And I just could not believe that this question had been asked of me. I'm pretty sure my jaw hit
the floor at that point.
No one should be held back in their education or their occupation
just because they have a disability or an additional need.
The ableist attitude within the education sector is quite apparent and that does
affect students negatively.
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Hello and welcome to Little Learners. Today's video is something a bit different but
something I feel very strongly about and I feel like it's really important to make this video
and to share it with all of you. I'd like to talk to you about ableism in education and
more specifically, disability discrimination within the education sector. I'm going to be talking about
this in terms of students and staff, the main issues that I've seen from my own experience
and what could be done to make things better for everyone. If you do find this video interesting
at any point please do click the like button, as it lets me know that this is something that
you're interested in and it also really helps out the channel. So I'm just going to run over a
few terms for you that I'm going to be using in this video just to make sure that we are all on
the same page about what they all mean. So first of all 'SEND' or 'S.E.N.D' means Special Educational
Needs and Disabilities. The term 'disability means a physical or mental impairment that
has a substantial or long-term negative impact on your ability to carry out daily activities,
and the term 'ableism means discrimination in favour of able-bodied people or non-disabled people.
So now that we've got that out of the way let's get into the video. So I myself am a disabled woman
and I have quite a few different health conditions that impact my physical ability. I experience a lot
of pain on a day-to-day basis and I have a lot of different conditions that I have to manage.
I have experienced disability discrimination both in primary schools, secondary schools -
not in universities actually - I've worked in two universities and both of those times have been
really pleasant experiences, but as a teacher I have certainly experienced disability
discrimination and I'll go into that a little bit in a moment. For students I don't think that
discrimination is necessarily as obvious but I think that the ableist attitude within the
education sector is quite apparent and that does affect students negatively. Now this is by no means
saying that all teachers and education staff are ableist, of course not, a lot of them are disabled
themselves, a lot of them are just not ableist, and I think that the 'system' (if you like), our education
sector, also has a lot of ableist tendencies. So what do I mean by that? Students who have SEND or
special educational needs or disabilities, their education will vary depending on where they are
educated. So there are specialist schools for children with particular needs or disabilities
and then many children who have SEND will be in a mainstream school. Now in mainstream schools it can
be really difficult to get the correct support for these children because there are so many barriers
to getting the funding that we need for these students. So a lot of the time we'll have students
who have particular needs and need reasonable adjustments to be made, and this just means that
we put adjustments in place to make sure that they can access education just like everybody
else, that it is equal and that we're thinking about equity, so not just equality but also equity.
There is a really good infographic on what that means I'll put that on the screen now.
So you can see that equality and equity aren't quite the same thing and that it's important to
consider equity when we're talking about equality. Making reasonable adjustments can be expensive,
having extra staff for students who need extra support, having extra equipment for students
is very expensive, and of course schools and staff want to be able to give students what they need
but there are often huge barriers within the education sector to accessing funding to support
these students, and so you have a situation where there are children who - just because they have an
additional need or a disability - don't get to access the same education as their able-bodied
peers. This has a detrimental impact on children's grades, on their mental health and also their own
self-confidence; how they see themselves, how they view themselves as a member of society -
if you see yourself as someone who needs extra support but isn't given it because of money or
because someone thinks that you don't deserve it, then you don't see yourself as equal to other
people in society. You might start to see yourself as a burden - I certainly did when I was a student,
and so that is kind of the system of education that we have. But then we also have people working
within that system who are ableist, who bring their own views - whatever they may be - into the
school and that negatively impacts students and staff who have additional needs or disabilities.
I have seen this as a member of staff, so when I was getting some of my diagnoses sorted out I
was really impacted negatively by a lot of my symptoms and the attitude of the school kind of
slowly started to get a bit more negative about it, the more support that I needed.
So as my symptoms were getting worse and I just wanted to come to school and do my job,
that was an issue because I needed some reasonable adjustments. So for example as my physical health
deteriorated and I had to use a walking stick full time, I asked for an adult-sized desk
and adult-sized chair, because where I was working in Reception at the time, teachers had to use child
chairs and child desks to do their work. I was treated as though I was such a huge burden and
I had to plead for months just to have something that would help me do my job like everybody else.
There was some funding available which I made my headteacher aware of, but that was too much work
to get into - more paperwork - so they didn't want to do it. I was seen as a burden, I was seen as someone
who was less than. Why should she get something just because she has a disability? And that way of
thinking I have seen that throughout the education sector. So those kind of situations where you're
really thinking, 'All I want to do is do my job, I just need some reasonable adjustments in place
because I have a disability that I have no control over, but if these adjustments are put in place
then it's fine, I can get on and do my job,' and as I said earlier I worked at a couple of universities
reasonable adjustments were put in place there, no problem, did my job, there was no issue at all. So
obviously I knew that disability discrimination was something that was happening in education
but I think it didn't hit me quite as hard until I went for an interview for a teaching position and
the interview was going really well and I was very open about my disabilities, because I didn't want
it to become a big deal when I started, I wanted it to be clear that I had these disabilities and that
these are the reasonable adjustments I would need in place to be able to do my job,
and at the end of the interview the Head Teacher asked me, 'So why should we employ you when we could
employ someone who doesn't have a disability and is healthy?' and I just could not believe that this
question had been asked of me. I'm pretty sure my jaw hit the floor at that point! [laughs] And the
fact that that head teacher felt it was perfectly reasonable to ask me that question in an interview
just goes to show how systemic ableism really is within education in this country, not just
against staff (but of course definitely against staff) but also within the practices of education
when it comes to our students. It is so ingrained within the system that there are just
barriers upon barriers upon barriers for anyone who is in a school or an education setting who has
a special educational need or disability. Now, why does this happen? I think a lot of this comes from
lack of knowledge, lack of understanding of what disabilities are and what additional needs are,
and although we have really evolved over the years and we have improved treatment of disabilities and
the understanding of what invisible disabilities are, we're still not at a very good level and
the history of people's opinions and old practices still exist and still impact on our education
system today. There are very obvious things, like many school buildings have not been built with
disabled people in mind, you might notice that there are stairs to get up to some schools
and they've had to add on a ramp - or they don't have a ramp for wheelchair users - you might notice
some schools have stairs inside them and no lift, so that people who are physically impaired, people
who can't walk upstairs, cannot get upstairs, very obvious things like that but also you have
the not so obvious: the attitudes within schools and education settings, lack of understanding and
the unwillingness to learn, which is ironic seeing as we work in education, but there you
have it. I would never be upset at another member of staff saying to me 'I really don't understand
what your needs are, I don't understand why you need this thing, can you tell me and educate me.'
That's fine, you would never expect someone to know and understand all disabilities and
special needs, but the fact that many members of staff aren't willing to learn is a huge problem.
The attitudes need to change, the education on this topic needs to improve, and the treatment of
people who have disabilities or additional needs needs to be better. As with most things this starts
at the top. People who are in charge of education, people who are in charge of school trusts and are
in charge of schools need to be educated on how to treat disabled people. If you are a member of one
of those categories I highly recommend you take a look at the Equality Act of 2010, that explains
exactly what you should be doing for people with disabilities and what reasonable adjustments you
should be making for them to ensure that they can access their employment or their education just
like everybody else. We need more training, for not just teaching staff but all staff within education,
so that they can understand the wide variety of disabilities and needs that do exist and what we
need to do to enable these people - including myself - to access everything the same as everybody else.
We also of course need to change the narrative in wider society. We need to challenge those attitudes,
we need to challenge how disabled people are depicted in mainstream media, we need to make sure
that if there are adjustments that can be made to ensure that a child can access their education
that those adjustments are made. We need to make sure that if there are adjustments for
a teacher to be able to just - teach - then those should be made and that no one should be
held back in their education or their occupation just because they have a disability or an
additional need. That should never be the case. We also need to stop grouping together people who
have disabilities or special educational needs. I heard recently from a teacher friend of mine
that in their school they have classes that are intervention groups for children with
SEND. That's the only requirement. So children are coming to this class to improve their maths for
example but they're only in there because they have special educational needs and disabilities,
so every single one of the children in that class has a different need, a different ability,
and there is no way to teach them all one thing just because they each come under the umbrella of
SEND. This has been a problem for a long time - grouping together students just because they
have additional needs or disabilities, but their abilities range drastically and their needs
range drastically, so we need more education on this topic. We need to challenge and change
attitudes and we need to make sure that reasonable adjustments are put in place so that everyone gets
exactly what they deserve which is the same access to education as everybody else. Everyone
deserves respect, everyone deserves dignity and no one deserves to be discriminated against
negatively just because they have a disability. I hope that this video has been informative for you,
if you have experienced this yourself please do let me know in the comments below, I'd be
really interested to hear your experiences and your thoughts. If you would like more videos about
disability in education please do let me know in the comments below, or just like this video that
lets me know that you're interested in this topic, and do click the subscribe button so that you get
to see if I make a follow-up video. Thank you so much for watching - this is a really important topic
to me so I really appreciate you sticking around for the whole video. I will see you next time.
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