To what extent have learners with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties been excluded from the policy and practice of inclusive education?

ABSTRACT

The article is a position paper on inclusive practice in education with respect to students with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties (sld/pmld). It asks if children and young people with sld/pmld have been excluded from the policy and the practice of inclusive education. A review of the literature found that there is a research gap around inclusive education for learners with sld/pmld, and a review of historical and current practices indicated that this group of learners has indeed been excluded from both the policy and practice of inclusion in the United Kingdom with the use of curricula based on a mainstream linear and academic model reinforcing this exclusion. The study makes a theoretical and practical contribution to the continuing debate about inclusive education and will be of interest to teachers, parents, policy-makers and the learners themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Special education
• inclusive education
• special educational needs
• education policy
• severe learning difficulties
• profound and multiple learning difficulties

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Andrew Colley is Senior Lecturer in Special Education at The University of East London, Cass School of Education and Communities. He has taught children and young people with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties in special schools in Essex and Cambridgeshire and is the co-author with Peter Imray of ‘Inclusion is Dead. Long Live Inclusion’ (Routledge, 2017) and the author of ‘Personalised Learning for Young People with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties’ (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2013). Andrew has a Master’s Degree in Education (sld/pmld) with Distinction from the University of Birmingham and is currently undertaking a part/time PhD at The University of Cambridge Faculty of Education exploring outcomes for children with pmld in different settings in England.

ORCID

Andrew Colley http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4330-2418

Notes

1 A review of assessment for pupils working below the standard of national curriculum tests in the UK carried out by Diane Rochford at the request of the Minister of State for Schools and published in October 2016 has recommended that The P Scales be gradually phased out.