This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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Disability Strategies Bill passed
28/03/2002
The Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils' Educational Records)(Scotland) Bill was today passed by the Parliament.
The Bill will require education providers to develop disability strategies to help all pupils with disabilities. The strategies should detail how access to the curriculum and to the physical environment will be increased, and how communication with pupils with disabilities will be improved.
The Bill will support and complement the new duties under the Disability Discrimination Act, which will make it unlawful from September for education providers to discriminate against disabled pupils and prospective pupils.
In a separate measure, the Bill will also allow Ministers to reinstate the rights of parents in Scotland to access their children's school records.
Deputy Minister for Education Nicol Stephen said:
"Most education providers are already doing a lot of good work in improving access for pupils with disabilities in schools and nursery classes. We want them to build on this and to be proactive in planning their future provision. The aim is to ensure sensible planning rather than simply responding on an ad hoc basis to the needs of an individual child.
"This will ensure that education providers give priority to promoting inclusion and will help pupils with disabilities to benefit from equal opportunities at school.
"We also want to ensure that parents in Scotland have an independent right to access their children's educational records. That right was removed as a consequence of data protection legislation that came into force in March 2000. This Bill allows us to sort out the problem."