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<p>All schools have duties under the Equality Act (2010) towards individual disabled
children and young people, including:</p><ul><li>to make reasonable adjustments, including
the provision of auxiliary aids and services, to prevent them being put at a substantial
disadvantage;</li><li>not to discriminate in relation to their disability; and</li><li>to
publish accessibility plans setting out how they plan to increase access for disabled
pupils to the curriculum, the physical environment and to information. (Local authorities
have parallel duties to publish accessibility strategies.)</li></ul><p>Complementing
this, the Children and Families Act (2014) places duties on schools to use their ‘best
endeavours’ to make special education provision for those who need it, many of whom
will have disabilities.</p><p>Taken together, this amounts to a range of exacting
duties on schools in relation to disability.</p><p>To support schools in meeting those
duties, in relation to vision impairment and more broadly, we are providing £3.4 million
funding over 2018-2020, for the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
schools’ workforce contract, which will be delivered by the Whole School SEND consortium,
led by the National Association for Special Educational Needs, nasen. Our aim is to
embed SEND into school-led approaches to school improvement in order to equip the
workforce to deliver high quality teaching across all types of SEND. As part of this
programme of work, we are also reviewing the learning outcomes of specialist SEND
qualifications, including the mandatory qualifications for teachers of classes with
vision impairment, to ensure they reflect the changing needs of the education system.</p>
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