The individual education programme : who knows best?

Abstract

We invite the reader to imagine this: a group of adults are sitting around a table discussing the individual educational programme (IEP) of a disabled child. Let’s say that it’s a boy with cerebral palsy called Tom who attends a Year 6 class in a mainstream primary school. The meeting is taking place in the school and present is Tom’s teacher, his learning support educator and the inclusion coordinator, who is chairing the meeting. They have invited Tom’s speech therapist and physiotherapist to the meeting, and, after discussing amongst themselves, they will also ask Tom’s parents to join them and give their input. All of these adults will have the opportunity to have their say about Tom, even if not everyone’s input will be valued equally. There will remain one glaring omission – Tom himself. If we take the above picture as representative of an IEP meeting, then we can consider the missing piece in the centre to be Tom’s voice. Everyone seems to be eager to put their piece in the middle. Nobody seems to think about asking Tom to do that. This scenario is played out many times over for disabled children, whether it’s a Tom or Harriet, whether they are in a mainstream primary or secondary or even a special school, whether the child has a physical, sensory, intellectual or other type of disability, whether they are older or younger children. The feature that IEP meetings have in common is the production of a plan that determines the direction that the education of the disabled child in question will take for the next year. The most common thing missing in these meetings is the child themselves.