By law, secondary schools in England should make Accessibility Plans to enable disabled children and young people to access school facilities and make the most of their education. However, there have been no studies to find out if Accessibility Plans help disabled pupils to feel included and part of their school communities.
The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE) has received funding from the Disability Research on Independent Living and Learning (DRILL) grants programme to lead a project on the effectiveness of secondary schools’ Accessibility Plans.
They would like your help with this research if you are in England.
They are holding focus groups in Leeds, London, Bristol and Manchester with disabled young people and children, parents of disabled learners, and educators and professionals. Disabled children and young people will receive gift vouchers for their participation. Through these discussions the researchers hope to find out about any gaps between what the law says and people’s real-life experiences in schools.
If you can’t attend a focus group, ALLFIE would still like to hear from you regarding your experiences of accessibility plans in secondary schools.
For more information about the research project, please contact Dr Armineh Soorenian at: Armineh.Soorenian@allfie.org.uk.
NOTE: This research is not connected to EENET so please only contact ALLFIE with any queries.