Disabled learners - Accessibility Strategy 2024 / 2027 (Easy Read version)

Our plans for making our schools more accessible to disabled learners.

Contents

What this is about
Our plan
What we found out
What we need to do
When we will do the things in this plan
Hard words

What this is about

We are Swansea Council.

We want to make our schools more accessible for disabled learners.

Accessible schools are schools that children and young people can use easily. Whatever their needs are. It includes things like:

Being able to get into the building and move around it easily.
Having support for their individual needs.
Understanding written information and lessons.

We must do this as part of Equality law.

Equality means treating people fairly and making sure they have the same chances in life. Equality laws are laws that make sure people are not treated unfairly.

We must:

Make sure disabled learners can join in everything. This includes lessons, clubs and trips.
Make school buildings better and more accessible.
Make information easier to understand.

These are called the 3 planning duties.

We know that disabled learners are not the problem. They are not disabled by their conditions, impairments or needs.

Disabled learners are disabled by things like:

problems with our school buildings
systems and processes - the way things are set up
attitudes. For example, someone thinking a disabled learner is not able to do something, just because of their impairment.

There are lots of different types of disability. Some disabled children and young people also have Additional Learning Needs.

Additional Learning Needs is known as ALN. Children and young people with ALN need extra support to learn. This could be because:

They have a condition or impairment that means they need extra support.
They find it harder to learn than other children and young people the same age.
They have a condition or impairment that means they need to go to a special school.

Swansea has many ways to help:

disabled children and young people
and those that have Additional Learning Needs.

Some schools have separate teaching areas for learners with high needs.

We have 2 special schools.

We are checking these services and changing them where we need to.

We want disabled children and children with Additional Learning Needs to learn as near to their home as possible.

Some of our newer schools in Swansea are accessible. Some schools are partly accessible.

Others need a lot of changes to make them accessible because the buildings are older.

All children are different. They learn in different ways. We must make sure all children in Swansea, including disabled learners, can learn well.

Our biggest goal is for all children and young people to have the same changes to learn.

We want everyone in Swansea to have the skills they need for life.

We want people to have their human rights met. We want everyone to join in society and to be treated fairly.

This plan is our 3 year accessibility plan for all disabled learners in Swansea schools.

Our plan

We must think about the 3 planning duties in our plan.

This means our main goals are to:

1. Make sure disabled learners can join in everything in school including lessons, clubs and trips

Disabled learners have the same rights to learning as all learners.

All learners should be treated fairly, in all parts of school life and learning.

This includes making sure disabled learners have the support they need in lessons.

They should be able to take part in all lessons including sport.

They should be able to go to clubs and go on trips.

2. Make school buildings better and more accessible

Changes need to be made to many school buildings. This is so disabled learners can access what they need.

This includes thinking about issues with moving around, sight, hearing, and other things.

We need to think about and plan for many parts of a building. For example:

Classrooms
Stairs
Toilets
Dinner halls
Flooring
The yard and outside space

Lots of things could make buildings better. For example:

Ramps
Doors that open by themselves
Flat flooring
Accessible toilets
Parking for disabled people
Better signs

3. Make information easier to understand

We want disabled learners to be able to easily understand information.

Information can be easier to understand if schools use:

Easy Read
Large print
Braille
Audio

We made this plan by listening to what learners and parents want.

What we found out

We wanted to know what different people and groups think and feel about:

our 3 main goals
and how accessible our schools are for disabled learners.

Disabled learners:

They had lots of different experiences.
Sometimes other learners treat them badly.
They said schools needed to know more about different disabilities.

Schools:

What they know about disability and equality laws needs updating.
They need to think more about all of the different types of disabilities. For example, mental health issues.
Their accessibility plans need more information.

Parents and carers of disabled learners:

People had mixed experiences. Some felt failed by schools. Others felt supported.
They worried about bad attitudes.
They said schools need to think more about different types of disability.
They feel no one listens to them.

What we need to do

Based on what we found, we need to do these things quickly:

Make a guide for schools about accessibility plans.
Make sure staff in schools learn more about disability and accessibility.
Keep listening to disabled learners and their parent and carers.

We also need to take some more actions to meet the 3 goals.

1. Make sure disabled learners can join in

We need to:

Train school staff.
Help schools work with disability teams.
Share how to work in the best ways.

Schools need to:

Make sure they know who all of their disabled learners are. So they can support them to learn equally.
Make any changes needed so disabled learners can learn.
Give learners the equipment they need.
Check how well disabled learners are doing in school.

The most important things to be done are to:

Improve the training for school staff.
Make guides for schools to help disabled learners take part in trips, sports and other things.

2. Make school buildings better and more accessible

We need to:

Help schools decide what needs changing in their buildings.
Think about accessibility when we change or build new schools.
Help provide special equipment to improve accessibility.
Help with some costs.

Schools need to:

Check what changes they need to make and do them.
Pay for some costs.

The most important things to be done are:

We make a guide to help schools make their buildings more accessible.
We build a new special school - making Ysgol Crug Glas and Ysgol Pen-y-Bryn into 1 bigger and better school by 2028.
We make sure specialist equipment is re-used.

3. Making information easier to understand for disabled learners

We need to:

Help schools make information in different ways.
Tell schools to help each other and share good ideas.

Schools need to:

Train staff to make information in different ways.
Regularly check with disabled learners to see if they can do better.
Ask for help if they need it.

The most important thing is to train staff to make lessons easier to understand.

When we will do the things in this plan

This plan will take 3 years.

We will do some things in each of the 3 years.

We will see how this work is going every term. We will check this plan every year.

We will keep listening to disabled learners and their parent carers about this work.

Hard words

Accessible
Accessible schools are schools that children and young people can use easily. Whatever their needs are. It includes things like:

Being able to get into the building and move around it easily.
Having support for their individual needs.
Understanding written information and lessons.

Additional Learning Needs
Additional Learning Needs is known as ALN. Children and young people with ALN need extra support to learn. This could be because:

They have a condition or impairment that means they need extra support.
They find it harder to learn than other children and young people the same age.
They have a condition or impairment that means they cannot use the local school or college.

Equality
Equality means treating people fairly and making sure they have the same chances in life. Equality laws are laws that make sure people are not treated unfairly.