New Brunswick’s child and youth advocate is calling on the government to shelve plans to review the inclusive education policy and focus instead on addressing “longstanding failures” in early intervention, student exclusion and access to early French immersion.
In a scathing report released Monday, Kelly Lamrock challenged any suggestion that inclusion — the right of students with disabilities to learn alongside their peers which is a principle that has been applied in New Brunswick for 40 years — is responsible for declining academic results, such as literacy.
He argues that children, their families and educators are instead “bearing the consequences of delayed support and inadequate accountability.”
The province’s new 12-year education plans include a commitment to review and update Policy 322 — the policy that requires all public schools in the province to be inclusive.
It comes as New Brunswick student test scores are once again the lowest in the country.
But in his report, Lamrock pointed out that the literacy rate in the anglophone sector jumped from about 50 per cent to more than 80 per cent between 2000 and 2015, while inclusion was in place.
And Lamrock wrote that New Brunswick’s Grade 8 students had the biggest gains in literacy, math and science in the country in 2016, according to the Pan-Canadian assessment.
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