byebyeschool

Last week the lovely purpose built (in 1835) building for The Royal Blind School went on the market. This has also been my workplace for the past 13 years and i have been involved in and witnessed many wonderful and humbling things here. This is a sad time when the word 'inclusion' is used politically correctly in place of money-saving. I can hand-on-heart say that what the young people at our school experience is a very inclusive education of an extremely high standard, and were they to be placed locally within a unit or with a peri VI teacher seeing them once a week / one a fortnight, they would experience the opposite. at our school they have a peer group, they socialise, they are not ''the special kid''. They are armed with the skills and confidence they need to survive in the big bad world post school, with skills and experiences they would never have had had in a mainstream setting. At The Royal Blind School they learn to cook, to get from A to B, they do art and CDT, they go power boating and camping, all of these things in a mainstream setting they would be excluded from...but things we take for granted too- they learn how to make a bed, put on their clothes the right way round, spread butter on toast, identify a £1 coin, learn the difference between birds and aeroplanes, and that a doorway is not just a gap ......and this education comes at a cost, a cost that local authorities are not willing to/can't pay any longer...so guess who suffers. We'll get other jobs, but the young people won't get another chance at the education they require and are entitled to. ...on my soap box here, but am really passionate about this and so sad to see this, no, experience this happening... :'(