Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My themes are similar to those of Senator Pratt in terms of the fact that I will be talking about schools, discrimination and bullying, but for a different cohort of people. Students with disabilities is the area I want to talk about, and particularly the question of inclusive education.

I would like to start by mentioning a statistic that I think we should all keep at the backs of our minds in terms of how well we are travelling with inclusive education. The latest available figures for the employment of people with a disability shows us that in 2009, 54.3 per cent of people with a disability participated in the labour force, compared to 83 per cent of people without a disability—so almost half the number of people with a disability are in the workforce compared to those without a disability. We are ranked 21st out of 29 countries for labour force participation of people with a disability. It is a very low and, in many ways, a very shameful rate. However, I would contend that it is not a rate that should surprise us when we look at the way we go about educating children with disabilities compared to children without disabilities.

We still do not provide true inclusive education for children with disabilities, so why would we be surprised that when children without disabilities grow up and start businesses, they do not look to people they do not know or people they have had no experience of knowing as employees. It is only when we get inclusive education right—when we have students with disabilities being educated alongside their peers without disabilities—that we can expect that, as those children turn into adults, we will get the system right and will end up with people with disabilities being employed at a far better rate.

I was taken by a quote from a Queensland group called Blue Skies, who in 2009 did a report looking at what was feasible in terms of including people with a disability in all areas. In terms of inclusive education, they said:

Inclusive education, in early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary, adult and community education, is the foundation for social inclusion and participation of all citizens.

There is no magic bullet that says that when someone turns 18 they will suddenly become inclusive if they have not experienced being included—and including others—as children.

At the heart of the advocacy that is being done by another Queensland group, Queensland Parents for People with a Disability, is the belief that, when people with a disability are connected and have relationships with others, they are safer and more respected, and have greater opportunities and enriched lives. This is just as true for students as it is for adults, and it is something that we need to see as a continuum that goes on through a child's life from the time of babyhood through until they become contributing members of this society as adults.

I would like to use a quote to define what is meant by inclusive education, which comes from research by Dr Cologon from a 2013 report that she undertook. It says:

Inclusive education requires recognising impairment as one of many forms of human diversity, and welcoming and viewing diversity as a resource rather than a problem. Inclusive education, therefore, creates a situation where all children can be valued and experience a sense of belonging and where all children are encouraged to reach their full potential in all areas of development.

This has to include schooling, which I think any parent in this room would know is such a crucial part of growing up and a crucial part of life.

It is not just the academic education that one receives at school that people think is important. That is not all that is needed. If we are going to have genuine education in all areas of school life, it is not just about the focus on academic education; the social and relationship elements of education are equally important and, in many ways, they are a precondition for good academic results. In that area, Children with Disability Australia produced a report on the topic of how we get good inclusive education, called Belonging and connection of school students with disability. Both that report and a report by Queensland Parents for People with a Disability, called Diving for pearls,make the point that non-inclusive—that is, exclusive—education, in the sense of being excluded, does not happen simply in special schools. That is the worst example of how we go about excluding students with disabilities, but it also happens in mainstream schools. There is comment after comment by parents who have children with disabilities in mainstream schools—but in special ed units, which can be a fantastic resource to support children with extra needs but can also function like mini special schools within the grounds of primary schools. There are quotes in a number of the reports, particularly in the Diving for pearls report, about how little time their children spent in the mainstream classroom and how much time they spent in the special ed classroom—including, in some cases, over lunch breaks. They spent their breaks away from the other students—with carers or assistant teachers with them, not other students. In the Diving for pearls report there is a quote from one mother who said:

My son seeks out the regular kids but is still grouped with the 'unit kids', as they call them.

Another parent said:

Even the playground has a special area for students with a disability.

She is never given the opportunity to lunch with others. All her time is spent in the unit—even lunch time.

Whilst there are many great policies by state education departments these days, in terms of including children with disabilities into mainstream schools the practice is often not as good as the policies would suggest.

We need to do a lot more work in this area. We need to look at not only the academic education of people with a disability but also their sense of belonging to their local school communities. Schools are where we all learn how to belong to a community, how to make friends, how to relate to peers—and often, as children, how to get our own way with other groups. If you do not have that sense of belonging to a group at that level, when are you ever going to develop it? If the employers of tomorrow do not know children with disabilities as their peers, as people to be valued, as people with needs and sensitivities just like their own, how are they going to turn into the bosses of the next generation—who see people with disabilities as people they would employ? We can have every government program we like to try to encourage the employment of people with a disability; but until we see that employment as something that comes at the end of a continuum of including people with disabilities throughout their lives, we are not going to get the success that we need, and we are not going to get true inclusion of people with disabilities into our society.