ACADEMICS are pushing for specialist schools to be abolished in an effort to stop “segregating” students.
Senior lecturer at Australian Catholic University’s school of education Melissa Cain, who specialises in inclusive education, said students shouldn’t be separated.
“It doesn’t matter what (students) look like and what they can achieve, or what you know, they should all be educated together,” Dr Cain said.
“We shouldn’t be taking one set of children out of our society.
“Students with disabilities gain the most from being with their peers.”
However, Swan Hill Specialist School principal Jodi Walters said her students were not hidden and her school was a big part of the community.
“I dispute that we are segregated, 100 per cent,” she said. “We’re certainly involved in the community through our programs with other schools and our efforts to prepare our kids for the outside world.”
A large cohort of children in the Gannawarra Shire attend Swan Hill Specialist School.
While the calls have come from numerous senior educators at some of Australia’s most prestigious universities, Ms Walters is firm that the push has no momentum.
“I don’t believe there is a push to abolish specialist schools – it’s just a small group of university educators who wish to do so, it’s evident that the Department of Education supports us,” she said.
Teresa Iacono, of La Trobe University’s College of Science, Health and Engineering, said mainstream schools needed to be better equipped to help children with disabilities.
“We need to look at how we strengthen mainstream systems to cater to the needs of people with disabilities,” Prof Iacono said.
While Ms Walters said she was supportive of any improvement to help teachers and schools better deal with students who had learning difficulties, specialist schools would always be needed.
“The system needs specialist schools, and I cannot see a world where there isn’t,” she said.
Ms Walters said trying to improve the mainstream system was a noble endeavour – but the vastness of the task to make every kid attend regular schooling was far bigger than people are anticipating.
“Teachers are trained to support any student, but obviously, when you have a student with a disability, there are other things you’ve got to learn, which is where our local specialist schools come into play,” she said.
“My biggest concern would be the cost of disability for mainstream schools. We have students that require a hoist which is $7000, and a changing table, a further $5000, so are we going to put those in every school?”
As with any conversation about schooling, the opinion of their parents is, at the end of the day, the most critical, and this point wasn’t being recognised, Ms Walters said.
“I think what’s being forgotten in this conversation is that kids aren’t forced to enrol in specialist schools – parents have to enrol their kids to get in,” she said.
“My point is there are some students who will do better here, and that’s a choice their parents make, which is what I want to bring it all back to.
“If you asked any parent at this school if this is the place for your child, I’m willing to bet they’ll all say yes.”
The call follows a study by Monash University that has led the push for specialist schools to be scrapped and all students educated in a singular system to rid discriminative practices for students with disabilities in the education system.
