Link to...Cover Story - Exclusive
Inclusive teachers benefit every student: How do we realise policy in the classroom? Professor Linda Graham is director of the QUT Centre for Inclusive Education. She is currently leading two projects investigating learning and behavioural difficulties and spoke to Kymberly Martin.
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nclusive education in Australia has a long way to go, with each state responding through its own policy and practice, Linda Graham told Link. In 2018, Queensland state schools developed an inclusive education policy referring to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD). This international human rights instrument provides governments with an outline of their obligations to deliver quality inclusive education for people with disability.
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August/September 2022
“But Queensland did more than just refer to the CRPD, they adopted the definition of inclusive education, as it is defined in General Comment No. 4 to the CRPD. GC4 not only defines ‘inclusion’ but also what it is not. Queensland is the only state so far to have done this. “For example, NSW came out with an inclusive education policy statement recently but did not follow what was done in Queensland. Yes, NSW cited the CRPD but they omitted General Comment 4”. Graham suggests that this may be because NSW has committed to
maintaining the more than 100 special schools and the 2000 segregated support classes, as well as increasing the number of support classes in line with enrolment growth. “This practice fundamentally contradicts the right to inclusive education”. One of the reasons Australia has not progressed with inclusive education in the past 30-plus years is because of the absence of a clear definition of what inclusion means, resulting in a lot of misappropriation of inclusive education by advocates of segregation like special school principals and educators.