The Benefits Of Digregation In Special Schools

Essay Proposal

Traditionally children with disabilities would have been segregated in special schools, classes or institutions depending on the severity of their disability. These schools would be tailored to disabled people’s needs and would have staff employed to education these children at their own pace. There was seen to be many benefits to having segregated schools both for economic reasons but it was believed that it would have a positive effect on both disabled and non-disabled students. One of the economic advantages is that specialist equipment can be brought into one ‘special school’ and specialist teachers like speech therapists and physiotherapists can be used under one roof instead of little equipment in lots of mainstream schools. Another advantage perceived from having ‘special schools’ was that the students would benefit from having smaller classes. Jenkinson (1997:11) suggests that segregated school are “more supportive and less threatening” for disabled students, and the disabled students are able to build self-esteem as they don’t need to compare themselves against more able students within a mainstream school. Dunn (1968) argues against any benefits of segregation as he suggests that the only benefits from segregated schools is of the teachers and students within these schools as he states that it “relives class teachers of the need to diverse and implement curricula for students who appeared unable to learn from normal instructions in regular class”. And then goes onto state that teachers can “devote their efforts to the majority of students who did not have learning problems.”

Education for disabled pupils was soon to change as the Education Act 1981 stated that “young disabled people should be educated in...

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... the PE teachers as they are the lower in the ‘hierarchy’ of subjects within schools and the SENCOs subordinate them in ways of not giving them as much information, support or resources and prioritise LSAs to the more ‘important’ core subject like English, Maths and Science. This therefore has a huge impact on the way in which their lessons are able to include children with SEN and in the end can affect the experience of the SEN pupils.

The sources that will be used within this essay will be all secondary data. They will primarily consist of academic books and journals focusing mainly on SEN, inclusion within schools and particularly Physical Education and then looking at the effects on mainstreaming but from the perception of disabled and SEN pupils. This research will come from sources such as (Fitzgerald, H, 2005), (Fitzgerald, H, Jobling, A and Kirk, D, 2003)