Speaking at the annual conference of the NASUWT in Glasgow, union leader Nigel de Gruchy blames the closure of special schools for the spread of bad behaviour in classrooms. He says that mainstream schools have not got enough resources to cope with ‘these young tearaways’.
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Journal, April 10, 1996.

Northwich mother Denise Walker criticises Cheshire County Council for refusing to provide funds for an assistant to support her five-year-old son Sam at St Wilfrid’s School, Hartford. She says that changes in the Council’s policy on special needs mean that they will only fund part-time assistance for Sam, leaving her and his friends to raise the money elsewhere.
Northwich Guardian, April 10,1996.

Moving a motion condemning inclusive education, Christyne Keates, of the NASUWT’s executive committee, told the union’s annual conference in Glasgow that cash starved local authorities were closing special schools for financial reasons and teachers were being left to cope. There was intense pressure from parents to keep a child in mainstream schooling, but this might not be in the best interests of the child. ‘The answer should lie not in the promotion of inclusive education at all costs, but in a changed perception of special schools as part of the education system and not as a means of sentencing pupils’.
The Guardian, April 10, 1996.

Lynne and Danny Morrow fear they have finally been defeated in the battle to keep their son, Luke, seven, in mainstream education. They say Luke, who has Down’s Syndrome, was happy for more than three years at St John Vianney Primary School in Hartlepool but things changed in September last year after the teacher and special needs helper he had worked with both left. Now they feel they have no option but to send him to Springwell Special School where education officers say his needs will be better met. ‘We feel we have failed him but really it is the system that has failed him’, said Mr. Morrow. ‘All we are asking for is what any good parent would ask for, that they get the best for their kids’.
Hartlepool Mail, April 11, 1996.

The National Union of Teachers at its conference voted to adopt inclusive education as a long-term goal and to campaign to end compulsory segregation of disabled children in special schools against their or their parents’ wishes. Richard Rieser, a disabled teacher and chair of the Alliance for Inclusive Education, said that the evidence was clear from schools with an inclusive ethos: behaviour improved, results improved for the disabled and non-disabled majority and young people learned to respect each other. He said the NASUWT had wrongly equated the widespread increase in difficult behaviour arising from poverty, unemployment and family problems with the closure of special schools.
The Guardian, April 16, 1996.

A disruptive schoolboy will be taught by outside staff in his present school at a cost of GBP100 a day in a compromise to try to avert a strike by teachers. Twenty teachers at Glaisdale School in Bilborough, Nottinghamshire, are threatening to strike unless a decision to expel Richard Wilding is re-imposed. Fred Riddell, chair of Nottinghamshire Education Committee said the measures meant that the school was meeting its legal responsibility to support the 13-year-old. Teachers have been refusing to teach the teenager because of his long record of causing trouble and violence. His parents have resisted pressure to transfer Richard to a special school.
The Times, April 23 and 24, 1996 .

The number of children expelled in England has risen from 11,000 in 1993/94 to an estimated 15,000 in 1996. Pressures to achieve good exam results and rising class sizes have been blamed.
The Guardian, April 23, 1996.

Special needs pupils are to get top priority when places are allocated at popular Sheffield schools. The shake-up in admission policies reflects the trend in which more special needs children are being taught in mainstream schools instead of special schools. In future, a disabled child will be guaranteed a place at a school which has specially-adapted buildings and classrooms. Alternatively, a child with special needs may have a particularly suitable school named in his or her statement.
Doncaster Star, April 29, 1996.

Rawthorpe High School is leading the way in integrating special needs pupils in mainstream classes. Thirteen children with autism and learning difficulties are being taught in ordinary classes. The project – a joint initiative between Barnardos and Kirklees education authority – is the first of its kind in the country. Project leader, Jane Bienias, said: ‘We are hoping to stage a conference later this year and want to encourage more schools to get involved’. Special needs pupils are taught at their own level in mainstream classes, with extra support where needed from project workers.
Huddersfield Daily Examiner, April 30, 1996.