Mill Hill High School has become the first mainstream school in Barnet to admit blind students and has set up the borough’s first dedicated unit to cater for them. The school, welcomed Orhan Deniz, 11; and Bilal Ansari, 12; into Year Seven. Both need special brailling equipment to read, as well as other support staff to help them through the day. They have each been allocated a learning support assistant, who helps them in class during activities which require sight, such as looking at the board, and they also have a room set apart for them. After a year of planning the school was given an £80,000 grant for some of the equipment it needed, such as a brailling machine which transfers written material into Braille documents. It also has a member of staff to convert work from teachers into Braille and an advisory local education authority officer to liaise with the council’s visual impairment unit, at a cost of about £50,000.
Hendon and Finchley Times, November 4, 2004.

Mark Vaughan, founder and co-director of the Centre For Studies on Inclusive Education, says he is not surprised at the Ofsted finding that the Government’s framework for inclusion has had little effect on numbers of disabled children in mainstream schools. According to Mr. Vaughan, the Government has been giving contradictory and ambiguous messages about inclusion for years. He says: ‘In many areas, inclusive education has progressed in spite of, not because of, government policies, which since 1997 have called for a permanent role for special schools alongside the development of inclusion.’
Community Care, November 11, 2004.

A Leeds special school teacher whose pupils moved to mainstream says there have been many advantages. Writing for the Times Educational Supplement Letter Section, S. M. Siddall says: ‘The children and staff moved together, so that we can now share our expertise with our mainstream colleagues on a daily basis. Also, we (staff and children) have stayed on the roll of the special school so there are not the concerns over league tables and the headteacher could not exclude any of my pupils even if he wanted to! Above all the pupils have benefited tremendously from being a part of a lively and successful school where they have the companionship and support of their peers. They are recognised as being ‘different’ but that doesn’t stop them enjoying all the benefits of mainstream education. We have created flexibility that means for some of the time the pupils are in their own base but as far as possible they are in mainstream classes. Clearly if their behaviour is too demanding the base is there. Being in a mainstream school has given them opportunities and experiences that they would never have had if they had stayed in a special school and I have taught in some ‘good’ special schools.’
Times Educational Supplement, November 12, 2004.

A Telegraph leader article has hit out at Education Secretary, Charles Clarke’s proposals for schools to share responsibility for children experiencing problems with behaviour. It says the ‘proposal to dump feral children in flourishing schools reeks of the naïve egalitarianism of the 1960s’. According to the Telegraph writer, parents pay taxes so that their own children can receive education and implicit in that contract is the understanding that their education will not be sabotaged. ‘The crucial point, however, is that these young hooligans have their own “special need” which is to be separated from ordinary children and educated by specialists. That is sad, but then it is sad that society needs to run prisons’.
Telegraph (Web), November 19, 2004