Sir, – As Budget 2027 approaches, we write as 56 parents of disabled children.
Recently on RTÉ’s Prime Time we heard about disabled children for whom the education system is not working. Yet the Minister for Education’s response included a commitment to open more special schools.
As crisis has come to dominate this conversation, separate provision is too often presented as the solution. Failures of this system should not lead us to assume that segregation is what families want for their children. Nor should they be taken as evidence that inclusion itself does not work.
Whatever definitions our system has come to accommodate, inclusion actually means including every child. We repeatedly hear that including some is “complex” but perhaps we should have the humility to recognise that we do not yet know enough about designing schools around the full diversity of children.
RM Block
Fortunately, among our best informants for change are children for whom our traditional idea of school is not working. So why are we concentrating so much of that knowledge away from thousands of mainstream schools?
Inclusion means listening and in response changing what happens around children. It is a school adapting its environment, teaching and expectations so that every child can belong.
That is the transformation we want Budget 2027 to begin investing seriously in: building the leadership and culture needed to make inclusion possible in every school.
We are not naive about the scale of this. We simply reject the idea that because equality is difficult to achieve, our children should settle for less of it.
The scale of the change does not diminish their right to inclusion. And a child’s equality does not diminish because they require more support.
Our children get one childhood and one education. We want them learning alongside their siblings and neighbours, known in their communities, valued and able to access the same as every other child.
Children are already showing us how to build it. We need leadership willing to listen and investment willing to follow. – Yours, etc,
LUCINDA MURRIHY (and 55 other parents of disabled children from across Ireland),
Dundrum,
Dublin 16.
