Community Living Manitoba began as a network of parents who were concerned about the lack of education available for their sons and daughters who had developmental disabilities. Over the past 60 years, children with developmental disabilities have moved from being denied access to public education to being included in the classroom. The journey into the classroom began over two decades ago when Community Living Manitoba, along with the Manitoba Teachers’ Society, The Children’s Coalition, the Manitoba Council for Exceptional Children and many other advocates of inclusive education, began to press the Manitoba government to change the way students with developmental disabilities and other special needs received services. This prompted Manitoba Education and Advanced Learning to launch a Special Education Review to examine and report on current practices and recommendations for future practices within the public education sector.
The Special Education Review Initiative was created in April 2000 to coordinate the implementation of 44 recommendations made in The Special Education Review. Inclusive education became a goal, not only for children with developmental disabilities, but for all children in Manitoba. Manitoba Education and Advanced Learning regularly met with many stakeholders, including service providers, advocacy groups and parents, and they discussed the issues that they and their children faced in receiving adequate, standardized, appropriate and respectful education. There were many jurisdictional differences in these discussions, but the consultations resulted in the amendment to the Public Schools Act, reinforcing the responsibilities of Manitoba school boards to ensure appropriate public education for all school-aged children in Manitoba. This amendment was given Royal Assent in 2004, and the development of its supporting regulations led to its proclamation in early November 2005.
(Community Living Manitoba, A Parent’s Guide to Inclusive Education, 2013, p. 38-39)
Inclusive Education isn’t something that schools do to be kind. Our children have the right to an inclusive education. In Manitoba this includes to attend their local catchment school with their peers, and to receive reasonable accommodations:
The first and foremost consideration in the placement of all students is the right to attend the designated catchment school for their residence in a regular classroom with their peers or in a program designated by the school board if the school does not provide it. This includes the four provincially recognized programs: English, French Immersion, Français, and Senior Years Technology Education.
(MEECL, Standards for Appropriate Educational Programming in Manitoba, 2022, p.8)
School divisions must provide reasonable accommodation for all students based on identified needs. Students requiring such accommodation shall be assessed and reasonably accommodated on an individual basis. The Human Rights Code specifies that there must be reasonable accommodation of students’ special needs unless they demonstrably cause undue hardship due to cost, risk to safety, impact on others, or other factors.
(MEECL, Standards for Appropriate Educational Programming in Manitoba, 2022, p.8)
In Manitoba, publicly funded schools are governed by The Public Schools Act and The Education Administration Act. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as part of the Canadian Constitution, is the supreme law of Canada.
(MEECL, Standards for Appropriate Educational Programming in Manitoba, 2022, p. 3)
Manitoba Education has more information on Human Rights and Appropriate Educational Programming at this link: https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/specedu/aep/human_rights.html
You can learn more about the history of the development of special education in Manitoba as well as the role that advocacy played in it, at this link: A Brief History of Special Education in Manitoba (Community Living Manitoba, A Parent’s Guide to Inclusive Education, 2013, p. 38)
Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth (MACY) has an easy to navigate list of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as downloadable posters in a variety of languages.