by Philippa Stobbs OBE
This week CDC is publishing a webinar for schools on the disability duties in the Equality Act. The webinar sits alongside, and complements, the school materials that CDC published in July. These include a guide for day-to-day decision-makers, a guide for governors and trustees and a handbook for schools on the accessibility planning duties. Earlier this year CDC also published materials for early years providers and FE colleges.
The new schools’ webinar was commissioned by the DfE to spread an understanding of the disability duties and to help to embed them across the life of the school. An introductory unit is for school leaders and senior managers and encourages the strategic use of the material, to plan and embed the duties in everyone’s responsibilities.
Thereafter the webinar is organised in four main units:
- The first unit is focused on the definition of disability in the Equality Act and helps schools to understand the breadth of the definition
- The second looks at the core disability discrimination duties and the key risks for schools, such as ‘blanket policies’ applied without adjustment for disabled pupils
- The third supports schools in planning more strategically and, at the same time, meeting the accessibility planning duties and the Public Sector Equality Duty
- The final unit puts all of the duties into the context of a whole school approach
And, importantly, the webinar is for everyone working in schools. These are not ‘add-on’ duties or an extra strand of work; meeting the duties is embedded in every aspect of school life from classrooms and subject specialisms to school events, clubs, visits and end of term celebrations.
At the end of each unit there is a ‘takeaway’ activity that encourages some reflection on different aspects of the duties and how they are met in the school.
The webinar is being published at a time of significant focus on SEN and disability. The Department is publicly committed to consulting on major reforms to the SEND system in the New Year and set out some detail in the SOS’s letter to the Education Select Committee.
Most of the national discourse is currently on the cost of the SEN system but, in practice, the really high cost of this is that long-term outcomes for disabled young people and those with SEN are poor and this takes its toll, longer term, on their quality of life as well as on the public purse.
A report from the NAO recognises that "the … DfE sees more inclusive mainstream education as the best way to ensure children get the support they need, and that this could be more productive." However, the report also found that "Although there were some good examples of what inclusive mainstream education looked like, often led by school leaders, we found that schools were not incentivised to be inclusive."
The DfE has significant strands of work underway to address the lack of a consistent approach to more inclusive mainstream schools. These include the curriculum and assessment review, the new Ofsted framework, improvements to initial teacher training and early career support, an expert group advising on what makes for the more inclusive mainstream schools, as well as longer standing professional development programmes such as Universal SEND Services, run by Whole School SEND at nasen.
The commissioning of the new Equality Act materials by the DfE needs to be seen in this context. The disability duties are not new. The guides and the webinar provide an important reminder of duties that have been in place since 2010 and, before that, under the SEN and Disability Act, since 2001.
At a time of so much public and political profile for SEN and disability the webinar is a timely reminder that most reasonable adjustments cost little or nothing; that some changes to school policies can benefit everyone, staff and students alike; that closer engagement with pupils, parents and the wider community can often inform and improve our approach; and that making sure that all our children are in school, engaged in learning, thriving, making progress and able to leave school and make a contribution to our national life is one of our most important, cherished and shared aims.