Inclusive Education for All

This conversation began when the Alibrandi family came to us three weeks ago to enroll their three children for next year.  Moving from interstate, Eliana is in Year 9, and twins Georgio and Luca are in Year 7. Luca lives with ASD2, but has always been educated alongside his brother - sometimes in the same classroom, and sometimes in another peer class. In talking to the family, Luca's presence in his classrooms has helped all his peers grow and excel in caring for him, as much as he has benefitted from being alongside his brother and peers, and made to feel "one of the team" (their words). When they came to us and were informed Luca would be in the adjacent "Special School" it is little wonder they were confused, hesitant and reluctant at such a change.  One can't blame them for exploring other nearby options while we have this important conversation as a school community. With Luca as our primary focus, it is traumatic and challenging enough for Luca to be...

While the Special School and this school sit side-by-side geographically, it is unconscionable how little the two interact - in either direction. It has been this way as long as anyone can remember, and because there is so much required of each institution to look after itself and its own needs, there has not been space made to have a conversation about why things are the way they are.  I believe the time has come - not just to engage in the conversation, but to actively work towards change and bringing the two into one through a full commitment to inclusive education.  Despite UNESCO offering and advocating to the world a roadmap for global inclusive education, here in Australia we have not made the progress we should to meet the needs of all people as set out Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Optional Protocol Article 24 of that Statement (found here: https://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/convention/convoptprot-e.pdf ) was clarified  by the U...

 We are all born free If the UN can say it, and as a nation, we can sign on to such a statement, then surely we are impelled (not just compelled) to action those words. And yet, despite the idealism and hope of such words and statements - true of the whole of the declaration - we are all aware that, globally, we fail at many of them, and locally, we fail at more than we should. Image from "We Are All Born Free: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures"   published  Amnesty International in 2015. Being differently-abled has always been part of community - as something from birth or as something that results from an accident - and despite the celebration held for awareness days, Paralympics, or fundraising events, disability still remains too tokenistic for too many. While visuals are more inclusive, the media is more inclusive, it is still abnormal or other for the majority of the population to interact, let alone include, disability in the normality of the ev...

This blog is primarily to advocate and move our school community to a fully inclusive model.  After years with the segregated special unit alongside our school, and instigated by a conversation with a future student and their family, I believe passionately that our school community can lead the way in modelling a move to full inclusion of all students of all abilities, rather than doing ourselves the disservice of isolating students and peers from one another due to various levels of differentiation. The reality is that ALL are different in various ways- learning about, learning from, learning with people of all differences enhances our education, our learning and who these young people become as they grow into the world.  The two following images are helpful visuals to help all to understand what is meant by inclusion.  Our current model follows the historical misunderstanding around disability which resulted in models of exclusion or segregation. This division left litt...