REGARDING the article 'Special schools get nil out of 188' by Mark Templeton (LET, December 3), I am amazed that such an ill-informed and highly insulting article was allowed in your newspaper.
Has Mr Templeton ever been in a special school in his life? He certainly has not been into our school, but if he had the nerve to visit and he was able to find one Year 11 pupil who is being denied the education they deserve, I would take out a lifetime subscription to the Telegraph.
At a time when the 'inclusion' of children with special needs into mainstream schools has reached epidemic proportions, we should be able to expect some honest reporting and not sensationalism.
Does Mr Templeton understand what it must be like to have a severely and multiply disabled child? Does anyone really understand outside of that child's family?
How do these families feel when they see their child's special school named in your paper for failing their child? And on what evidence? We do not enter children for GCSE examination. I have been the headteacher of this special school for pupils with physical difficulties for 14 years. During that time, we have re-integrated into their local mainstream schools a continual stream of pupils whose academic needs would be met better than they were here. As a result of this integration, our numbers have fallen from 94 to 44 over the last 10 years.
Currently, we have attached to this school an 'outreach' service which supports almost 100 pupils with physical difficulties, in nearly 70 mainstream schools. Most of these 100 pupils have never been pupils of this, or any other, special school, as they went directly into their local mainstream school.
Inclusion has already happened and the very small and declining number of pupils who remain in special schools, especially ours, have a depth of problems and needs which Mr Templeton is clearly incapable of understanding. I am not even certain whether David Blunkett, the Education Minister, grasps the current special school situation.
We keep no prisoners at Primrose Hill. The pupils have their needs met here and they remain here because that is what their statement of educational needs highlights and is what their parents wish for. The number of special schools and the number of pupils attending those special schools is at an all-time low and clearly will continue to fall further, thanks to the Government's Green Paper and articles like Mr Templeton's.
We in the 13 remaining special schools in East Lancashire are not attempting to stem the tidal wave of integration. Rather, we have concentrated on improving the quality of the service we provide for our very special children and, in my experience, both here and in the other special schools named in your article, of which I have personal experience, we are recognised as offering 'value for money.' Most have achieved good OFSTED reports.
The question which would be more interesting to ask is: "If all of those 118 pupils who were Year 11 pupils in these 13 special schools in 1996 had been in their local high school, how many of them would have been put in for GCSE examinations?"
I don't think that the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education want to hear the answer to that specific question.
GERARD McCABE, Head Teacher, Primrose Hill School, Harrogate Crescent, Burnley.
Footnote: Mark Templeton was merely reporting on a report by the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education. Mr McCabe is attacking the messenger. It was the Centre which made the various observations, not Mark Templeton - Editor.
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