You know, I always have thoughts I want to blog and somehow I never get around to it. Ah well.
So- we made The Telegraph on Sunday!!! As this is a national paper, that's a whole lot more significant than being in the Salisbury Journal every week, as our students and parents have been.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/17/nbook17.xmlThis article totally rocks. Here it is:
Christopher Booker's notebook
By Christopher Booker
(Filed: 17/09/2006)
Does the 'Lisbon Agenda' lead to learning difficulties?
Last week there was a demonstration outside Salisbury College to protest at the sudden closing down of courses for more than 100 people with learning difficulties. Just before the end of the summer term, Mike Claydon, secretary of the Salisbury Learning Disability Support Group, whose 25-year old son is one of those who has benefited from a horticulture course at the college, received a letter to say that, from the start of the new academic year, the college would no longer be running its Pathway courses for those with learning difficulties or disabilities.
Salisbury is not alone. Similar closures have aroused protests from Cornwall and Bristol to Liverpool and Newcastle. What baffles the students and their families is the nonsense that this makes of official statements. Bill Rammell, the "lifelong learning" minister, only last month called on further education colleges to "improve support for learners with learning difficulties". The Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, has claimed that this "must remain a priority". The Learning and Skills Council, which administers funding for the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), last month insisted on its "serious commitment to this agenda".
Despite these fine words, there has been a decisive shift in Government policy; but it is not easy to discern why. Salisbury College and the DfES both explained last week that the reason for discontinuing courses for those with learning difficulties is that too many were not considered able to "progress" to qualifications or to make an active contribution to the economy. (Some of the Salisbury students had been at the college five years or more.) The DfES claimed that many courses were not up to standard; but Ofsted rated Salisbury College's courses higher than any others on its curriculum.
A clue may lie in the fact that an important source of funding for many of these courses was the European Social Fund (acknowledged on Salisbury College's letterhead). In the past five years it has contributed £100 million to further education in the South-West alone. But early in July an EC regulation, 2006/1081, laid out new priorities for the ESF. The emphasis is on training people to play an active part in the economy, in accordance with the "Lisbon Agenda", designed to transform the EU, by 2010, into "the most competitive, dynamic and knowledge-based economy in the world".
It is significant that the regulation requires member states to help equip the physically disabled to hold down jobs (along with asylum seekers) but makes no reference to those with learning difficulties. As an ardent Europhile, Mr Rammell may wish to deny that the ESF's new priorities have any connection with his department's decision to "re-prioritise" further education funding. But there has been no other explanation for such a dramatic change of policy.
Undoubtedly the closures are causing great distress to thousands of students and their families, deprived of what had been a hugely beneficial service to the community. As Doug Congdon, the campaigns and policy director of Mencap, told me last week: "Without these courses many of these students will be left with nothing to do but stay at home. Closing them down in this way has been a disgrace."
He also points out that, by denying them access to further education, the new policy appears to be in flagrant breach of the Disability Discrimination Act, which will almost certainly be tested by a legal challenge.
Perhaps Mr Rammell would care to provide a rather fuller explanation than we have had so far.
