Disability advocates urge faster phase-out of segregated education following royal commission report

Advocates for people with disabilities have urged Australian governments to expedite phasing out segregated education systems, as recommended by some commissioners in the disability royal commission’s final report.

The final, 12-volume report of the royal commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability was made public on Friday after four-and-a-half years of hearings, reports, submissions and powerful testimony from people with disabilities and their loved ones.

The commission’s 222 recommendations included systemic changes to embed inclusive education for students with disability in mainstream schools, though the commissioners were split over whether to recommend the total phase-out of segregated or non-mainstream schools.

Three commissioners recommended “transformational change” that involved phasing out and ending segregated education and “ensuring inclusive education systems”, with an aim of having no students with disability in segregated schools by 2052.

Those recommendations are some of the few that have been singled out in the hours after the report’s release for specific attention by advocates, who say the moves are overdue but the projected timeline is too long.

Skye Kakoschke-Moore, the chief executive of Children and Young People with Disability Australia, said on Friday that it was imperative to listen to the voices of children with disabilities and their families about what was in their best interests.

“We hear overwhelmingly from our community that segregation is not the way to go,” she said. “We hear that full inclusion is the only way that children and young people with disability will get to realise their full aspirations as fully participating members of our community.

“The royal commission report recommended a roadmap towards inclusive education. We support this but we think that there is room to move on the timeline that the royal commission has proposed. Twenty-eight years is a long time. Twenty-eight years will condemn another two generations of children into a system where segregation prevails and inclusion does not.”

Darryl Steff, the CEO of Down Syndrome Australia, said the organisation was disappointed that there was division among the commissioners regarding a proposed end to segregated education.

“The royal commission has shown that segregation is a form of discrimination that is harmful and must end,” Steff said. “The first major steps Australian governments can commit to is ending the harmful separation of people with disability in classrooms and workplaces.”

Advocates have also called upon the government to ensure a newly announced taskforce to work on responding to the commission’s recommendations does not just consult people in the disability community, but includes them “in the room” from the start.

The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, would not be drawn to respond to any of the commission’s specific recommendations, but announced on Friday that the government would establish a commonwealth disability royal commission taskforce which would coordinate the federal government’s response to the report.

“This work will be done in close consultation with the disability community and stakeholders,” she said. “The commonwealth taskforce will be led by my department, but it is a whole-of-government effort.”

Nicole Lee, the president of advocacy organisation People with Disability Australia, said the ‘council being set up by the federal government’ should include people with disability.

“We don’t want to advise into any reporting mechanisms or any councils or any oversight bodies that have been developed moving forward,” Lee said. “We want to be in the room alongside government, with the bureaucrats, making the decisions for our lives – that impact our lives. By us, for us.”

Receiving the report was a matter of “pride, but also grief” for people in the disability community, Lee said.

“I don’t think any of us in this room today are surprised by the gravity of the stories that are contained within that report,” she said. “We know what our lives have been like, we know the violence that we’ve been subjected to.

“We also want to see a future that is fully inclusive – not more inclusive, we want a fully inclusive future and completely desegregated environment and community.”