*We no longer celebrate academic excellence in schools. Instead, we uphold mediocrity, in the pursuit of inclusion. It’s disgusting, and it’s wrong.
The educational kool aid of the day will continue to be drunk by those who like to believe this progressive malarkey, because it sounds so very shiny and new. Be wary of those claims which sound too good to be true. Like most things, they ring hollow after a while.

*Haalbare versus niet haalbare inclusie:

------I secured my first teaching position at a time when children with physical disabilities were starting to be encouraged to attend mainstream schools. My school admitted its first child who used a wheelchair. The science labs were on the first and second floor of the building and so a lift was installed. All of this was perfectly reasonable and an example of how to include children with different needs.

------However, imagine that a child is particularly badly behaved. Perhaps she comes from a difficult background or perhaps she has psychopathic personality traits that mean that she lacks empathy. Perhaps the former caused the latter. Suppose we then decide to give this child a label for her poor behaviour. Let’s call it ‘antisocial behaviour disorder’. Including this child is now a quite different prospect to including the child with the wheelchair.

I moved on from my first school when I was still quite a young teacher. My second school was in a more deprived area. I remember teaching science to Year 10 one Wednesday afternoon. A boy – let’s call him “Joe” – was misbehaving. He kept shouting out swear-words whilst I was trying to address the class. I had placed him near the front and he repeatedly turned around, saying things to the other students that I couldn’t quite hear but, from their reactions, I could tell were quite insulting.

We had an ‘on call’ system where, in an emergency, a senior member of staff was available to come to a class