The long road to recognition for disabled

Thirteen years after the IHC laid a Human Rights Commission complaint against the government for preventing disabled access to schools, the plea will be heard. It has been a long road to recognition of the issue. A preliminary hearing by the commission took seven years to convene and a government bid to strike out the claim another seven years to dismiss.

The disappointment and frustration stretches back even further. The groundbreaking Education Act of 1989 guaranteed disabled children access to their local school but this was eroded for years leading up to the Human Rights Commission complaint in 2008.

It is not, largely, the fault of the schools. They are strapped for funding and resources. Some are under more pressure than others to enrol high numbers of children with special needs.

Kawerau Pu¯tauaki School principal Rachel Chater said the numbers of students with learning support needs in the Kawerau area were higher than the 15 to 20 per cent assumed as the basis of schools’ current special education grant.

Disability advocate and mother to Down syndrome son Travers, Colleen Brown, wrote to the Herald this week about what can be achieved and what it is worth.

“The 1989 Education Act allowed disabled children the right to an education,” she wrote. “Our son Travers benefited from that act. He enjoyed everything our education system had to offer.

“He walked to school with his siblings and the neighbourhood kids, attended camp, caught the bus to intermediate, enjoyed experiencing what his peers did. You cannot put a value on the joy we, as parents experienced seeing him participate alongside others. He taught his peers a great deal. Those children who attended school with Travers are now parents. What going to school with Travers taught them was not to fear disability, that he was more like them than he was different.”

And that’s something we would all want, surely. Progress has been made since 2008. The law was changed last year to require every school “is inclusive of, and caters for, students with differing needs”. A new register of all students who need support is being trialled in Tauranga and Kawerau; learning support co-ordinators have been funded for two-fifths of all schools, and dispute resolution panels are being set up to resolve disputes between schools and students or parents.

With an estimated 15 per cent of New Zealand’s 826,000 school students — 124,000 children — having disabilities requiring “reasonable accommodations” to ensure their right to an education, change is long overdue.

The Government’s moves are not too dissimilar to what the IHC has been seeking. There are 28-day specialist schools in New Zealand for students in years 1 to 13 with high needs such as adapting the curriculum for them, or needing specialist staff support, additional teaching time or teacher’s aide support.

More can be done to bring the rest back into the fold, and it should be.