New Brunswick's Premier Says Full Inclusion Isn't Working
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses New Brunswick's Premier and Minister of Education acknowledging that their full inclusion policy isn't working.
Key Takeaways
- Government leaders are admitting failure - New Brunswick's top officials are publicly acknowledging that blanket full inclusion hasn't worked
- This validates what educators have been saying - Teachers on the front lines have long reported that full inclusion fails some students
- Policy change may be coming - Acknowledging the problem is the first step toward providing a continuum of services that meets all students' needs
Transcript
Inclusion is hard, but it's worth doing right, and no one is better at inclusion.
No jurisdiction has tried harder and done better than New Brunswick in Canada.
But I have to say, over the past 12 years, what's been put in place in New Brunswick is as good as it can possibly be.
No one is trying harder, no one is doing more, no one is doing better.
and yet it is still not working.
So I apologize to everyone who knows me in New Brunswick.
None of them are putting me up to this, and I'm probably gonna get you in trouble, and I'm sorry, but I really have to call on the leadership in New Brunswick to move away from Policy 322, which has been in place since 2013.
And back in November of last year, Premier Susan Holt wrote a letter to Education Minister Claire Johnson, a mandate letter saying, here are our policies, here are our priorities, here's what I want you to pursue.
And Policy 322 is mentioned there, but also mentioned in that November letter is a need to improve teacher working conditions and a need to improve staff retention.
and a need to provide staffing and training and resourcing for educators to succeed in what they're doing but in you know in particular policy 322 policy 322 says that full inclusion has to be the law of the land there's no opportunity for students to attend specialized programs there is no room for specialized classrooms everything has to be full inclusion And I think this is a good goal.
I think this is a noble and ambitious thing to strive for.
But it's been 12 years, and I think we have to start listening to educators and ask ourselves, is this really working for the students that it's intended to help?
Because I think for most students, inclusion is a good default.
We should, in most cases, try our level best to make inclusion work for them because we don't need to have completely separate settings, completely separate classrooms for most students.
And I saw that firsthand as a principal in Seattle, where we had the same range of students you have, we had the same needs, we had the same challenges.
And for most kids, inclusion can work, but not 100% of kids.
And the challenges that New Brunswick is facing right now, the difficulties that are causing educator turnover in New Brunswick, are going to be the same in any system that strives for 100% inclusion, because you're going to have a small percentage of students who need a different environment.
They cannot succeed in a regular classroom, no matter how much support, no matter how much staff training.
I think we have to stop throwing training at a problem that training cannot solve.
When kids need a different environment, we have to give them that environment.
So I'm calling on the government of New Brunswick to rescind policy 322, get rid of it, It does not work.
And if it worked, you would have succeeded by now.
You are trying harder than anyone else in the world.
And to all the educators in New Brunswick who have been trying to make this work over the past decade plus, my hat goes off to you.
Again, you are doing better than anyone else in the world at inclusion.
but it can't work for 100% of students.
And I don't think you should continue to have to try to make this work for kids for whom it's never going to work, especially for students with autism who cannot handle, you know, not all students with autism, certainly, but some students with autism simply cannot survive, cannot thrive in a classroom that is full of too many other kids they need a different environment you know who these kids are i've had these students in my school and i've seen the difference that it makes to give them an environment that is that is built for them that meets their needs and that is not the regular classroom and this policy makes that illegal makes that against the law in your province so again it was a good effort But I implore you to change course on Policy 322 in New Brunswick and to any jurisdiction that's trying to make full inclusion work for 100% of students.
If it's working, great.
Keep doing it.
But listen to educators and listen to parents when they say it's not working.