Inclusive Education

According to Pro Bono Australia’s news article Call for equality for Students with Disability, the right and equality of students with disability still remain poor as they are being denied to have inclusive education. The inclusive education is basically putting students with disability in a regular class with students that do not have disability, and the students with disability only receive special help when they need.

The article says that there are currently a lot of barriers for students with disability to receive inclusive education. I agree with the article as I have seen these barriers in my high school.

One of the problems which I see in my high school that creates barriers for students with disabilities is the lack of basic assisting facilities. Case in point, there is no way for students with physical disabilities to travel between the ground floor and the first floor, as there is no accessible path if you are in a wheelchair. The same situation happens to the toilets and the canteen. Another problematic situation of my high is there is a lack of support staff to help and assist those students in need, especially who have intellectual disabilities.

About the situation in my high school, I would like to share a real story that happened in my school. There was one boy in year 8 of my high school who has some condition of delayed development of the brain, named Jim. Jim’s parents decided to let him go to my high school so that he can have inclusive education.  Jim had all his class with regular kids my school. However, because the support staff in my high school also teach classes, it was not possible for them to always give Jim the special assist when he needs them, both physically and academically. Therefore, what my school did is let three very warm-hearted students help Jim. They entered year 7 with Jim and ever since then, also it was not their official job, they still agree with high school to help Jim as they can when the support staffs are not available. So you can always see the four of them together in the playground. 

It is indeed a very warm story. However, the problem behind it is also very worrying – my high school does not even have enough support staff to assist Jim’s inclusive education. In fact, not only support staffs, but also regular teacher should be trained to be prepared for teaching students with disability. A lack of social justice can be seen as the attributes of social justice also include equity in human development. (Buettner-Schmidt & Lobo, 2012) It is clearly not able to be achieved because many of Australian schools are not fully ready to deliver fair quality inclusive education for students with disability. These barriers will remain until they are fully prepared.

 

Reference

Unknown author (not mentioned on the website). (2013). Call for equality for Students with Disability. Pro Bono Australia. Retrieved on 27/10/2013 from: http://www.probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2013/10/call-equality-students-disability

Buettner-Schmidt, K., & Lobo M.L. (2012). Social justice: a concept analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing 68(4), 948–958.