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	TX: 13.02.06 - Educating children with special needs PRESENTER: PETER WHITE
	Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WHITE Now tomorrow's Call You and Yours gives you yet another opportunity on this programme to present your evidence directly to an official parliamentary select committee inquiry. This month the subject is whether we need to rethink the way in which we educate children with disabilities and other special needs. The Education and Skills Select Committee has decided to inquire into special educational need provision and how it should be delivered. Now in 1979 Baroness Warnock delivered a report in which she said that wherever possible children with special needs should be educated in mainstream schools. But she's since revised that view and recently she told the select committee that she thinks the system is now excessively bureaucratic and it stifles achievement. Well I've been talking to Baroness Warnock about the situation the committee faced when it was first formed over 30 years ago. WARNOCK What we had to try to do was to explain that these children were not a race apart, there were lots of them already in mainstream schools, so that you didn't have to think of special education as something completely different. So our aim was really to find a definition of the point of education, what it was for, that was common to all children, whether they were disabled or whether they weren't. And then to say that some of these children had tremendous obstacles in the way of walking down this educational path, others found it easy and that was the distinction we wanted to draw between those who needed special help and those who didn't. WHITE Now the tool that you selected to try to provide the right help for children was this idea of a statement of need, which sounds like a good idea and yet you have said that it wasn't a very bright idea, why do you say that? WARNOCK As it turned out some children with special needs got statements and others didn't. So that there was a class of children who had special needs, which had been identified in the school and by assessment, but who didn't get a statement. And therefore the local authority had no statutory duty to supply the help for those children, whereas they do have a statutory duty to provide what is on the statement. But of course what we stupidly didn't really think about was that there was no extra money going to be given to the education overall, so as local authorities became more and more strapped for money in the 1980s the statement didn't go on being a statement of what the child needed, it became a statement of what the local authority thought it could get away with as the minimum help that that child would need. So it has worked out as a very bad system. WHITE The thing you said which really I think perhaps polarised opinion when you issued your recent report was that you felt that the idea of inclusion had been taken to extremes and I think you said really that you felt that that had taken us down a wrong turning. WARNOCK I think that inclusion has been taken too far as a kind of ideology. And I think it's partly the fault of this government and I think the government before who talked about special schools almost as if they were terrible places that you had to keep people away from at all costs and that really all education must be in the mainstream. Now I know that a lot of disabled people feel this themselves and they feel that children have a right to be educated in the mainstream. But the difficulty about that view is that some children with special needs just cannot flourish in mainstream schools and I'm thinking particularly of children with emotional and behavioural problems - of fragile children who need an environment that they can feel at home in, not a huge big comprehensive school but a small school where they know everybody and everybody knows them. And I'm certainly in favour of as many people as possible being educated in the mainstream but there are some people for whom this simply does not work and this is what I think the government and also the disabled lobby have failed to recognise. WHITE Given that you say that not enough distinctions perhaps were made between the various needs of children wasn't this anticipated at the time, I mean how much did your committee talk to real children, rather than simply educationalists? WARNOCK I remember we interviewed six people who had what's now called emotional and behavioural problems and many other disabled people and we did take their views very much into account. The difficulty very often was that the standard of expectation in those days, that was a long time ago, in special schools was very poor on the whole and a lot of people in special schools really didn't get to learn anything very much at all, they were contained, rather than educated. That is no longer true I think, I think there are very many excellent special schools now and it would be a thousand pities if those schools were closed. But myself I don't think they will be because I think that actually on the side the present government has a rather enlightened view about the existence of a new kind of special schools which are called specialist non-mainstream schools. And these are special schools that have applied for specialist status, maybe in IT, maybe in sport, whatever it may be, and who remain small schools which have nobody that are attending them who doesn't have a statement. And I personally would like to see the statement tied to one of these schools, so that if parents wanted to have a statement for their child what they'd be asking for was that he be educated at one of these small special schools that have masses of resources and lots of expertise. And then of course there's another kind of special school called a trailblazer, which is a specialist in special educational needs, so that you have some of these schools, special schools, that are specialists in cognitive disorders, learning difficulties, either mild or severe, and these trailblazer schools are meant to help train teachers in other schools, including mainstream schools, and share out their expertise and their skills. My difficulty with lumping all special educational needs together is that that would be a very, very expensive thing to do frankly because it would mean having specialist teachers in all mainstream schools. And that I think is something which actually would be far more expensive than having some places that were real places of excellence. WHITE So how far have you lost confidence in the concept of inclusion or is it simply that you feel that it's been taken to - well what you might describe as to an absurd degree? WARNOCK It's the second. I have no difficulties whatever with the concept of inclusion where a school just needs to make a few adaptations or perhaps get a special teacher in and really is devoted to doing that. Then I think inclusion can be excellent. But the children that I really feel sorry for are the children who are never going to feel themselves to be included in the mainstream because they just can't manage the environment. And those children I think should not - it shouldn't even be attempted that they should be so-called included because they're always going to be miserable, they're never going to flourish. WHITE What would you like the priorities of this select committee to be? WARNOCK I would like the select committee to recommend at least two things. One of which would be to revamp the statement, if we've got to go on having statements, and tie it to the concept of one of these small schools. And that would be the second thing that I would like them to concentrate on. WHITE Your report was obviously designed to make things better for children with disabilities, overall has it done that? WARNOCK Yes I think it has. I think it's done it in one important way that we really don't hide away children with disabilities any longer. I know that immediately the report had been published I was given a very posh lunch in the Athenaeum by somebody whose child had hitherto been completely disregarded by other children and they passed on the other side of the road. He's now playing in the street with other children because all he'd got was a special educational need, he wasn't dotty any longer. And I think we did do good in that way. But that's long ago. We've moved on to another time and we've got to think with more subtlety about these children and not lump them altogether as if they were one. WHITE Baroness Warnock, who's given her evidence to the select committee and now they'd like to hear from you. Tomorrow we'll be devoting the whole of the programme to the issue, we'd particularly like to hear from parents of children with special needs, teachers working in both mainstream and special schools and educationalists. We'll have a panel of experts, including the committee's chair - Barry Sheerman. To submit your evidence call us on 0800 044 044 or e-mail us via the programme website bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours and please leave us a contact phone number so we can get back to you. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites

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