The Leeds Inclusive Learning Strategy

We received a leaflet via school yesterday. Seems to have been given to all parents. It claims to be ‘Information for patients and carers’ on the subject of the ‘Leeds Inclusive Learning Strategy’. It comes from Education Leeds. They’re pretty much the Council (except when they apply for grants…but that’s another story). What an ‘inclusive learning strategy’ might be I have no idea but let’s read on in the hope of finding out.

Well, they claim that their goal is a ‘world class inclusive education system for all children and young people in Leeds’. World class eh? But we still want to know what the Inclusive Learning Strategy is. I’m hoping they’ll explain what ‘inclusive learning’ is and how they plan to be world class at it. Well, it doesn’t say. What it does do is explain (and I use the word extremely loosely) the areas it covers. This includes ‘Promoting and developing inclusive practice and inclusive schools’. What might that mean? What is ‘inclusive practice‘? - and what does an ‘inclusive school’ look like? Another area covers ‘Developing how pupils access behaviour provision across the city’. Mm, not sure about the grammar for a start. Leaving that aside, what on earth can accessing behaviour provision be? What kind of behaviour can one ‘provide’ to a child?

Oh well, so their grammar isn’t very good, they haven’t defined what they mean and they use jargon. Let’s move on. In the section ‘What does LILS mean for your child?’ they explain that ‘Your child will have full access to school life’ (!) – ‘from the curriculum and teaching to out of school activities’. They don’t explain what partial access to school life is currently being provided and why children apparently don’t yet have ‘full access’ to teachers and the curriculum. Even better, ‘They will learn and go through school in a way which suits both them and you, their family.’ Can we get our child to go through school dressed as a pirate? How many alternative ways of going through school will be offered?...’I’m sorry headmaster but our Charlie is going through school in a way that suits Charlie but doesn’t suit his family or myself, 1 out of 3 is simply not good enough. I demand you change the way he goes through school immediately’…

Now we all know (or you haven’t been reading this blog!) that there are a whole group of people whose job is to have endless meetings with each other to come up with ways of stating good intentions and the bleedin’ obvious. These usually amount to saying ‘we think good stuff is better than bad stuff’ (don’t get me started on the Leeds Initiative’!) and all conceivable meaning is lost on the way. You end up with a leaflet (more often a big glossy brochure with thick card covers) containing ‘information’ which is actually completely free of information. In this case I think they’ve used relatively few words thinking that this might possibly make it easy to understand or be in plain English. In fact it’s little more than a random series of words. I guess (and it is just a guess) that it might be something to do with equal access to education, but who knows.

The final page says that you can contact a man from the ‘Pupil planning team’ (their lack of capitals) ‘if you need this document to be interpreted’. I am soooo tempted to write and ask to have it translated into English. If I could be bothered I’d write to Education Leeds and get really arsey as well as writing to the papers. The trouble is that this kind of toss is so prevalent that no-one can be bothered to fight it any more.

People will talk about ‘social cohesion’ and misunderstanding between cultures and the rest but it’s actually these white middle class overpaid 'educated' people that are the people I have nothing in common with and don’t understand. Why do they talk like this? And why do they think that anyone might be interested? I think we have to assume that this ‘Strategy’ in common with nearly all strategies has no application in the real world at all.

In the section ‘what we have done so far?’ (I think they meant ‘what have we done so far? i.e. a question that makes sense, or possibly ‘What we have done so far’ i.e. not a question) they say they’ve been ‘holding discussions to help people with a key interest in the project understand the LILS and get them involved’. A ‘key interest’?

Aw forget it, these people aren’t worth getting angry about. I just despair that so much money is spent on this stuff and the people who come up with it who presumably cry themselves to sleep at night realizing they’re wasting their deluded little lives – if only. I’m off to ‘write learning programmes to meet the needs of children and young people’.