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Point of view
Point of view: my school career
Photo: RNIB
People with Vision Impairment deserve equality in education Conrad Will
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s a child with vision impairment (VI) in mainstream education, I was lucky to have gone to schools which did their utmost to meet my needs. I also had unwavering support from my family. But even then, the reality was that the outlook for children with VI was mixed at best. I fear that for many children and young people today, their circumstances may not be so fortunate unless urgent changes are made. I am one of over 30,000 people aged 0-25 with a vision impairment in England. We require specialist support to learn on equal terms with sighted children, enabling us to develop the skills we need to succeed at school, live independently as adults and enter employment. Yet as we take stock of the pandemic’s impact on education, new research from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) shows a worrying trend of children and young people with VI being let down. In the past year alone, a third of local authorities in England have seen their budgets for specialist VI education services SEN119
“My school had never had a VI student before” cut – at a time where specialist provision for high need, low incidence disabilities, like VI, could not be more important. Sadly, the deterioration of support for children with vision impairment is not a new development, despite the present backdrop of the wider education sector being under unprecedented strain. In the past four years, over half of local authorities have had their VI service budgets cut at least once, with over three quarters having their budgets frozen or cut. I am sure that I would not have got into Oxford University, nor gone on to work in Parliament, were I not able to participate in mainstream education. It is vital that children with vision impairment can, wherever possible, learn alongside their sighted peers. There are numerous social justifications for this, in senmagazine.co.uk
