What NEED does this meet?
Many parents believe that the way towards a more tolerant and cohesive society is for their children to be educated at schools where those of any religious persuasion and those of none are treated equally. For those parents there is at present no way in which they can obtain a valid appraisal of any particular school’s practices in this area.
Similarly, there are many schools that might like to be able to distinguish themselves from others through their inclusiveness and thereby make themselves attractive to such parents.
This initiative therefore addresses the needs of two groups; parents seeking and inclusive educational environment for their children and schools wishing to broadcast their policy on inclusivity.
What is the APPROACH?
At the core of the initiative would be a membership-based and database-driven website. Members would be of two types; schools and parents.
Key to the functioning of the initiative would be the development of a questionnaire and a clearly defined scoring system that would result in the generation of an “inclusivity index” for each school. Most important is that this questionnaire and the scoring system should be publicly available and, by so being, provide a standardised and universally recognised and accepted measure of inclusivity.
Every school would be invited to complete the questionnaire and so obtain for themselves a measure of inclusivity. Schools achieving a sufficiently high inclusivity score would be allowed to display an inclusivity “kite mark”. The scoring system would be supported by a league table that would identify schools with low inclusivity indexes and shame those who had not completed questionnaires into doing so. Schools would be allowed to resubmit the questionnaire as often as they wished.
The role of parents would be threefold. Firstly to to ask schools that have not completed the questionnaire why they had not done so, secondly to appraise and validate the scores that the schools had awarded themselves and thirdly to enter into dialog with each other and the schools as to how inclusivity might be improved.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
Parents seeking inclusive schools will be able to identify them more easily and act to change those that are not so.
Schools will be able to promote their inclusivity and make it clearly and easily available to parents.
In the longer term our society will benefit as a greater understanding and acceptance of different cultural and philosophical views becomes pervasive.
What is the COMPETITION?
There are a number of services that provide directories, both printed and online, of what different schools have to offer. None of these have any reference to a measure of inclusivity, neither do any of them provide any kind of a forum for a two-way interchange between parents and schools. Nor is the purpose of these directories to bring about change.
League tables also exist but these are usually concerned only with accademic measures.
This idea is revolutionary in terms of what it seeks to achieve and the prize is so great that it must be chosen as the winner.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
All the individual components that would comprise this system are available in existing low-cost software solutions. The hosting requirements would also be relatively modest.
The costs, as they are, lie in the design and integration of the various components; the time of web designers, software developers and database administrators. If managed as a collaborative project using a volunteer virtual team these could be kept low.
Ongoing costs, once the system is established, would be minimal as it relies entirely on the use of the web and e-mail and the system is self-policing.
Once developed the model would be applicable in any country anywhere in the world. The only differences that might be necessary would be fine tuning of the questionnaire to suit local conditions.
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April 5th, 2006 at 9:18pm
Excellent and timely idea to assist parents with information at a time when the government are proposing to further increase the numbers of sectarian schools.
April 5th, 2006 at 10:35pm
I heard Quentin’s original pitch a few months back. I support the idea, but would suggest that we have something broader – really, we need a system to hold schools accountable to citizens, rather than to a kitemark.
April 6th, 2006 at 2:46am
Firstly – I’m all in favour of an inclusive society and inclusive schools. However, I don’t like this idea and I don’t think it will work.
Firstly, most parents live in a particular geographic area. The middle class may be prepared to move .. but not too far. Therefore you’ve only got a certain number of schools to choose from. Depending on where you live it might be 5 or it might be 25. But it’s not THAT many.
If you want to know how inclusive a school is:
a) look at the prospectus. If the school’s got the letters RC after it and goes on about a “Catholic Education” or worse still an “Accelerated Christian Education” then it’s probably not for you.
b) if the prospectus looks ok then give the headteacher a call and arrange a visit.
By then you should have a fairly good idea of the school’s pholosphy. If they’ve got creationism in the science curriculum or the headteacher laments about all the immigrants he or she has to deal with they’re probaly not what you wanted.
“Members would be of two types; schools and parents.”
Ok – so I’m a headteacher and I choose for my school to join the site .. doesn’t that tell you a lot already?
“The role of parents would be threefold. Firstly to to ask schools that have not completed the questionnaire”
a) We’re a Roman Catholic School/Muslim School/BNP School for nice little white kids .. we’re not inclusive.
b) We’ve got enough bloody paperwork to do without you adding to it, you incosiderate b******. I’m the headteacher and I already work a 120 hour week – what have you got against me?
“In the longer term our society will benefit as a greater understanding and acceptance of different cultural and philosophical views becomes pervasive.”
Come on, It’s a website! You need to have realistic goals. I’d love to think one website could change the world in such a fundamental way, but I think you’re reaching here.
“League tables also exist but these are usually concerned only with accademic measures.”
Yes, but the problem with league tables is that they tend to drive standards down.
For example, take a secondary school that does GCSEs.
It gets judged mainly on the number of pupils who achieve 5 A-C grades (or equivalent).
So:
a) teachers encourage pupils to do easier subjects like Child Development or Media Studies rather than subjects which the teachers beleive to be more useful and academically rigourous like French, History or Science.
b) teachers get pupils to do non GCSE courses which are suposedly equivalent to 3, 4 or 5 GCSEs – depsite the fact the teachers do not believ them to be as valuable.
So you get higher GRADES but lower STANDARDS.
That’s why year on year results are up but employers complain about graduates that can’t add up or string two sentences together.
If you can’t reduce intelligence to an index then you sure as hell can’t improve inclusivity to a set of numbers and hop to change anything.
April 6th, 2006 at 9:39pm
Faith schools are an area where democracy is not working: various polls have put the number of people against faith schools at well over 70%, yet all 3 main political parties proposed to retain them in their manifestos at the last general election. The Inclusive Schools Initiative has the potential to generate a ground swell of activity and then social change by informing people and promoting debate. The web site proposal is very practical and focused. It gets my support; please add yours.
April 8th, 2006 at 10:32pm
Very interesting and worthwhile project. No doubt there are all kinds of practical problems (as laid out in the comments above) but persevere and good luck!
April 10th, 2006 at 9:13pm
I am in favour of this proposal for several reasons
Inclusivity is the “in Thing”, not because it is fashionable but because it is suddenly the right thing to do which it is, but because it is a factor in the survival of many institutions. If the Conservatives do not get inclusive they die. Why has it taken them so long to do? Yes an organisation can be exclusive, but often they pay a price just to remain so and in the case of schools this is a often a heartbreaking consequence for those left outside.
Every bit of information that can help parents is good. If you have watched the BBC2 programme called “Schools lottery” you would wonder why on earth we are putting parents and offspring through this process. What are we hoping to acheive?Is a bright child going to stop being bright just because of their surroundings. Sad if that is the only thing that keeps them bright.
Inclusivity is just a recognition that everyone is different and the sooner we recognise this fully – the better.
League tables and any index cannot be perfect but it is better than no information or the system which allows entry to schools by having tea withh the headmaster or vicar. The best effects of more information are often not felt immediately and revealing information can eventually bring about a change in thinking that it is better out than kept aside.
April 14th, 2006 at 2:15pm
It’s a shame to think we have to go this route simply in order to get children in state-funded schools to be educated side by side.
But we do.
I support this initiative as a possible way to apply some pressure to schools, and to the government and other bodies to include inclusivity measures and dissuade schools from any kind of non-academic selectivity.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:02pm
This is a good proposal. It promotes inclusivity in schools, which is a very important part of education and of the social development of children.
Government policies at present are driving in the opposite direction, making schools more faith-based, segregated and socially divisive. Those policies will create problems for society in years to come because people will not have had the early experience of mixing with others from different faiths and beliefs.
Of course, a website is not going to solve all the problems that segregated schools are creating. But it sends out a clear signal that the alternative exists and that people want it. Hopefully, wider action on inclusivity would include political action and campaigning to make our schools inclusive rather than segregated. But the issue needs to be pursued on as many fronts as possible and the proposed website would be a significant contribution to that campaign.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:45pm
although i agree that inclusive education is the way forward it is important to state that inclusive education is not yet effectve as the provisions in schools are present however techers are failing to put them in practice due to the strain of such a dramatic change in the educational system and if trial and error is the way forward then the only people to suffer will be pupils
excuse spelling mistakes i am dyslexic!