A teacher and SEND parents asks: is inclusion working in schools?

Do you think inclusion working in schools? Do you have a personal perspective to share?

Tania Tirraoro from Special Needs Jungle introduces Nancy Gedge in an article (13 November 2015) with her view on the subject…

Tania’s note: Nancy Gedge is back with her views on the thorny subject of inclusion in schools for children with SEN. As both a teacher and a parent of a child with a disability, Nancy has an important and heart-felt perspective:

Yesterday, I was in London talking to a group of head teachers and SENCOs at the Bridge School in Islington at the Inclusion Conference, organised by the National Education Trust. I’ve written at length about our experiences as a family with both mainstream and special education; I’ve commented on some of the reasons why more and more children with SEND are moving to special schools, rather than staying in the mainstream sector.

As I am both a parent of a child with significant SEND (my son has Down’s syndrome) and a teacher (I teach children with SEND in a mainstream primary school), I have a pretty good idea of what life looks like from both side of the playground, and this is what I said:

I, like many teachers, and many parents of school age children, tend to think that Education-with-a-capital-E is the be-all and end-all of everything. It dominates almost every aspect of our lives – but, and this is, from my perspective as a teacher, a sad thing to admit, it does not hold all the answers. It can do a lot, but not everything. Outside of our Edu-Bubble there is a world of birthday parties and discos and scouts and brownies, and inclusive ideas need to be there too…

Source and full article at