Disability and Education Timeline

The following pages provide a timeline of key events and attitudes related to disability and education from the 1760s through the years to the SEND Code of practice in 2014.
The resource has been designed to get participants thinking about perceptions of disability through time. Each participant has a page to work from (12 pages available). They should use the prompts provided in the footer to make notes.
They should then contribute in turn to a group discussion, starting with the oldest page, leading up to the present day, making comparisons and observations on each other’s time periods.
Key questions:
• Has any language surprised you?
• At what point was inclusive education getting on the right track?
• Is education ahead of society or the other way around?
• Which disabilities are understood best?
• Which disabilities are least understood? Why might this be?
• When were people with learning disabilities considered teachable?
• What do you think about the sterilisation proposals
• Consider how parents would feel if they had a child with a disability
• Consider how self-esteem may be effected by societies attitudes
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of special schools?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of seeking inclusion in mainstream?
• Is true inclusion possible?
Further discussion:
• Have we now achieved best practice in terms of inclusion?
• Describe a perfectly inclusive classroom / learning environment / school.