Special schools 'a dumping ground' .... An interesting article published in the Australian....food for thought! Justine Ferrari, National education correspondent From:The Australian June 27, 2011 12:00AM
Special schools 'a dumping ground' for indigenous students.INDIGENOUS students are being enrolled in special schools for children with behavioural and emotional problems at five times the rate of other students, effectively segregating them from mainstream education.An analysis by Macquarie University researchers finds indigenous students are over-represented in specialist behaviour schools and juvenile justice centres but not in schools for students with physical and intellectual disabilities.The study analyses enrolments in special schools in NSW, and finds indigenous students comprise 5.5 per cent of the total school population and 5.8 per cent of students in schools for physical and intellectual disabilities.
Indigenous children comprised 25 per cent of students in specialist behaviour schools and 50 per cent in juvenile justice centres.
The research will be presented at a conference of the British Educational Research Association at the London Institute of Education in early September.
Education researcher Linda Graham, from the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University, said physical and intellectual disabilities such as cerebral palsy, hearing and vision impairment or autism required a more objective diagnosis than some of the newly described behavioural and emotional disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.
Previous research by Dr Graham has shown that the growth in children diagnosed with a disability is primarily in the more subjective conduct disorders, while the proportion of children with physical and intellectual disabilities has remained stable.
Dr Graham said the over-representation of indigenous students in subjective conduct disorders suggested they were being diagnosed for being Aboriginal and then sidelined from mainstream schools. "There are two important points to draw from this: are indigenous children with physical disabilities non-existent or under-identified?" she said.
"And indigenous children have not, to my knowledge, cornered the market in disruptive behaviour so what is being identified or not identified, and what role does systemic culture and racist assumptions play in the process?" Behaviour schools teach children from Year 5 to Year 10.
"Behaviour schools are supposedly going to rehabilitate kids but they're staffed on a primary school model so these kids are not getting the specialist curriculum of high school; they're getting dumbed-down stuff," she said."They end up bored, they can't learn anything academically to go back into high schools; so once they're out, they're out, and these schools become a holding pen."
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