According to the UK Green Party website the Green Party will try to achieve the following if they gain power at the 2010 general election:
DY400 Research has shown that prejudice against disabled people can be greatly worsened by segregated schooling. To segregate children with impairments or difficulties for any reason, when provision is potentially available in an all ability setting, is a breach of human rights. Moreover it helps inculcate prejudice in non-disabled children. The Green Party will therefore introduce the following policies for an all-ability education system:
a) Impairment will not be an acceptable reason for excluding a child from a school to which they would otherwise be entitled to admission. This means that, whilst there will be no compulsory integration of individuals (or abolition of ‘special schools’), all schools will be deemed to be all-ability schools. Schools will have a statutory duty to provide for the needs of any child, wherever this can be achieved without disadvantaging other children; the presumption will be that a child’s needs can be met in that school. And government will have a duty to provide fully adequate funding for the purpose. Children will be entitled to take legal action against any school which seeks to deny this right. Children and schools will have the right to take legal action against the Government for failing to provide the necessary funding.
Where children with emotional and behavioural difficulties are concerned, a balance must be struck between their educational needs and their present emotional needs; and also between their own needs and the needs of the people around them. However, research and practise has shown that children with emotional and behavioural difficulties do not need to be permanently segregated from others.
b) Similar principles will apply to all other educational establishments, so that practical difficulties and institutionalised prejudice will not be allowed to deny a person their right to an education using impairment as an excuse.
DY401 Public awareness of the level of oppression of disabled people must be raised through a public awareness campaign to be devised jointly with disabled peoples’ groups.
I would be interested to hear both positive and negative views on UK Green Party’s Disability an Enabling Education System policies in the comments below?