Open letter to the NSW Department of Education

To Whom it May Concern at the NSW Wales Department of Education,

I had looked forward to reading the new New South Wales Department of Education “Disability Strategy” document, particularly because I knew that there had been consultations with advocacy groups that I know would have represented the needs and rights of disabled students well.

Groups such as Family Advocacy, and others, I know have strongly advocated for a fully inclusive education system that falls line with the human rights outlined by The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disability, and with the principles outlined in General Comment no. 4 (2016), Article 24, Right to Inclusive Education.

So I was disappointed to read, in the second sentence of your document, the following:

“We are committed to building a more inclusive education system, one where all students feel welcomed and are learning to their fullest capability.”

Instead of reading something more like “we are committed to building a fully inclusive education system, in which all students are welcomed…..”

The difference is subtle maybe, but it is gravely important.

A more inclusive education system is easy to achieve. That is not a real commitment to disabled students. Being more inclusive than you are now is not a big ask, honestly. Simply being “more inclusive” than the current situation where we have segregation as a common and expected practice is not going to help very many people though. What we need is a fully inclusive education system.

Similarly, helping students “feel welcomed” is not the same as disabled students actually being welcomed. You can show some interest in a person as they arrive, say kind things, show them around and help them navigate the environment for a day or two, smile at them when you see them, and they will feel welcomed initially. If they actually are welcomed though, you will need to do more than those few things.

An education setting that truly welcomes disabled students is physically accessible, sensory friendly, academically flexible, and culturally diverse inclusive of neurominority groups and disabled communities.

Words are important. You have carefully chosen yours, I can see, to make it sound like you are talking about human rights and doing what is ethically and morally good, but the reality is that you have made some deliberate choices that will allow you to remove yourself from blame when disabled students experiences of school setting turn out not to be actually inclusive.

I am not going to go through the whole document and explain every problem in it, picking out every nuance and small semantic slight of hand it contains. But, I do want to talk about your concept of what human rights are.

In the section “Our Vision” the following statement is made:

“People with disability have the same human rights as everyone else, including the right to participate in and contribute to social and economic life. Education has a fundamental role to play in supporting these rights.”

I find this statement particularly disingenuous, because it positions the responsibility of the Department of Education as being less involved in human rights than it really is, while making it look like the Department is doing the right thing to those who don’t know better.

Inclusive Education is not just a way to support other rights, inclusive education is a human right on its own. The United Nations has gone to a great deal of effort to ensure this fact is communicated and understood.

To minimise the importance of this right, particularly as a provider of education, is showing either a fundamental lack of understanding of what human rights are, or a grossly negligent approach to the Departments responsibility to the children whose rights they are charged with meeting.

I cannot reasonably think that an organisation with access to the legal minds and advisors the Department of Education has could possibly not understand what human rights are, or what its responsibilities in that context are. So I have to think that this document was carefully worded in a way that looks good and like it is concerned with human rights while covering up for the fact that the Department of Education is not as concerned with meeting disabled students needs as it is with allocating resources to prevent disabled students continuing to be a challenge to them.

Since the document was released I have seen people comment that “at least it is a step in the right direction” and “there is a lot of good stuff in there”, but I can’t agree. Sure, there is a definition of what inclusive education is that is close to the mark. Yes, it sounds good to define success and have goals for students, families and schools.

But, I see this new document as more of the same approach that many groups who claim to support disabled people have taken in the past. If people see an organisation spend money on programs or strategies, while using the language of human rights, that is generally enough to keep them happy.

However, if the money was spent to consult disabled people and their advocates in the creation of this strategy, then why does the document not read like it? Because it is not a step in the right direction. It is not a move toward inclusion. It is not a strategy that will try help disabled students in our public education system in any real way.

To be honest, I am not surprised. But I am bitterly disappointed. My youngest child started kindergarten this year. I had hoped that in the 15 years since my oldest child was starting school we’d have seen more progress than this.

This just looks to me like the same old familiar abdication of responsibility and setting the stage for shifting the blame for continued traumatic experiences of disabled students in NSW schools. It does not leave me hopeful that my child’s journey through school will be any less difficult than their older siblings.

As an organisation that claims “We are committed to continuously improving the education experiences and outcomes of all students in NSW”, you need to do better than this.

Nothing short of a conscious and deliberate move toward a fully inclusive education system lead by disabled people themselves will be an improvement. I am sure that is something the Department of Education has been told before, and this new strategy is a blatant ignoring of that message and an obvious shirking of the Departments moral and ethical responsibilities.