Social Inclusion in Schools
Improving Outcomes, Raising Standards
Ben Whitney
A David Fulton Book Routledge 2007
Reviewer: Belle Wallace, Director, TASC International
Ben Whitney opens his text with the following quotation from the Parliamentary Report on the State of Education in 1834.
A very important part of the population we cannot touch at all; I refer to the most degraded of the poor. The children of trampers and beggards. Sometimes, by extraordinary efforts, we get some of these children into school, but they are off again almost immediately; and those are the children from whom a very large proportion of our prisons are peopled. Now the difficulty is, how to get these children under instruction, and how to keep them (there).
The author discusses the children in the 21st century for whom the above statement would apply. He continues by summarising the key themes of the book: ensuring joined up services for children; maintaining attendance and achievement; dealing with exclusion and behaviour problems; safeguarding children; and importantly, making a positive contribution to ensuring that 'Every Child Matters'. The author celebrates the government's mission statement:
- Firstly, that when we say every child (and young person) matters we really mean it, without exceptions.
- Secondly, good or improving outcomes for the majority or even for most children are not a sufficient measure of our effectiveness. We have to be measured against them all. There is a universal entitlement to be delivered and nothing less will do.
Whitney goes on to quote from numerous government mission statements and then suggests a range of successfully tried strategies for schools to consider implementing. The author gives a challenge to all schools to reflect on their procedures and practices. He says; 'It is always easier to carry on with the way things are rather than trying something new. But as someone said, if you carry on doing what you have always done, you carry on getting what you've always got - and that is not at present enough for all our children, or indeed for ourselves.' p104
GEI Vol 24 No 1
