Educational support and social exclusion

The net result in NSW government schools has been an expansion in the number of students who are difficult to teach, together with a contraction in the achievement bands they must reach, as well as increasing sophistication in the ways in which their progress (and that of their teachers) is monitored.

While school systems in Australia have not yet progressed down the micro-managed road of scripted pedagogies, teachers in NSW have had to contend with high-definition curriculum documents, overlaid with multiplying outcome statements and the development of integrated units, together with greater pastoral responsibilities, legislative requirements and parent communities whose demands have been sharpened by choice policies and school markets (see the report In the Balance (pdf 2.24MB)).

Such a climate, not surprisingly, fosters survivalism and in schools struggling to meet their responsibilities with growing populations of students ill-prepared or disposed to classroom-based academic learning, as well as schools determined to maintain “choice” status, at least four incentives combine to drive the medical diagnosis of children who are hard to teach. These include:

1. the extra funding attached to a diagnosis of disability;
2. opportunities to provide an authoritative medical explanation for learning failure;
3. the lure of protective special education placements for parents; and
4. the professional interest of the range of special education professions.

This experience is reflected elsewhere. Through the analysis of placement statistics, research from a number of international contexts has indicated that:

• the incidence of normative disability categories are on the decline while non-normative disability categories are rising;
• some children with additional support needs are more likely to be educated in inclusive settings than others;
• placement of students with disabilities, learning difficulties and/or challenging behaviour may be influenced more by socio-demographic factors such as gender, where the student lives, as well as level or type of need;
• placement in special classes and units within mainstream schools can result in segregation just as profound in its effect upon children’s social lives as enrolment in a special school; and
• accountability frameworks that use student performance as a proxy to assess the performance of individual schools and teachers place a premium upon children with additional support needs, increasing the desirability of separate educational facilities for under-performing students who are difficult and costly to teach.

Given the allocation of education to a new super-portfolio which also seeks to promote social inclusion, the time is ripe to address the role schools play in reproducing social stratification and exclusion.

State educational systems now have an opportunity to collaborate with the Federal government to sponsor research, policy, protocols and programs that are sensitive to such issues. A useful starting point is to gather extant knowledge and innovation across states and territories together with initiatives and research from international jurisdictions in New Zealand, Singapore, Canada and Finland. This collective evidence will provide the basis for innovation that will contribute to improved educational outcomes and more efficient resource allocation in public education.

In the meantime, investing in measures that increase the desirability of difficult to teach students through better recognition of excellence in inclusive practice, reward for team-teaching and mentoring by experienced educators, and reduction in class sizes in schools serving socially disadvantaged areas are some initiatives to help redirect focus from individual deficit. Such opportunities for a quiet revolution remain under-recognised.