Special schools face a fall in numbers if proposals by North Tyneside Council to integrate children with special needs into mainstream schools go ahead. The plan is to increase the mainstream school population to 90 per cent. by 2010 with only ten per cent of pupils with special educational needs attending special schools. John Scott, acting manager for students and pupils’ services at North Tynside Council, said: ‘We are consulting on a draft plan for inclusive education which is giving children with special educational needs the chance to learn in mainstream schools. The proposals are set for the next five to ten years.’
Wallsend News Guardian, January 18, 2001.

Parents, staff, pupils and governors in Lambeth, London, have vowed to fight on after hearing that their special needs school is to close down. On Monday night the independent schools organisation committee rubber stamped plans to close Thurlow Park School as part of Lambeth Council’s controversial shake-up of special needs provision in the borough. The school which takes children with physical and associated learning disabilities from nursery age to the end of their secondary education will be shut down and re-opened as a secondary school – despite the pleas of parents.
South London Press, January 19, 2001.

Shaun Beard says he is prepared to go to prison in a battle over his son’s education. Brian, 11, has been at home in Prior’s Park, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, for more than three months, while his parents try to get him a special school place. They feel he should go Alderman Knight School for children with moderate learning difficulties but have been told by educational psychologists that Brian must return to mainstream pending a report. Mr. Beard, 33, said:’Brian definitely will not go to a mainstream school whether they want him to or not. Last week I told them there and then that no matter what they say he’s not going back to a mainstream school. I will keep him at home and go to prison if necessary.’
Gloucestershire Echo, January 24, 2001.

A scathing leader article in the Gloucestershire Echo has hit out at the county’s inclusion plans saying they will not work and are a trendy experiment. According to the article: ‘We have had it to the back teeth with education pundits who tell us that integration for 90 per cent. of pupils with learning difficulties into mainstream schools is best for everyone. It’s not and that’s an end to it. It is only better for education bigwigs who are off on their own trendy experiment. Integration is the current professional buzz-word and we are supposed to bow down and say thank you very much and let’s get on with it then. We can’t and we won’t . Why not? Because it’s wrong. Just as it was wrong when education officers and the trendy teachers in the 1960s and 1970s told us grammar, spelling and mathematical times tables didn’t matter.’
Gloucestershire Echo, January 24, 2001.

A school for dyslexic children has just celebrated 15 years of teaching with an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted report. Moon Hall School, in Holmbury St. Mary, Surrey, is well known internationally in the field of dyslexia, providing specialist teaching for children in close partnership with Belmont preparatory school whose facilities it shares. Moon Hall aims to integrate pupils back into mainstream schools and nearly all transfer to Belmont classes. According to the Ofsted report:’Pupils are educated in a supportive but educationally challenging environment where their needs are understood and addressed by all adults. There is a strong ethos of care and a commitment to ensuring the welfare of pupils is paramount.’
West Sussex County Times, January 26, 2001.

In a letter to the Editor of the Newcastle Upon Tyne Journal, the chairman of the Governors of Barbara Priestman Special School, Sunderland, questions whether admission of disabled pupils to mainstream schools is a human rights issue. He says: ‘That begs the question as to what human rights actually is. I believe that the right is to inclusion in society in adult life and a recognition that there should be a choice as to the best way to get there. It is a dangerous trap to believe that the only way to get there is by inclusion in a mainstream school.’
Newcastle Upon Tyne Journal, January 27, 2001.