Limbrick’s campus model for including all children in their local education system. Part 1

Referring to UK as an example of exclusion

The challenge

People who have differences, delay, disabilities are often excluded from things they should rightly be part of. This starts at babyhood and can then be a life-long disadvantage. This short essay is about children of all ages being included in their local education system. There is an accepted moral imperative for all children to be included in the mainstream alongside their peers. To my knowledge, there are no effective fully integrated education systems. This is an international issue but it will be helpful to refer to what is being planned in the UK.

The children

There is a new UK government proposal in which children who have differences, delay, disabilities will be organised into three groups as follows:

Those with the least need will be absorbed into mainstream schools.
Those who have greater needs will go into special units attached to mainstream schools.
Those with the greatest needs will have their own special schools.

I can imagine an army of lawyers would soon be busy helping parents challenge decisions about which group their child is put into. I can also imagine that building and staffing enough units for the middle group will take thirty years or more. Whatever the practical problems, we can see that this is not an inclusive approach and is not intended to be.

In reality, this proposal must cater for a fourth group of UK children who, if they are in school, are in special classes within special schools. In this fourth group are children who have some or all of the following conditions: being non-verbal; having very significant learning difficulties; being doubly incontinent; needing careful attention to ingestion, digestion, excretion, oxygen levels and posture; using adapted wheelchairs with head supports; having vision and hearing impairments; having erratic sleep patterns day and night; and epilepsy (controlled or not). The school day for these children is a mix of education, care and health support.

While a moral imperative to include all children in mainstream education must embrace children in all of these four groups, it seems to me that many people’s ambitions do not embrace children in the third and fourth. Full inclusion in schools as we have them now presents very many practical problems and the effort cannot get much further until these are addressed.

A story

A family, perhaps in your country, is getting the house ready for important visitors. Mother is preparing the best room and she asks father to bring in the fruit she has just brought back from market and to put it in the dish on the table. Father is soon scratching his head because the melon, pineapple, guava and bananas will not fit into the small ceramic dish, even after the grapes have been taken out. Mother takes over, bringing in a larger glass bowl but still the fruit will not fit. Some of it rolls across the table on to the floor and has to be washed. Their six-year-old comes in, assesses the situation, and asks why they are not using the new basket granny made. Parents laugh telling her the basket is almost big enough to put her in and then realise it is the best idea. The basket will take all the fruit and it looks very beautiful. The child goes out to play.

The campus

So if the fruit will not fit naturally into the dish, use a basket. If all children cannot be accommodated in the mainstream school, use a different sort of educational establishment. The account below uses the same sort of six-year-old logic and dispenses with the traditional school, putting a campus in its place. It logically follows the commitment that integration of all children into the local education system is a moral imperative that should not be ignored.

An education campus will aim to be all things to all local children and families. It will provide varying levels of education, care and health support tailored to each child and each group of children. It will provide opportunities in academic studies, play, sport, music, art, craft, growing, animal husbandry, food preparation, etc. and will help children enjoy their day-to-day life at the same time as working towards the future. Local cultural life will be fully integrated at every opportunity.

The campus will be an integrated whole embracing many buildings and facilities. As for older students at university, each child on the campus will participate in an individual pattern of activities, sometimes grouped with peers, sometimes grouped with children with shared interests or shared needs. Nutrition for each child will be a primary concern. The campus environment will be kept free of pollution and radiation as far as possible. The campus will be secular (with respect for faiths) and with an educational ethos. Staffing will be by people qualified in some appropriate way to support children in each activity.

Admittedly, a campus such as this presents many practical issues but it is envisaged as a logical consequence of the imperative to include all children in their local education system. The model is what I can imagine for the future. What can you imagine?

Peter Limbrick, July 2025