New ‘special schools’ a wrong-headed decision

2026-02-03 - 16:08

Comment: On January 29 2026, the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, and the Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, announced their decision to allocate $44 million to build two new special schools for disabled children in Palmerston North and Drury, South Auckland. For Stanford the moment was “a huge milestone because it’s the first time in 50 years that we’ve built a new specialist school”, a hiatus that was down to “the debate (that) has raged so long about special schools”. This was, she said, an argument made by adults under the banner of inclusion that had removed the choice of segregated schooling for disabled students and their families. Both ministers described the decision as an investment that would ensure disabled children had the best opportunity to learn well. But for advocates of an inclusive school system and wider inclusive society for disabled people in this country, the announcement reflected the ministers’ lack of understanding of inclusive education (Government policy). It arguably winds back the clock to exclusion, fuelling the very inequities experienced by disabled children and their whānau that both ministers say they want to fix. ‘The problem’ that apparently needed remedying was presented as a lack of parental choice for segregated education by some families. The real problem, as I and others have argued based on our own research and advocacy work, was neither mentioned nor addressed. That is, that many families face barriers that mean they do not have the choice of inclusion for their disabled child in their local school, and local schools struggle to access the resources and support they need to include and teach the diverse range of children in their school communities. Our work emphasises the need for policies and practices that ensure equity in education for all disabled children and young people. Key challenges to address include how disabled students and their whānau can have a genuine choice for inclusion, and what Government ministers need to know and understand to achieve this. Understanding inclusion means understanding the past. Fifty years ago, disability was viewed as a tragedy or a problem to be fixed by ‘specialists’ and ‘therapies’ in separate ‘special’ schools and classes that would make children ‘more normal’. Decades of research illustrates that such thinking drives low expectations for disabled people, limiting their opportunities for learning and a good life in the community. The recent Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care graphically documented how such thinking also made disabled children and adults vulnerable to abuse. A lot has changed in those 50 years. Most disabled children, including those with ongoing resourcing funding for high and very high needs, attend their local school, so funding decisions should be aimed at supporting those schools to be inclusive. Thanks to international and local research and the efforts of our own inclusive schools, we know that families will have the genuine choice of inclusion when the curriculum is written for and is inclusive of every child. And when local schools are well supported and resourced; when teachers have the knowledge they need to teach a diverse student group; when class sizes are reasonable; when teacher aide support is readily available; and when teachers can work collaboratively with learning support staff and therapists. We have a way to go to achieve these things. In a Newsroom piece I wrote about the recent settlement of IHC’s Human Rights Review Tribunal claim with the Ministry of Education and the Framework for Action that will address the barriers to equity and inclusion for disabled students and their families. As I argued then, the framework proposed by the IHC and agreed to by the Ministry of Education, was a chance to right many wrongs, and decades of reports and research documenting the challenges faced by disabled children and their whānau sat behind that moment. It is difficult therefore to understand Stanford’s and Willis’ decision to invest in segregated special schools. The Framework for Action emphasises the need for such decisions to be well informed by evidence. This includes a better understanding of the effects of a dual system of local and segregated education. That is, understanding where money is being spent and for whom, and where resources and therapists are located (noting that both ministers referred to the resources that special schools can provide). It means having a real grasp of how that looks in terms of equity for all disabled children and their whānau. Stanford said special schools hade been “consistently in my ear for this”. But good decision making also relies on the minister and ministry staff listening to a range of perspectives. Disabled children and adults, families, local school principals and teachers, and researchers have much to contribute when it comes to understanding equity for disabled children and what is needed for families to have the genuine choice of inclusion. Evidence is more than advocacy by a particular group. It is the systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of a variety of forms of data and information that clearly demonstrates what works and what doesn’t. We can only hope the ministers are willing to pay attention.