Are Australian schools inclusive?

Kurt Fearnley: We've produced this podcast on Awabakal Land and we've spoken to people living and working on Aboriginal land across Australia. We pay our respects to the elders, past and present. who continue to be among Australia's greatest storytellers and educators, passing on their knowledge using oral traditions and practices.

Kurt Fearnley: Hi I'm Kurt Fearnley, Paralympian and proud person with a disability

Sarah Shands: And I'm Sarah Shands, mum of a budding engineer with a disability

Gillian Stewart: I built a place for my squishy mellow jellyfish made out of blocks with little plastic diamonds in it so it's pretty.

Kurt Fearnley: I need one of those.

Sarah Shands: We all do.

Kurt Fearnley: This is Let Us In, a podcast series all about what it's like to be a person with disability living in Australia today. We've put this series together because it's time you knew a few things about what life can be like for people with a disability. And a good place to start is back in 1985. Nope no! Not that 1985, I'm talking regional Australia 1895, which is kinda like 1955. I'm 4 years old. It's November and we're in a little town in western NSW called Carcoar. My brothers and sisters are at school and it might be a warm and sunny day, but I'm inside playing with my matchbox cars while mum's doing the washing.

There's a knock at the door and there's two people I have never seen in my life standing there. Mum invites them into the kitchen and then ushers me out into the other room. I knew they were there because of me. But I didn't know why. I'm in another room, desperately trying to listen to what they're saying and I'm only catching bits and pieces.

It's such a strange feeling, when someone is talking about you. And you kinda know what they're saying. But you also don't. It just seems forign.

These people were from the Department of Education and were there telling my mum that there was a place for people like me. A special school for special kids. That sending me to the local school would be too hard. How would I even get into the classroom? They'd ask.

Mum was shaken when they left. She pulled me in for a cuddle, and then she went back to the washing and I went back to playing.

Then there was another knock at the door. This time it was the principal from Caroar Public School, Mr L'Home. Mum brought him into the kitchen, and again ushered me back into the other room.

But this time it was different. I knew they were talking about me. And I wasn't worried at all. Something about what he was saying made sense. And he also seemed so sure of what he was saying.

And all the questions those people from the Department of Education asked mum — like how was I going to get around the school? He would just say, we'll figure it out.

He didn't see me as too hard. He knew that there was a place for me in my local school with my brothers and sisters. The same school that my grandparents went through. And he saw value in having me there.

Sarah Shands: I love that story Kurt. But special schools work for some family's Kurt. So that might be your story, but it's not everyone's story.

Kurt Fearnley: Well firstly, special schools? They're not special. I feel really uncomfortable with that term because we call them special schools to make ourselves feel comfortable. We need to tell it what it is. We need to use real language. It's segregated education.

Sarah Shands: Okay, That's a really loaded word and I guess I feel a bit uncomfortable about that.

Kurt Fearnley: No matter how uncomfortable this makes you feel. It's time to stop hiding behind the word 'special'. I think it's time we don't feel okay. So I'm going to call it segregated education, because that's what it is. And I'm not calling it segregated education to offend you, or to disrespect the incredible work that the teachers, principals and support staff do at these schools every single day. or the very real challenges that lead a parent to this choice. It's not that at all.

Sarah Shands: So what's it about then?

Kurt Fearnley: It's time we demand that we do better by our children and young people with a disability. Because no child should be made to feel like they are too hard. Or that they don't belong. And those very same conversations we have today were had about me 35 years ago. Or you may see that I'm easy right. I'm the easy case. I wasn't the easy case in 85' It's the same conversation just happening to a different group of people

Sarah Shands: It seems really counterintuitive when you've got these schools that are full of speciality trained teachers that know how to teach kids with disabilities, they're trained to do it. So it seems on the surface that this sort of investment in that part of the education sector would lead to better outcomes for kids with disability.

Kurt Fearnley: Not according to the research. The segregated school settings actually put kids on a path to lifelong isolation from their community.

Sarah Shands: Alright. Let's look at why there are these segregated schools for children with disability. Chris Peters, chose to send his eleven year old daughter to Darling Point Special School, because mainstream school just wasn't working for his family.

Chris Peters: We knew that she had some issues and wasn't developing in comparison to other children. She had fine motor skill issues. She had all these issues. But anyway, we thought, well, you know, it might be just a different process, we just got to play catch up. And anyway, she was at that school until we got to the point where she was one step away from being removed from the school, because she was so disruptive. Not intentionally, but she was very disruptive, very controlling, and she really a one on one education type kid.

Kurt Fearnley: And so what made you think that this school might be right for your family?

Chris Peters: I don't know what first made us come to Darling Point but we came up to meet with Charmaine and our daughter came there went into class and we had a look at it. And since then, it's been absolutely fantastic. It is so the right place first she loves going to the school. She's very much she needs one on one.

Sarah Shands: As a parent we want our kids to be happy and finding a school that they thrive in is such an important part of this.

Kurt Fearnley: I built my career and my identity through what can be seen as a segregated sport, wheelchair racing. And look, I love my Paralympic Mob. We are a diverse and inclusive family. But we grew out of a segregated family. And I know that things are changing. Athletics club, swimming clubs have para participation and events too. And so you can see that this issue is so complex. And emotional. Because people with disability find belonging in their segregated spaces.

Sarah Shands: One of the main criticisms levelled at segregated schools is that they have low, really low expectations of what kids with disabilities can achieve. This was the case for Luke Nelson.

Luke Nelson: I rolled out of school and I couldn't read. I couldn't write and remind they remind that I'd like to remind the listeners that I was 18 when I couldn't read or write So that was, that was not a good experience for me.

Sarah Shands: Why don't you think you were taught to read or write at your school?

Luke Nelson: Because I believe that the expectations of people with disabilities in some places weren't that high. And I think community expectations aren't that high. You get out of school, and sometimes they go, okay, you'll go to a day service, you'll go somewhere else. So the expectations of having a job, you know, moving out of home or doing something that they just weren't there.

Kurt Fearnley: Luke's right. Young people that go to a segregated school are excluded from their community from a very early age. And this puts them on the path to day services, Australian Disability Enterprises the old sheltered workshops –entrenching this isolation and exclusion. And when mainstream school get it wrong, it can lead to lifelong trauma. David Roy has worked as a teacher for the past 30 years and when his son was diagnosed with Autism, they began early intervention programs through the Department of Education in New South Wales.

David Roy: We discovered he was getting unexplained bruising, we discovered that he was becoming quite traumatised, just having to go to this place. And we removed him. I apologise, I still find this quite emotional. It came when he likes chocolate. Okay, he had a limited diet in those days of, you know, basically cheese, juice chocolate. And we had some chocolate in a kitchen cupboard in the corner. And we said, oh, go to the cupboard and get it. He refused to. In fact, he ran away in tears. We're going what is going on here. And we had a child in tears, scared of a cupboard in our kitchen. And he just started saying bad teachers. And we found that the children are put into small cupboards and this was a cupboard it was an upright cupboard with a like a walk in door but it was just shelves all the way out full of items for the classroom. And you could literally stand in front of the shelves close the door and your back is against the door

Sarah Shands: What was it like as a parent, having that trust abused?

David Roy: It's guilt. And I'm the most guilty because I am the parent who was a teacher saying, no, no, they can't be doing the wrong thing. Their teachers, we don't do that. That was stupid of me.

Sarah Shands: What happened with the school and the teacher?

David Roy: We did end up going to legal proceedings. I can't tell you the result of those. Because we had to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Kurt Fearnley: There is no denying that there are valid fears coming from the disability community about attending mainstream schools. When mainstream school aren't equipped to teach children with disability, parents feel they have no other option but to enrol their children in a segregated school. But what if we were to demand that the mainstream schools were better. Genuinely inclusive and resourced to support our children with a disability, in their community. We are the 15 – 20 percent of the population, and shouldn't mainstream schools should reflect that?

Sarah Shands: Armstrong Creek School is in Victoria and they are living inclusion. This mainstream school has over 600 kids and 13-15% of the students have a disability. Evan Savage is the school's principal.

Evan Savage: we're very lucky with the new school, a lot of the environmental things have been done for us. But we think about the instruction, so how we teach, what needs to change what's different? What's the, what is it about the curriculum that's hard to access the environment? And then the last thing we would focus on is, what is it about the student or the learner that, you know, might be inhibiting them from being fully included? you know, a school would say, you know, what, if only we could do this, we would be able to support that child better? Well, how do we plan for that.

Sarah Shands: Hannah Prentice moved her family from Melbourne so all three of her kids could enrol at Armstrong Creek School. Its culture of catering to all children is particularly important for her middle child, who has down syndrome, and was enrolled in a segregated school.

Hannah Prentice: It was brilliant school, I can't fault it. They were amazing with her really, really good. But she developed a lot of behaviours. She got quite aggressive for a little while there. She developed things that she'd never done before. Like she started flapping her hands a lot. And yeah, it was a lot of challenging behaviour that sort of started when she started at school.

Kurt Fearnley: Has there been an effect on your family of having all your kids in one school?

Hannah Prentice: It's been a game changer for us. I think great for them inclusive point of view, they don't notice disability. You know, they've got kids in their classes that have a wide variety of different additional needs going on. And half the kids, they don't know that it's, it's a thing.

Kurt Fernley: And this is what inclusion does. Disability becomes part of the fabric of what makes us human. And not something to be ashamed of, or to hide away or to fear. And that is really powerful for making our whole community inclusive.

Sarah Shands: But Armstrong Creek isn't every school.

Kurt Fearnley: Why not? If Armstrong Creek is on the right track, then why can't we start to create more inclusive schools right across the country? Catia Malaquias is the founder of All means All, the Australian alliance for inclusive education

Catia Malaquias: When my son Julius was born I was told, I think on day, you know, about a day later that they suspected that he had Down Syndrome, I immediately started to ask the nurses in the maternity ward for recommendations about the best special school saying you, you know, in my area. My thought process immediately jumped from I now have a child with the disability that must mean that this is where he goes. So it's this assumption of special places for special people. I am not a bad person. I was pretty ignorant person. And, you know, that is that is, you know, like ableism it, which is, I guess, in a way, you know, there are different ways to define it. But it's, it's the belief system, it's, you know, it, it reflects the belief systems that we have about people whose bodies and brains don't conform to a certain idea. Now, I was pretty lucky that I had people around me that started to challenge that. And I'm also sort of quite curious, I then I started reading a lot and I was shocked, I tell you, I was shocked to discover that the practice of actually separating out people with disability, you know, does not have any support in terms of, you know, education research. So the practice of segregation is not evidence based. It is a historical practice.

Kurt Fearnley: But when a child with a disability turns 5, they need to go to school. And so you have a choice to make. A segregated school or a mainstream school.

Catia Malaquias: Parents are often put in a position where they just have to make Hobson's choice. It's either this, you know, segregated education system, which is not evidence based, and creates a whole bunch of problems, or it's a mainstream system where kids aren't being supported properly, you know, having a really hard time, that is not a choice. But what disabled people and advocates are fighting for is actually for an inclusive education system that we don't have yet.

Sarah Shands: So what would creating an inclusive education system look like?

Catia Malaquias: So we're talking about transforming the education system to make you know, Schools genuinely inclusive of diversity and difference, not just for students with disability, but for other groups as well that have been traditionally, you know, marginalised in education systems as well.

Kurt Fearnley: So what do the young people think? Margarita has worked as an advocate for Children and Young People with Disabilities and thinks co-design or asking people with disability what they think the solutions are, could be a good place to start.

Margarita Dall'Occo-Vaccar: Where I think codesign can really kick off and really have an impact is in policies, in training programs, in government advisory in all of those foundation things that build the structures and build schools to then be supportive of students with disability. But I also think that within schools, co-design means that you can have meaningful participation of students in the way that they are in that community.

Kurt Fearnley: So what is stopping the education system from being genuinely inclusive? David Roy again.

David Roy: I will say some of the mainstream schools are fantastic. And yes, there are segregated settings, both within schools and our separate schools. One of the reasons we have those is because the mainstream system is not built to include. So yes, I understand why parents go to these segregated settings and want them because it's the safest place for their kids to be. Even though we also know that segregated settings is where abuse and discrimination is more likely to happen. But it's hard. Everything is a barrier.

Kurt Fearnley: So while ever there is a release valve out there which is the segregated setting we will have segregated schools. That will give a chance for a kid with a disability who goes through the mainstream setting to be labelled too hard.

Sarah Shands: Up next on Let Us In

Margaret Ward: She knew no one in the street. She would even try to visit and she would go to the front door and call out. It was so painful so sad.

Sarah Shands: That's up next on Let Us In. If you like what you've heard, subscribe on the ABC listen app for more episodes, and feel free to share this podcast with everyone you know

Sarah Shands: This podcast has been produced with the support of the Melbourne Disability Institute and the University of Melbourne. The Executive Producer is Sarah Shands of Point 5 Productions. Fact checking by Lisa Herbert. Big thanks to Blythe Moore, Phil Ashley Brown, Simon Scoble and Nicole Bond. Sound engineer is Clint Topic from Sawtooth Studios and all round ideas guy is Grant Wolter.