table of contents - home page - text-only home page UK Considers New and Inclusive Special Education Bill By Kay Schriner (kays@uark.edu) In a move to further integrate children with disabilities into mainstream school, Great Britain's House of Lords is debating a bill that would, according to the Alliance for Inclusive Education, "put a new duty on schools and Local Education Authorities to plan for increasing accessibility and inclusion." The Special Education Needs and Disability Bill is intended to implement proposals made by the government in the recent Green Paper entitled Excellence for All Children: Meeting Special Educational Needs. Two subsequent documents, Meeting Special Educational Needs: A Programme of Action(published in November 1998 in England) and Shaping the Future for Special Education(published in Wales in January, 1999) were prepared to describe a 3-year plan of implementation. This bill is part of that plan. The bill would remedy existing deficiencies in British law. Currently, publicly-funded providers of education services and private schools are exempted from the non-discrimination mandates of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA). This new bill would repeal the section containing this exemption from the DDA, thereby imposing new mandates on schools. If this bill is passed into law, public schools in England and Wales will not be allowed to treat students with disabilities less favorably than non-disabled students without justifying such treatment; to make reasonable adjustments so that students with disabilities are not put at substantial disadvantages to non-disabled students, and to plan strategically and make progress in increasing physical accessibility to schools and to the curriculum. Institutions of further and higher education would also be affected. They would not be permitted to treat disabled students less favorably without justification and would be required to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that students with disabilities are not put at a substantial disadvantage. Great Britain's new Disability Rights Commission (DRC), chaired by Bert Massie, would have the responsibility of preparing new Codes of Practice explaining the new law to educators, people with disabilities, and other affected parties. The DRC is a relatively new body, formed by the Disability Rights Commission Act 1999. Following debate in the House of Lords, the bill will be considered by the House of Commons. Amendments are being proposed in both bodies, but according to the Alliance for Inclusive Education, the final bill will probably be "more or less what it is now." The Alliance, which is a national organization dedicated to a "fully inclusive education system," views the proposed legislation as a positive step. "It "will move things forward because it makes people think in a different way about disabled children," says Micheline Mason, the Alliance's director. Now, they will think of kids with disabilities as subject to discrimination just as are other minorities. The new legal obligations imposed by the law would force schools and local school boards do the necessary training for implementation, and according to Mason, "therein lies the real opportunity to change things." The Alliance, she says, has the capacity to "go into the schools and do this work." The Alliance has nonetheless proposed some amendments that they believe would improve the bill. Among other things, these would require that the views of the disabled child be considered in developing the educational plan, and provide for compensation for discrimination that cannot be rectified (as in the case of a student unlawfully excluded from a one-time event). The Alliance is asking advocates to contact their Members of Parliament to express support for these changes. To read more about the Special Education Needs and Disability Bill, go to www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200001/ldbills/003/en/01003x--.htm For more information about The Alliance for Inclusive Education, contact them at Unit 2, 70 South Lambeth Road, London SW8 1RL Telephone: 7735 5277 Fax: 7735 3828 E-mail address: allfie@btinternet.com Micheline Mason is the Director, and Richard Rieser the Chair. table of contents - home page - text-only home page