The world of disability is full of irony and paradox. The past week’s events have been no exception. Media attention has focused on truancy in our schools, with a fair bit of righteous outrage about children and young people who don’t attend school because they are disaffected, school is not where they want to be and it doesn’t engage them, or they think there are better things they can do with their time. What shall we do is the cry? Who do we punish and how? What so we do with these kids?
I am possibly a bit naive to wish that the same level of public indignation and energy could be raised about the disabled children who are denied equal access to their local schools, despite the law. Who but their families and some activists care if they are engaged in learning or not? We are assured it would be too difficult and expensive and ‘we don’t have the resources.’ The children who are truanting also need specialist help and resources I suspect.
It all leads me to wonder how many kids the schools really do serve if thousands are truanting and others are unacceptable.
