In the audit that was recently carried out for assessment one I discovered an area of need relating to children with disabilities and special needs in mainstream schools in the UK. There are approximately 1.3 million students with Special Educational needs in the UK and only 9.3% of them attend Special schools, (National Audit Office, 2019). During the audit it was found that there were loads of factors affecting the effectiveness of the inclusion of Disabled and Special needs children in mainstream schools in the UK, particularly bullying. A Mencap survey showed that Eight out of ten disabled students had been bullied and six out of ten had been hurt physically (Mencap, 2007). Intimidation and ridicule experienced by these vulnerable pupils through bullying has left some of them not wanting to go to school, feeling withdrawn and isolated and in most cases uninterested in school. Some parents are forced to withdraw their children from mainstream schools and transfer them to a special need schools which is sometimes far and not within their local government area (National Children’s Bureau, 2007) (Jayanetti, 2019).
This report aims to tackle this issue of bullying by advocating for the implementation of an awareness-raising anti-bullying programme that does not overlook children with disabilities and special educational needs, within schools in the UK. The report will analyse the proposal and cover how this programme aims to be funded, implemented and will also give the social policy context which provided the framework for this proposal.
