Inclusive Education in the UK and Tajikistan - Case Study Example

The aim of this essay is to critically examine how the legislative process works in practical terms to promote inclusive education in the UK and Tajikistan. Inclusive Education in the UK Over the past few decades, the British legislation has continually shown “significant developments in policies and practices concerning children with disabilities (Research Report DCSF- PP042). The British legislation details regulations that govern the process of promoting inclusive education to the disabled people. Each government in the United Kingdom aims to combat social injustice by applying the inclusive education system (Lindsay, 2003:10). This objective conforms to the UNESCO policies of ensuring equal opportunities for all. Provision of education to all children encourages the society to appreciate diversity. Appreciation of diversity breaks the society free from discriminatory attitudes. Nowadays, the British experience of passing new laws, policy documents and restructuring schools to ensure educational equity for all children serves as a good model for developing countries to follow. But how successful have the UK policies and practices really been to impact on the development of inclusive education in developing countries? A review of some of the Special Education Laws and Legislation in the UK has shown that the UK government and policy makers recognize the causes of inequality in the education system and seek to address them efficiently. The following educational documents greatly affect the effectiveness of the inclusive education system: 1978 and 1981 were the turning- point years in development of inclusive education as a part of the national educational system in the UK. As stated in the “The Education and Skills - Third Report printed on 21 June 2006”: “The Warnock Report in 1978, followed by the 1981 Education Act, radically changed the conceptualisation of special educational needs. It introduced the idea of special educational needs (SEN), "statements" of SEN, and an "integrative"—which later became known as "inclusive"—approach, based on common educational goals for all children regardless of their abilities or disabilities: namely independence, enjoyment, and understanding”. It is the 1981 Education Act that fixed in the UK education legislation the transition from “medical” model of understanding disability to social model. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 secured additional assurances of the rights to education for people with disabilities. The Act required from local authorities to present publically the enrollment statistics of the pupils with disabilities at mainstream schools, to accommodate the needs of the children with special needs in “mainstream school” and ensure non discriminative attitude towards them from “other” children. Based on the article “More disabled children in mainstream schools”, published by BBC news on September 1999, “Disabled children are increasingly being taught in mainstream schools but the chances of gaining a place depends on where they live, according to a new report “(BBC online network). The Education Act (1996) defines children with special educational needs (SEN) as having:"a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for him." The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has defined Special Education as: "Specially designed instruction, at no cost to parents, to meet the unique needs of a child with a disability If the education in “ordinary” school meets the necessary requirements of the child, then he/she should not be transferred into a special school without a prior consent of parents. Local authorities are obliged to meet the needs of a child with special needs; the teachers should be informed on the special educational needs of this child. In 2001, there was enacted a Special Educational Needs and Disability Act – SENDA 2001 by the British Parliament thereby fixing the rights of the children with special needs to be educated in mainstream school. A new “Code of Practice” was also amended in 2001 and added that an individual must work with the curriculum as well as determine the procedure for the parents and children’ participation in the assessment and decision making for the provision of special educational needs. Although the inclusive education is legislatively protected and being developed, yet the special schools continue to function and are considered as a part of an educational society for those children whose parents decided to place their children in the special schools. Review of the following articles and reports proved that the government mostly was following the liberal model of inclusive education in the UK. The model is aimed to integrate children with special needs in mainstreamed schools. An article published on BBC news states that “Under the Labour, huge numbers of special schools have closed as the government pursued a policy of greater inclusion of children with disabilities” (BBC news). The Green Paper provides statistics that “over time, the number of special schools has decreased from 1,161 in 2002 to 1,054 in 2010, but the proportions of pupils with statements placed in them has increased slightly in recent years, from 40 % in 2006 to 44% in 2010. In 2006, 89390 pupils were on roll in maintained and non-maintained special schools, this increased to 90, 760 in 2010. (Ofsted (2006)”. Research Report DCSF- PP042 highlighted in Aiming High for Disabled Children: Better Support for Families, ‘across local authorities, disabled children and families are offered different levels and standards of care; those most in need are not always the most likely to get support, and parents and young people in some areas felt insufficiently empowered, informed, or involved’ (HM Treasury and Department for Education and Skills, 2007: 14). As a consequence three priority areas to improve outcomes for disabled children have been identified: access and empowerment; responsive services and timely support; and improving quality and capacity ((HM Treasury and Department for Education and Skills, 2007.” Thus, in spite of the fact that laws require that all children receive equal educational opportunities, in practice, for the successful implementation of all acts, there are still many unfinished things to be accomplished. Inclusive Education in Tajikistan The inclusive education in Tajikistan has started its development during the qualitative changes and transformations in the social educational policy. Deteriorating economic conditions sharply displayed the restrictions and an inequality against the people with disabilities. Absence of effective mechanisms for realization of acts seriously delays in processing social policy changes. Tajikistan is situated in the southeast of the Central Asia and borders in the north on Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, in the east with China, in the south with Afghanistan. Currently, out of 7 million residents in Tajikistan, 146 thousand are people with disabilities, including 12,500 –children under age 16. According to the Constitution of Tajikistan, every person has the right to education. The basic education laws are the Law «About Education», the Standard of educational institution of the higher professional education, the Law «About primary professional education», the State educational standards of secondary and higher professional education, the National concept of education of Tajikistan of 2005- 2015 which enable equal access to education regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, political position, income. Up until 1990, the government of Tajikistan pursued a policy of placing children with disabilities in separate, special institutions. This system allowed the people with disabilities to fulfill their basic needs and thus excluded them from social, economic and political life of the country. The 1992-1997 Civil War followed by the political and economic reforms have completely destroyed this system. The compulsory school system in the country has been dramatically affected, and it is the disabled children who were excluded from getting basic education, especially those who reside in the rural areas of Tajikistan. (9% the Tajik population lives in the capital city, Dushanbe while the rest 81% lives in rural areas). Tajikistan has undertaken efforts on reforming an education system for children with disabilities and special educational needs. The Government of Tajikistan supports initiatives to promote development of inclusive education in the country. The law «About Education» contains special articles about education for children with disabilities. The law «About social protection of disabled people in Tajikistan», Standard of educational institutions of boarding school type in Tajikistan is offered the conditions of enrollment, the internal timeline, management, financing and granting of services of public health services at these schools. In 2011, Tajik government developed a National concept on inclusive education. The legal framework of the inclusive education system in Tajikistan is based on International Legal documents recognized and signed by the government of Tajikistan: Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), UNESCOs Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960), Convention on the rights of the child (1989) and Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (1993). Thus, Tajik government is continually developing and improving the legal framework of the education system in Tajikistan. However, there is no special law concerning rights of children with special needs which would accent the necessity of having inclusive education. Tajikistan ratified six agreements of the human rights concerning children, but still did not ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People. Education at home or classes at specialized schools are the basic ways of providing services to children with special needs. Government structures should provide coordination of decisions on pedagogical education development in the country. This includes carrying out the development and updating of accepted measures on their application in practice, combining tactical and strategic actions, and giving a strategy priority to the question of professionalism of teachers. The solving of these problems assumes the presence of new management personnel, the civil servants who will well understand the role that a system of inclusive education plays in the formation in a postindustrial society. Development of institutions of inclusive education in Tajikistan is currently a knot of problems and contradictions and demands special measures. One actual problem is a shortage of experts in the sphere of education for training the children with special needs. The consequences of the Civil War in Tajikistan (1990-1997) have caused many specialists to leave the country and thus leave the country without the specialists. Nowadays, in order for every disabled child to have full access to educational institutions in Tajikistan, there is no developed legislation, social programs, or specialists; in short, no mechanism for their realizations and control. Absence of legislativeframework and deficiency of financing act as the basic obstacles of inclusive education in the country. However there is another serious obstacle in the successful implementation of inclusive education in the country- public stereotypes and prejudices against educating disabled children. The society should begin with an attitude and mentality change in the society. The given analysis has shown that the process of inclusive education in the UK has both strong and weak sides. On one hand, the government provides the right to parent of a school choice, promotes advancement of social integration and the creation of new educational societies and expands the possibilities of access to education. On the other hand, these processes strengthen the tendencies to exclude the children with special needs, since the inclusive schools in the created conditions might take on the features of a combination of poverty and disability, thereby strengthening an inequality. As for Tajikistan, the inclusive education is being developed and is mostly based on the international experience of social integration. Based on the OECD report, the international organizations in Tajikistan in this case are very influential in defining the priorities and directions of this activity in Tajikistan. It is important for Tajik specialists to learn to see civil, cultural and ethical process in advancement of social integration, without reducing all to "effective" and «rational» usage of resources as the legislative mechanism of redistribution of resources for inclusive education in Tajikistan is yet not established. Inclusion is a comprehensive system and governments should realize the importance of establishing practicable policies. The policies should define the role of each player in the system. For inclusion to deliver, all players in the education system should play their role without fail. The policies must elaborate on the role of the learner, the teacher, the school leadership system, and inspectors of quality in education. Read More