide warns him this might not look so good as it would appear that some of the most vulnerable children were being disadvantaged.
7. Gordon and Tony think about this for a while and then some bright spark pipes up and says it wouldn't sound so bad if they gave it a nice, catchy, touchy-feely label.
8. And so was born the policy of ‘Inclusion'.

Who knows if this is what really happened or if it's just fantasy?

All wecan be sureis that something strange is going on and it's not in the best interests of our kids. So our fight in this borough continues and we are beginning to generate some interest in the National Press.

We believe that the way the LEA has gone about its business leaves open to being reported to the Local Government Ombudsman and being charged with ‘Maladministration causing injustice.'

We would urge others facing a similar struggle to consult the Ombudsman and find out how your council might be flouting the principles set out in his Code of Good Practice.

Most of all don't give up - keep fighting and together I'm sure we can save our special schools and preerve the educationthat WE knowis bestfor our kids.