Curriculum and Assessment Review
26 November 2024
CSIE has responded to the Department for Education’s call for evidence towards the Curriculum and Assessment Review. CSIE’s main response was included in the response from the collective voice of the Special Educational Consortium. In its additional submission CSIE drew particular attention to the following issues:
Embracing the social model of disability and understanding disability as an ordinary part of human diversity are at the heart of developing a more equitable education system, which expects educators to have high aspirations for all children and young people, and which responds to the needs of all learners with equal commitment and effectiveness.
Under the Equality Act 2010 schools have a duty to advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. The current system’s increasing reliance on separate “special” schools, however, means that instead of receiving the support needed to access learning in their local community, many disabled children and young people receive so-called special provision instead of what is offered to their peers. The Curriculum and Assessment Review can set a good example of how such equality of opportunity can be pursued.
The Equality Act also places a duty on all schools to make Reasonable Adjustments so that disabled children and young people are not at a disadvantage. Recent evidence suggests that many schools are reluctant to welcome children with labels of SEN or disability. The Review offers a great opportunity to articulate a range of Reasonable Adjustments which can make the Curriculum, and the Assessment process, more accessible for disabled children and young people.
Initial Teacher Education and Continued Professional Development will also need to be revised, to support a transformation of attitudes and cultures in a way which places children and young people with labels of SEND at the centre of the education system, rather than in the periphery or as an afterthought.
The global call to develop more inclusive education remains strong (for example through the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Sustainable Development Goal #4) and the UK has been repeatedly criticised by UN Committees for its slow progress towards developing more inclusive education.
Finally, CSIE suggested that the entire model of financing inclusive education is thoroughly reviewed, bearing in mind that: a) changing systems of financing inclusive education is a key lever for achieving more widespread inclusion; and b) countries which implement a financing model based on funding services provided, have greater success compared to countries where funding is based on some aspect of individual need (e.g. types or categories of need).
