As part of the passage of the Children and Families Bill through Parliament, the Department for Education (DfE) has been consulting on the draft Code of Practice and draft regulations and transitional arrangements.
CSIE’s main response has been made through the collective voice of the Special Educational Consortium (SEC), of which CSIE is a member. This includes the SEC statement informing the DfE that the draft Code of Practice could not be supported if it was laid before Parliament for approval in its current form, and the more detailed consultation response submitted on 9 December. Both these documents are available on the SEC website.
In its individual response, CSIE recommended that national and international equality legislation should be more clearly reflected in the revised Code of Practice and that the Department for Education should use the ongoing legal reform as an opportunity to safeguard and promote greater disability equality in education.
Our response focused on two significant aspects of the law reform. The draft Code of Practice reflects what is currently in the Children and Families Bill as this moves through Report Stage at the House of Lords. Both documents repeat what the last law reform established more than ten years ago: that children who want (and whose parents want) a mainstream education, will be placed in a mainstream school as long as this is thought to be compatible with the efficient education of others in that school. In our response, we argued that in the 21st century this sounds inappropriate and anachronistic. It would not be said for a child from an ethnic minority background, or who speaks little or no English. Schools are presented with small and large challenges all the time; on the whole, they do a very good job of responding, and often rising, to the challenge. If any school is concerned that the presence of one child could compromise the efficient education of others, the government should support it to organise teaching and learning in a way that benefits everyone; not say that they do not have to include disabled children. We argued that the pretext of efficient education of others allows schools to continue to exclude disabled children, and that this seriously undermines parental choice. Promising a choice without building capacity in schools is like issuing a ticket and keeping the door locked.
Our response also focused on the unexpected suggestion that children and young people can be placed in special schools indefinitely, even if their needs have not been formally assessed. We suggested that this appears to be an oversight, which we urged the DfE to rectify as a matter of urgency. We also added a brief note on why we think this could be detrimental for some young people, for the unlikely event that establishing such an enormous loophole in the system was intentional.
Finally, our response pointed out that a response time of only nine weeks seems astonishingly short for a consultation of this magnitude: 13 separate documents, a total of 239 pages, proposing major changes to the education system. We understand that this concern has been echoed by many others.
Earlier today, 10 December, it emerged that the Independent Parental Special Education Advice (IPSEA), after submitting its response to the consultation detailing why the draft Code of Practice is not fit for purpose, has called for a moratorium on this legislation. CSIE has registered its support for this call. IPSEA chief executive, Jane McConnell, said “Political enthusiasm for making a change must not be allowed to drive bad legislation forward”.
