In the UK, as in many other countries, the rights of disabled children have been safeguarded through legislation, and duties placed on schools to monitor the impact of their activities on disabled people (children, staff and parents) and to make reasonable adjustments to their policies, practices and procedures. Schools however, cannot meet these important duties if they have no methods for identifying disabled children and the barriers and supports to their full participation in school.
Our researchers - Dr Jill Porter, Dr Sue Martin, and Jayne Hacker (University of Bath), Professor Harry Daniels (University of Oxford), Professor Anthony Feiler (University of Bristol) and Dr Jan Georgeson (Plymouth University) have produced a toolkit support the collection of this data.
In addition to the tools being used with over 16,000 children in England they have now been taken up in India and Moscow - the latter as part of the implementation of the state programme of the Russian Federation ‘Accessible Environment’ for 2011-2015 (working with Svetlana Alekhina - Director of Institute of Inclusive Education and Marina Kostina - Moscow State University of Psychology and Education).