Removing barriers to achievement: A strategy for inclusion or exclusion?

Taking as its starting point a critique of policy for inclusion which I published 6 years ago after the publication of the Green Paper Excellence for All Children; Meeting Special Educational Needs (DfEE, 1997 DfEE. 1997. Excellence for all children; meeting special educational needs, London: DfEE. Google Scholar), the present paper presents a critical analysis of subsequent policy relating to the inclusion of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in the mainstream of education which claims to secure for them a genuinely equitable educational experience. The results of this analysis suggest that far from ensuring full participation as a right, the policy for inclusion can be seen to have done little to increase genuine access to the mainstream for these pupils and may well have even increased exclusionary practices therein. The paper focuses particularly on the potential of current government strategy, presented in Removing Barriers to Achievement. The Government's Strategy for SEN (2004), to drive forward and realize the inclusion agenda. This examination reveals that, as in previous policy, there is a failure to recognize the complex and controversial nature of inclusion; no attempt is made to address the exclusiveness of the curriculum, assessment procedures, and practices of mainstream provision and that the strategy is founded on notions of normalization, compensation and deficit approaches to SEN. The paper argues that there is a need to recognize that as long as policy is founded on the idea that inclusion into the mainstream of schooling, as it is currently conceived, and achievement measured against a set of norm related standards is the route to good education children with SEN will continue to be disadvantaged and to receive an inferior educational opportunity