I was badly failed by the hotchpotch bodgeup they call the LEA as were most of the special needs children that were shunted around units with me. I honestly believe in fully comprehensive schools, with no child being excluded from any particular school based purely on their personal religion, wealth, or academic achievement. Having been to a church school, a hospital unit, a selective school, a girls school and an inner city comp I think they all could have been improved by a little bit of diversity of intake. Schools need to be place where kids learn skills like reading or woodwork, surely, not religion or their 'place' in life. Children who could achieve high academic standards can be failed in the comprehensive system by the scarcity of resources and the absence of similarly able peers. Conversely, kids in special interest schools can be failed by their exclusion from the rest of the world which, lets face it, they're going to have to live in eventually. I think if we stop categorising children at five or seven or eleven they might surprise us with what they can achieve, and what they can make of the world once it is in their hands. Many of the kids I went to school with left with no qualifications and now are rotting away on the dole or in the factory, including myself. The world is losing out on the contributions they could have made given equality of opportunity. Pool the resources I say.
