Learning from disability history to create policies where inclusive education can become a reality

Richard Rieser OBE is a renowned disability and inclusion expert. He is also the founder of Disability History Month. Here, he traces the recent history of inclusive education, how it can be made to work, and asks if this Labour government can make a positive difference

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 “Labour will take a community-wide approach, improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools”

July 2025 Labour Manifesto

In October 2024, the National Audit Office reported that the 2014 SEND reforms were not working. In December the same year, as £740 million was made available to remove barriers and build more resource bases in mainstream schools, Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said,

“Labour will take a community-wide approach, improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, as well as ensuring special schools cater to those with the most complex needs. We will make sure admissions decisions account for the needs of communities and require all schools to cooperate with their local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion, and place planning.”

Bridget Phillipson

More recently, at the ASCL conference in March, Ms Phillipson spoke of ‘whole system reform’ and for ‘parents to expect less resources’. No doubt this was a reaction to the growing numbers of children with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) 576,000 in 2024 and growing local authority deficits in SEND EHCP funding of 4.6 billion by the end of 25/26.

There are two important ways of viewing the failure of disabled children and young people in England’s education system. They are contradictory:

• a medical model/deficit approach and
• a social/human rights approach.

Only one will lead to children (in Labour’s current watch words) “thriving and achieving”. To understand these, we must go back in time…

Medical or Social Model?

DPI (Disabled People’s International) defines impairment as a functional limitation within the individual caused by physical, mental, or sensory impairment, and disability as the loss or limitation of opportunities to participate in normal life due to physical and social barriers. 

Over the last 50 years, the Disabled People’s Movement has been seeking to get society to think about disability from a Social Model/Human Rights point of view, as opposed to the older oppressive Medical/Deficit Model.

Under the social model, we have physical or mental impairments—long-term loss or difference of function. Impairment is part of the human condition. But how society responds is cultural and values-based. This is what leads to barriers to our participation.

Removing barriers to what you CAN do

As disabled children who have grown up, we in the Disabled People’s Movement can attest to the damage done to our self-image and life chances, from focusing on us through the lens of what we cannot do, along with attempts to “normalise” us through endless therapies. This is not an argument against medical-based interventions, which have kept many of us alive.

Rather, it is an argument to judge us by what we can do. To remove barriers built up by the Medical/Deficit model, how we can do things will look different to others, because of reasonable adjustments, support and perhaps at a different pace. Barriers include those in the environment that prevent access; barriers in information and communication systems that are not designed to accommodate our impairments; and barriers in attitudes and social organisation that exclude us and damage our psychological development. It also includes barriers in the way things are organised, such as the curriculum, its content and ways it is assessed; barriers to dealing with our behaviours and emotions; and barriers to our enrollment onto courses and to schools and colleges.

Many of the barriers we as Disabled People face block and curtail our lives. They impact differently, depending on the type and degree of impairment we have, and our life circumstances, but we in the Disability movement have solidarity with each other because the barriers are derived from a common oppression we face: Disabilism.

“…discrimination or prejudice against disabled people, often based on the belief that we are inferior or unable to participate fully in society. It encompasses negative attitudes, behaviours, and systems that create barriers and disadvantages for disabled individuals”. 

The History of our oppression is important for young disabled people to understand and it should be part of the Revised Curriculum for all young people. It can be liberating to realise that how you are treated has its roots in the false science (Eugenics), Incarceration, segregation and ignorance of the past and NOT your impairment and what you cannot do.

We urge, hope and expect parents and carers of disabled children and young people, most of whom have no direct experience of being a disabled person, to be allies in their child’s struggle for rights and inclusion.

Jumping through systemic hoops to get support

Many parents act as allies and champions for their disabled children, fighting for the resources and provision they believe their disabled child needs to achieve and thrive. Because our mainstream education system is not inclusive, these are often only available in separate special provision or independent schools or colleges. Such families may be considered as “refugees from a failing mainstream system”.

However, to get these scarce resources, parents and carers have to jump through many hoops of a deficit system that is used to ration scarce resources. This means relying on a Medical model approach and demonstrating what the disabled child or young person cannot do to get a statutory EHCP or even SEN support in school. A sense of welcome and belonging to the community is often missing in all forms of provision, as it is not the current purpose of schooling, when it should be.

Are children with SEND disabled?

Are all these children and young people (1.9 million) with additional needs disabled? Under the Equality Act 2010 definition, which is to provide protection from disability discrimination, one would say Yes!

You’re disabled under the definition in the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities”. For example:

• ‘normal daily activities’-e.g. lining up, obeying instructions, interacting with peers etc.
• ‘substantial’ is more than minor or trivial,
• ‘long-term’ means 12 months or more.

For the purposes of the definition, you “have to ignore the impact of medicines, appliances and aids”. E.g. Asthma, ADHD or Epilepsy drugs, teaching assistant, hearing aid or wheelchair.

What would happen if equality duties were properly enacted?

The proper enforcement, monitoring and training for schools on the Public Sector Equality Duty, especially as it applies to disabled people (Section 149 of the Equality Act), would lead to a rapid embracing of disability equality as a key aim in schools and colleges. The Disability Equality duties are based on a human rights/social model approach rather than the older deficit/medical model approach to disability.

How much better it would be if all schools enrolled the disabled children living in their catchment area and the school was resourced to meet their needs, the barriers challenged and removed, the staff trained to provide an inclusive approach to learning and socialization and the children and students were empowered to collaborate and support each other, rather than compete? In other words, an education system based on inclusive values.

How does Inclusive Education fit in?

The first internationally legally-binding treaty on the rights of persons with disabilities, agreed in 2006 with Article 24 on Inclusive Education, starts with:

The UK Government ratified this Convention in June 2009, but unfortunately placed a reservation and objection against it. The first changes the UK’s definition of a ‘general education system’ to include segregated education:

“The United Kingdom Government is committed to continuing to develop an inclusive system where parents of disabled children have increasing access to mainstream schools and staff, which have the capacity to meet the needs of disabled children. The General Education System in the United Kingdom includes mainstream, and special schools, which the UK Government understands is allowed under the Convention.” (Interpretative Declaration on Education – Convention Article 24 Clause 2 (a) and (b))

The second reserves the UK’s right to send disabled children to special schools outside their local area:

“The United Kingdom reserves the right for disabled children to be educated outside their local community where more appropriate education provision is available elsewhere. Nevertheless, parents of disabled children have the same opportunity as other parents to state a preference for the school at which they wish their child to be educated.” (Reservation: Education – Convention Article 24 Clause 2 (a) and 2 (b))

The UK is one of only two countries in the world to place restrictions on Article 24 (the other being Mauritius).

In September 2016 the UN Disability Committee published a General Comment on Article 24 setting out how governments can move towards greater inclusion. Again, the UK has ignored this and remains out of step with the rest of the world. An article in June 2024 on SNJ by Professor Mel Ainscow shows how far away we are in the UK from what is going on in countries where inclusive education is seen as a human right.

What inclusive education is and is not

The General Comment No 4 is useful in that it demonstrates what Inclusive Education is and is not.  

The World is falling far behind achieving this SDG goal due to Covid disruption and a reduction in financial aid, but nowhere is this more than amongst disabled children and young people.

Though the circumstances are very different between low-income countries and the UK, the failure to develop inclusive education in both has its roots in the same outdated ‘medical model/deficit thinking’.

Whole school approach for inclusion

Ironically, the expansion of Inclusive Education to cover the full variety of diversity has brought its own problems of dilution of the inclusion of disabled children and young people. This manifests itself mainly in the lack of understanding and practice amongst all mainstream staff.

Recently, The Difference and the IPPR in their report addressing lost learning in England, have proposed an inclusion model based on a whole-school approach. Based on work with 200 schools, the report sets out four principles of effective whole school inclusion.

• ONE: Inclusion is… Built from the universal up
• TWO: Inclusion is… Culture-led from the top
• THREE: Inclusion is… Community collaboration
• FOUR: Inclusion is…Measurable

The authors argue for an inclusive system in mainstream and to break down silos to deal with the challenges of attendance, behaviour and special educational needs. Their vision of inclusion includes equalising cohort intake to represent those living in the catchment of the school, but they still repeat the Government mantra ‘that special and alternative provision schools will always be needed for some children with the most complex needs’. Thus reinforcing silos for those who need the relationships and social inclusion in the community the most.

How do you get inclusive education?

Inclusive education is a change process of the culture, policies and practice of the school, as was established nearly 30 years ago by the development and utilisation of the Index for Inclusion (Booth, Ainscow, 2002). We cannot say who cannot be included in the mainstream once we set about demolishing the barriers that prevent their inclusion. Eventually, all young people should be in the mainstream as the process beds in. But this does not mean treating everyone the same; far from it.

A whole-school approach to inclusion, as championed by nasen (National Association for Special Educational Needs), involves a commitment from all staff, students, and parents to create a learning environment that supports the needs of all learners, including those with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND). This approach is facilitated by nasen’s Whole School SEND initiative, which provides resources and support to schools. This is based on a social model approach and emphasises identifying barriers. (Read SNJ’s posts by Whole School SEND here)

When I was working on a global project for UNICEF on Preparing Teachers for Inclusion, after a thorough global survey and resource review, I formed the view that for training teachers and other education staff for inclusive practice, we needed a Twin Track approach.

The problem is that general inclusion training does not give education staff the expertise, pedagogy and knowledge they need to make the specific adjustments and supports that disabled children and young people need to access learning, thrive and achieve.

The twin tracks of teacher education are the General Inclusion Track and the Impairment Specific Track to be applied in an inclusive general education setting.

Examples of both are listed below.

General Inclusion Track

The general inclusion track of teacher education involves developing teaching and learning strategies that support inclusive education: i) to ix)

1. Valuing difference and diversity;
2. Differentiation of materials and methods;
3. Collaborative learning where pupils and teachers work together;
4. Peer support where pupils help each other academically and socially and challenge negative language and behaviour;
5. Flexible curricula as well as the provision of classroom and assessment materials;
6. An anti-bias curriculum that challenges traditional sex, tribal, class and disability perspectives;
7. Sufficient time for meaningful learning and rewarding of effort compared to individual’s previous achievements;
8. The creation of a stimulating and interesting multi-sensory learning environment; and
9. A child-centred approach with teacher reflection.

Impairment Specific Track

The impairment-specific track recognises that the above approaches on their own will not work equally for all disabled children, as they require reasonable adjustments and support arising from their impairments and the barriers they face. These adjustments are specific to the types of impairment a child/young person has. Within this track, the teacher/school would learn to identify the loss of physical or mental function, with a basic screening tool and have a working knowledge of the range of adjustments that can be implemented in the classroom.

Tools available for teachers for disabled students

Below is a list, although not comprehensive, of some tools available for teachers to use with their disabled students :

1. Visually Impaired or Blind: Glasses, magnification glasses, Braille, tactile maps and diagrams, audio tapes/CDs and text to talk, mobility training, large print documents and paperwork, audio description, modified orientation and creation of fixed points in class, creation of auditory environments, talking instruments, color contrasts, and identification of hazards such as steps;
2. Deaf and Hearing Impaired: Finger spelling and basic sign language, interpretation, Oral-lip reading, basic Hearing Aid maintenance, strong emphasis on visual environment, additional time and support with abstract concepts and maths;
3. Deafblind: Some of the tools listed above in a) and b), Deafblind Language, provision of interpreters, creation of tactile environments;
4. Physical Impairments: -Adapting doorways and furniture, creation of an accessible infrastructure as well as accessible toilet and washing facilities, maintaining safe storage of equipment, provision of personal assistance, diet and medication resources, and rest time space;
5. Specific learning difficulties: Creation of colour overlays and backgrounds, providing easy read texts, story tapes and text to talk, allowing the use of spell-checkers, concrete objects, and breaking activities down into small doable steps;
6. Speech and communication difficulty/impairment: Facilitated Communication, Augmented Communication low and high tech, pointing, switching, talkers, information grids;
7. General cognitive Impairment: Pictograms, small steps curriculum, easy read, scaffolding, Makaton, symbols, information grids, concrete objects, individual programme, recording thoughts on video;
8. Mental Health Impairment: Counselling and personal support, differentiated behaviour policy, empathy, quiet space, circle of friends;
9. Neurodiversity & Behaviour impairment: Circle of friends, structured environment and day, differentiated behaviour policy, chill out space and mentoring.

The above are only illustrative and not exhaustive.

Providing teachers with access to these tools and giving them access to this knowledge and understanding has proven useful in creating new attitudes and values that can improve disability equality training and disability studies.

The whole-school approach is vital here so staff share and integrate these techniques and methods in their day-to-day practice.

Intentional relationship building

Inclusion & the intentional building of relationships was an early definition of inclusion from Canada, where the first purposive school inclusion projects started more than 55 years ago. They were part of a movement to de-intuitionalise adult services and schools, and shut special schools.

Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic School Board in Ontario pioneered its Each Belongs approach. See Each Belongs Jim Hansen and Gerv Leyden, Inclusion Press. The thinking was that separation and segregation break the relationships humans have with each other. Through techniques such as Circles of Friends, buddying and Person-Centred Planning, these breakages can be restored to allow the disabled person to rebuild a life. See Inclusive Solutions who have developed a range of tools to introduce these tools into a British context.

Labour’s 1997-2010 focus on Education, Education, Education

Twenty-eight years ago, a previous Labour Government was committed to Education, Education, Education. David Blunkett, as Secretary of State for Education, endorsed the UNESCO Salamanca Statement for Inclusion, set up a National Advisory Committee on SEN and developed a strategy to develop a more inclusive mainstream system. Education was brought under the Disability Discrimination Act with the 2001 Education Amendment Act.

This had an impact, with 60% of school students with a statement being educated in the mainstream from 2004 to 2006. I was involved in selecting, and then filming and reporting on 40 mainstream schools that had developed Reasonable Adjustments for the full range of impairments for the Department of Education.

But then, spurious concerns about school students’ positions on international league tables predominated, and increasing competitive pressure was put on schools, with teachers increasingly not trusted. By 2007, Andrew Adonis, then minister for schools, could tell the Education Select Committee that the Labour Government ‘did not have a policy for Inclusion’.

Education policy was more and more run from Downing Street. A welter of initiatives followed that were not tested for their impact on disabled learners. Baroness Warnock also came out against the inclusion that her famous report of 1978 had argued for. By 2010, the trend towards greater use of special schools was well underway, and previous good inclusive practice in mainstream schools was reversed, including whole school approaches and a wide use of resource bases.

Education in England, 2010-2024

With the Coalition government from 2010, came an acceleration of competition and market forces through performance league tables and Ofsted. The acceleration of academisation marginalised disabled students even more. This was not helped by David Cameron having a policy of ‘being against the bias to inclusion’.

Local authority specialist support teacher teams were dismantled, the curriculum was narrowed, and starting points rose. Coursework was crushed, and learning became more exclusionary. This resulted in underachievement growing to 30%, then 40% of the cohort.

As many will know, the 2014 reforms of The Children and Families Act Part 3 brought the change to SEN Support and EHCPs. Unfortunately, this coincided with austerity when local authority and school budgets were severely strained by austerity. This has, as we know, led to growing numbers of parents seeking specialist provision, often via the SEND Tribunal, because their disabled child’s needs have increasingly not been met.

Can we change the trend to inclusion?

Now we have a chance to reverse these trends. The arguments above demonstrate why this has to be whole-school and system-wide change, based on the well-established practices of inclusive education. Those who will demonstrate whether this is working, and who should be at the centre of these changes, must be disabled children and young people in our mainstream schools.

But to do this will be challenging: teachers must reinvent their teaching and learning styles to be inclusive through Twin Track approaches, the building of relationships, and the empowerment of disabled children and students. Additionally, the government must channel funding to these endeavours to resolve massive council high needs funding deficits.

If a true focus on inclusion is prioritised, parents and carers should have increasing confidence that their disabled children can thrive and achieve in mainstream schools. But the strategy must be the development of real inclusive practice in the mainstream, tailored to meet the needs of all learners and reduce the barriers they face.

Dr Richard Rieser OBE, World of Inclusion Ltd

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Also read:

• SEN Resource Bases and Unit Provision in Secondary—what are they and do they count as inclusion?
• UK Disability History Month – How far have we still got to go?
• Inclusion and putting the ‘Disability’ back into SEND
• Human Rights, The Equality Act and Inclusive Education: The 12 changes the #SENDReview Green Paper needs for a paradigm shift
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• The same but different: Understanding SEND and inclusion in schools today
• Inclusive Education: It’s not just a buzzword—it’s something we can define and measure
• Without detailed plans for its planned “Inclusion Dashboards”, the DfE is navigating towards an Inclusion Illusion
• Disability History Month 2023: Focusing on disability, childhood and youth shows inclusion is going backwards
• “Every learner matters and matters equally”. But in England’s education system, do they really?
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Richard Rieser

Managing Director at World of Inclusion

Richard Rieser is a leading disability advocate. He is the managing director of World of Inclusion Ltd.
RIchard is an expert disabled international equality trainer, consultant, filmmaker, writer and teacher.

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Latest posts by Richard Rieser (see all)

• Learning from disability history to create policies where inclusive education can become a reality - May 14, 2025
• Disability History Month 2023: Focusing on disability, childhood and youth shows inclusion is going backwards - November 15, 2023
• Human Rights, The Equality Act and Inclusive Education: The 12 changes the #SENDReview Green Paper needs for a paradigm shift - May 20, 2022