15th September 2020
After a long campaign by disability advocates, the right to attend school fulltime is now enshrined as part of the Education Act (2020). Our Kahui Ako has a long history of supporting students with additional learning needs. Principals and SENCos attended a session facilitated by Trish Grant, Director of Advocacy, IHC, who challenged us to think about how we take our Catholic school values and translate them into practice in our schools and classrooms. In a discussion around inclusion, as opposed to exclusion, segregation or integration, we considered some key questions: Who is 'in'? Who is 'out'? Who decides? and what are we going to do about it?
Following on from the morning session, SENCos worked together with Victoria Parsons, Service Manager, MoE, to build a common understanding of how we can share information about our learners who need various forms of support. This is an exciting, ongoing collaborative project between all of our Catholic schools that will hopefully result in some extra resourcing, better transitioning of students and ultimately, better outcomes for students.