Inclusive Education for Learners with Severe, Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties in England

Abstract

There has been a policy for including pupils with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties in mainstream schools in England since the 1980s. However, effective inclusive education has proved to be very difficult to achieve in practice. Currently, there is a mixed economy of special and mainstream schools offering inclusive education, and we argue that the place of education is less important than the quality of that education. Ideally, pupils with S/PMLD would be educated in their own local communities, alongside their non-disabled peers, but this situation is not yet established in English schools.

Citation

Lacey, P. and Scull, J. (2015), "Inclusive Education for Learners with Severe, Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties in England", Including Learners with Low-Incidence Disabilities (International Perspectives on Inclusive Education, Vol. 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 241-268. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-363620140000005017