The Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has backed special schools and called for a re-think of the Government’s inclusion policy. The Tory leader said he was deeply concerned about special schools in his north-east London constituency which were threatened with closure because the local council wanted to integrate children into mainstream education. He accused the Government of putting pressure on councils to integrate special needs children and questioned whether this was possible for children with serious difficulties.
Daily Telegraph, July 2, 2003.

An independent adjudicator has backed the closure of Dean Hall School in Gloucestershire. Parents marched in the street to save the school but the Labour-run council said it was following the Government’s policy of including all but the most seriously disabled children in mainstream schools. The Local School Organisation Committee, which oversees admissions and places, referred the controversial closure to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, set up under the 1998 Schools Standards and Framework Act. The adjudicator, Hilary Nicolle, the former education director of the London borough of Islington, backed the council and said it had a legal obligation to close special schools and divert money to mainstream classes to comply with the Government’s inclusion policy. Her word is final unless the parents can find funds to apply to the High Court for a judicial review of the decision. If the ruling stands, it could sound the death knell for hundred of other schools under threat.
The Daily Telegraph (Weekend), July 5, 2003.

Schools across Scotland will fail to deliver equal access to mainstream education for disabled pupils without greater Scottish Executive support, councils and lobby groups have warned. Legislation to be introduced next month will direct schools to give mainstream education to all pupils, including those with physical and educational special needs, other than in ‘exceptional circumstances’. However councils fear they will not be ready to implement the policy, part of the Standards in Scotland’s School Act 2000, at the start of the new term. They pinpoint the difficulties in providing access to sprawling secondary schools in ageing buildings.
Sunday Herald (Glasgow), July 6, 2003.

An award-winning special school has lost its battle to stay open. St Anne’s Special School in Lewes is to close by 2007. Headteacher Gill Ingold received the decision of an independent adjudicator yesterday and tearfully broke the news to staff after school. The closure will be phased with the primary school section closing in September 2005 before the remaining secondary school closes on August 31, 2007. Cabinet members on East Sussex County Council voted to close the school which has 75 pupils in December, as part of a county-wide review of special needs education. The decision was made because of a drop in numbers but the council was accused of blocking the admission of pupils and not giving some children the option of going to St Anne’s. However, an independent adjudicator said he was not convinced the school could continue to be viable educationally or financially in the years ahead.
Brighton Evening Argus, July 15, 2003.

The director of the Alliance for Inclusive Education, Micheline Mason, has highlighted the funding difficulties faced by the small number of national voluntary organisations working full-time for inclusive education. She says that as inclusive education is supposedly accepted policy by the Government it might be expected that organisations like hers would by now be fully supported. However, this is not the case. She points out that millions of pounds are still being poured into segregated special schools. For example, Scope has a budget of £61 million to educate fewer than 400 children while the main voluntary organisations working towards inclusion have an annual income of less than £1m between them.
The Guardian (Education), July 29, 2003.