Press releases

Press Release: The Government’s Funding Cuts To Mainstream Education are a Breach of Disabled Pupils’ Human Rights

Immediate Embargo:

On the 30th May 2019, the Alliance for Inclusive Education will be joining forces with thousands of National SEND Crisis march protestors against the schools funding crisis at Downing Street.

29 May 2019

As a result of this funding crisis, disabled pupils have found themselves increasingly being excluded from schools and pushed out of mainstream education, with 44.2% of EHCP pupils attending special schools (Department for Education, 2018a) and 5.17% receiving “one or more fixed period exclusion” (compared to 1.08% of non-SEN pupils) (Department for Education, 2018b). Similarly, disabled pupils are disproportionately affected by off-rolling, with approximately 5,700 disabled pupils “disappearing” from state-funded secondary schools between Years 10 and 11 (Ofsted, 2018).

During routine scrutiny of the Government’s implementation of UNCRPD, the UNCRPD monitoring committee did not accept insufficient funding as a reason for a lack of investment in inclusive education and concluded there was a clear violation of disabled pupils’ human rights under Article 24. The committee recommended that the Government must,

“adopt and implement a coherent and adequately financed strategy, with concrete timelines and measurable goals, on increasing and improving inclusive education” (The Alliance for Inclusive Education, 2018).

In June 2019, the Government’s education spending cuts go on trial and a high court judge will decide whether disabled pupils’ right to mainstream education has been violated under the Equality Act 2010, Human Rights Act 1998 and UNCPD Article (24).

Simone Aspis, ALLFIE’s Policy and Campaigns Coordinator states that,

“the funding cuts are creating rife disablism and disability-related discrimination in our mainstream education system. For the first time in history, more disabled pupils with EHCPs are being educated in special schools than in mainstream ones. This needs to stop right now – this Government has a duty to promote inclusive education among disabled pupils”.