Articles > Interaction Journal Articles > Volume 10, Issue 2 > Proposals for Inclusion in NSW: Review of the McRae Report

Background

Over the past decade there has been a significant increase in the call for inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of life. This shift has been buoyed by changes in legislation and public policy that make it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of disability and which require that services promote integration and a positive image and achieve positive outcomes for people with disabilities.

The shift is reflected in the educational literature. Questions of whether to integrate specified categories of students in limited environments have been replaced by questions of how to include all students in the full life of the school. The shift is embodied in the distinctions between integration and inclusion and fundamentally concern issues of adaptation; whether the student must or should adapt to the existing norms of the school or whether the adaptation can be expected to be a two way process of the school to the student and the student to the school.

Parents have played a significant role in promoting the rights of their sons and daughters to a meaningful and valued life in the community. In NSW over the past decade most children with disabilities have had some experience of integration through pre-school and early childhood services. They have found that integration 'has worked'; that their sons and daughters have learnt, cognitively and socially, and that being a part of the local community has provided benefits to the child and the family. An increasingly vocal group of parents have been aware of their rights, enshrined in legislation. They have read the literature and, through it, have broadened their expectations. These parents have increasingly been seeking the same opportunities for all their children; they are increasingly calling for their sons and daughters with disabilities to be welcomed and educated at the same schools and in the same classes as children without disabilities.

In NSW parents have been thwarted in their efforts by the Special Education Policy of the Department of School Education which states that
"Every child with a disability... has the right to attend the local neighbourhood school where this is possible and practicable and in the best interests of the child" (NSW Special Education Policy, 1993).

Much to the chagrin of parents, 'the best interests of the child' are seen to be decisions out of the domain of parental realm and yet are seldom considered in the light of the findings of educational literature but rather what are 'practicable and possible' are determined by the ever shrinking state integration funding, the attitudes of some professionals and the ability of Principals to withhold enrollment.

The policy alleges choice from a continuum of services but in fact:

"The broad choices which confront parents are singularly unbalanced at present. If they (parents) choose a School for Specific Purposes (SSP) or some type of support class for the education of their child, enrollment is virtually automatic, staffing resources are guaranteed over time at a consistent level, and the specialised equipment and materials can usually be found on site.

If they choose an integrated placement in a neighbourhood school, enrollment has to be negotiated and may be refused. Resources are limited by capped funding procedures and must be sought every six months, with the implication that they may decline over time.

These same factors are substantial disincentives to accept students with disabilities" (McRae, 1996, p4).

These contradictions between law, policy and parental expectations on the one hand and the practice of special education in NSW on the other led to demands for change.

Over the last decade the tensions emanating from these contradictions have been seen in every section of the Department of School Education.

Finally, the efforts of parents led to an election commitment and the incoming Labor Government commissioned a review of the education of students with disabilities. The terms of reference called on a researcher to:

"...conduct a feasibility study to examine the potential costs and long term benefits of greater integration and inclusion of students with disabilities both in financial terms and in terms of the long term outcomes for the students involved" (McRae, 1996, p2).

David McRae became the researcher and the short hand reference for the report is the McRae report.

A significant shift

The McRae report, which was released in NSW Parliament in September, 1996, calls for 'a time for change' to adjust the structural arrangements to accommodate and support changes in law, public policy, community attitudes and educational practice. Overall the report is to be applauded as a watershed in the education of students with disabilities in NSW and if adopted will make a significant difference in the educational opportunities of a significant number of children.

With the release of the report comes the first official recognition of the obstacles, the inconsistencies and the unspoken guidelines that parents always knew but which were never made public.

The report acknowledges:

that current practice in the education of students with disabilities is unlawful.
that despite changes in the law, public policy, parents' attitudes, unmet demand and high levels of success of integration, the Department of School Education has maintained structural barriers that have inhibited the development of education policies and practices that would have enabled children to be educated within the spirit and letter of the law.
that enormous disincentives exist to enrollment in the regular class.

These public disclosures alone vindicate parents in their ongoing battles with a Department that has been singularly unprepared to acknowledge the facts.

Proposed Components for Change

The recommendations that will underpin a change to education are:

The adoption of the principle that "Public education must be inclusive and responsive to the needs of the full range of students."
A change to the Special Education and enrollment policies to ensure that the choices of parents of students with disabilities are governed by the same general conditions as apply to other parents.
An independent appeal process where there is fundamental disagreement over placement or service provision.
The adoption of a non categorisation approach to students through the introduction of the concept of support needs in an educational setting.
The development of a new form of resource support which is targeted at individual students, transferable, allocated according to a common procedure, based on student's support needs in an educational setting, guaranteed and indexed and able to be flexibly deployed.
The recognition of the importance of staff development.
The recognition of the importance of making mainstream curricula relevant and accessible to students with disabilities.

A Note of Caution

The thrust of the report concerns providing 'parent choice of placement on a balanced and informed basis'. We must acknowledge that the environment in which we live is one in which people with disabilities are devalued and where services are offered in a continuum. The mere existence of the most restrictive options means that people will be found to support their viability. As McRae notes, there is

"the understandable belief that simply because they exist, support classes or SSPs are the appropriate placement for all students with disabilities" (McRae, 1996, p.5).

The process of choice must be safeguarded to ensure that the choice of which the report talks is available to all children, including those with high support needs.

Weaknesses

There are a number of weaknesses in the report.

Whilst recognising the critical importance of teacher training, the report does not go far enough in examining the implications of inclusive practices for teacher education. Fiddling around with single mandatory units in special education will do little to prepare teachers for the mixed ability classes that they currently and will continue to face.

When change is of the magnitude that is being called for, significant efforts must be put into re-tooling the systems of support so that there is as smooth a transition as is possible. This should be seen as an investment for every child. That is, the teacher who is trained to address broader bandwidth's of skill within a class grouping will not only be better positioned to teach the child with recognised disability; but better able to address the crisis in our ordinary classrooms where 1:5 to 1:3 are experiencing some level of significant difficulty.

Further, the report does not address the staff development needs of executive staff. The adoption of a system similar to NSW TAFE in which persons in executive positions must have undertaken authorised training in relation to the inclusion of all students would send a very clear message to leaders in schools and the bureaucracy about their responsibilities.

The report deals inadequately with the issue of therapy services, critical for the development of some students. Whilst negotiations proceed for the increase of resources in this area (negotiations that have been on the agenda for literally decades), the limited resources must be distributed equitably according to need rather than placement. Such a recommendation is surely an oversight given its consistency with the approach taken to resources in the remainder of the report.

The report proposes better integration of regular and special education, a proposal that is only to be applauded. The report, however, has missed the opportunity not just to amend the Special Education Policy but rather to develop general education policies that are inclusive of the needs of all students. Instead, one of the ways in which this integration of regular and special education is to occur is through the use of SSPs to provide support, outreach and in-school services to regular schools.

Special educators have knowledge and skills that will be critical to the successful inclusion of students with disabilities into the regular class. What this recommendation does not recognise, however, is the significantly different culture that exists between SSPs and regular classes. Support provided by people in SSPs who do not support the underpinning principle of inclusion will do much to undermine efforts of teachers and parents in struggling for inclusion, particularly for students with high support needs.

Special education has long laid claim to knowing how to teach well, some of which is justified. But having done so in isolation from local neighbourhood schools, special educators are mostly novice in the 'teaching together' schema. On the other hand, typical class teachers have at least partially mastered teaching many disparate groups together. The two teaching cultures, like the children they are to teach together, have been 'brought up' apart; developing their own sub-cultures, professions, languages... even to the point where separate staff rooms on co-located campuses is common. This sort of division needs to be melded so that we are able to teach well and together.

Conclusion

The report makes public that (NSW's) State integration funding has not increased since 1990/91 while the number of students with disabilities being supported in mainstream classes has more than doubled since that time. The fact that teachers and parents have worked together in that time to enable integration to occur is a testimony to the substantial goodwill that exists within the educational community.

The McRae report is an attempt to build a system that will provide for:

parent choice of placement on a balanced and informed basis;
guaranteed levels of resource support according to students' needs in an educational setting; and
equitable distribution of available resources regardless of location or setting" (McRae, 1996, p4). These are goals that can easily be supported by all stakeholders in education.

These are goals for which all parents, teachers and academics must band together to demand of the government the development and funding of an education system that is consistent with current legislation and policy in NSW. We look to the government of NSW to show leadership in the area of education by implementing the McRae report.

Bibliographical note:

Belinda Epstein-Frisch, a parent of a child with a disability, co-ordinated the Kids Belong Together campaign in the lead up to the 1995 NSW state election. Under the auspice of Family Advocacy, Kids Belong Together ran a campaign of parent action to create better schools that would enable all children to be welcomed and educated in the regular class of the local neighbourhood school.

Reference: Connaughton, K. (1996). Proposals for Inclusion in NSW - Review of the McRae Report. Interaction v.10 #2 p.25-26.
Reprinted with permission from the National Council on Intellectual Disability.