Tory leader tackled on schools bias

 Sunil Peck

An exchange between a father who fought to get his disabled son into mainstream school and David Cameron exposes a myth that the education system would be fairer for disabled children under a Conservative government, campaigners have said.

The Conservative manifesto  pledges to increase choice for the parents of disabled children by ending what the party describes as the "bias" towards including disabled children in mainstream schools and ending the "ideologically-driven" closure of special schools.

But Jonathan Bartley, who challenged David Cameron on his education policy after he battled for two years and spent thousands of pounds to get his son Samuel into a mainstream school, told the Conservative leader that there was a bias against rather than for inclusion and that his policy would lead to segregation.

Artemi Sakellariadis, Director of the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, said that many other parents had to fight to get their disabled children into mainstream schools which she said showed that there was not a bias towards inclusion.

She added: "It's all right to say that parents can choose the type of school and provision they want, but there are so many educational professionals who think that mainstream isn't a possibility for some disabled children  and no attempt is made to develop provision. So parents of disabled children in some local authorities don't have the choice of mainstream."

Richard Rieser, who founded the group Disability Equality in Education, said that when disabled children went to special school, it was often because they had been failed by a lack of provision in their local mainstream school.

He said: "It's not at all easy for parents to get their disabled kids into mainstream schools and if you've got a major party saying that they're going to remove the bias for inclusion it's going to mean a lot more segregation."

Tara Flood, Chief Executive Officer, Alliance for Inclusive Education, said that the conservatives only seemed to advocate more choice for parents who wanted their children to go to special schools.

She said: "The Cameron manifesto in terms of the education of disabled people, if implemented, would take us back forty years by reversing his believed bias in favour of inclusive education."