North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has called on the Welsh Government to address the fact that some local authorities in Wales are failing in their statutory duty to remove barriers for disabled pupils in school.
Questioning the Education Minister in the Welsh Parliament today, Mr Isherwood referred to a case in one Local Education Authority where a young wheelchair user’s parents were told that their child should attend another school because the Authority was not prepared to pay for the adaptations needed, despite the Authority’s failure to first establish the child’s needs with the parents.
He said:
“It's now, I think, two years since the Children's Commissioner produced her follow-up report on wheelchair accessibility in schools in Wales, 'Full Lives: Equal Access', which identified a number of areas for improvement, some of which were strict duties under the Equality Act 2010, some of which were not. It found, for example, 'over-reliance on individual schools to plan for the needs of pupils with physical disabilities' and that ‘only one of Wales' 22 councils had sought the views of young people when drafting their Accessibility Strategy’.
“Amongst the things it said that needed to happen was ‘consultation with children and young people and their families’, which ‘is a duty under the Equality Act 2010 and has to form part of the accessibility strategies and plans in order to make these meaningful and uphold the rights of children across Wales. All local authorities and schools should therefore be consulting with children, young people and their families in preparing their strategy or plan’.
“How, therefore, do you respond to a situation of which I've been made aware where a Local Education Authority, having accessed a school site, told the parents of a young wheelchair user that they were not prepared to pay for the adaptations needed for the site and that the pupil was going to be moved to another school, before discussing the child's needs with the parents. Fortunately, the parents understood the law, their rights, both devolved and non-devolved, and they're now in engagement, but only because they battled to become so, and they're now discussing proposed alternative adaptations. So, how, two years after that key report, can you or will you re-engage with Local Education Authorities, some of whom are still pursuing these archaic and discriminatory practices?”
In her reply, the Minister said; “I'm appalled by the situation that you've just explained. It's simply not acceptable in my eyes. Of course, one of the ways in which we are addressing this as a Welsh Government is our Twenty-First Century Schools and Colleges building programme, where we take these issues over accessibility as front and centre in what we want to achieve in our educational estate. But schools have existing legal responsibilities, LEAs have existing legal responsibilities, and I'm always happy to investigate those cases that you've just highlighted and challenge the behaviour of local authorities if that's not being adhered to”.
