377

of 500 signatures

To Department of Education

The Department of Education is considering bringing management of non-medical student support in-house so that universities will manage it using funding from all students' tuition fees. Non-medical support includes BSL interpretation, specialist mentoring, speech to text reporting and other vital support. Currently, non-medical support is arranged by external providers funded by the Department of Education.

If the Department of Education goes ahead with plans to remove individual entitlement for non-medical help, it would predominantly impact D/deaf, blind, and autistic students, and students with mental health-related disabilities. Women are also disproportionately impacted by these plans. Bringing non-medical support in-house would effectively amount to cuts to this type of support, given that universities already fail to provide adequate disability support due to lack of funding and structural ableism. Disabled people are already underrepresented in higher education, more likely to drop out, less likely to achieve a high degree result, and less likely to find employment after graduating.

Notes: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/reforms-to-disabled-students-support-will-confuse-and-dilute-our-rights/

Petition text

The Department of Education must commit to fully funding non-medical support for disabled students, to help keep disabled students in higher education and remove barriers to our success. Disabled students deserve quality university education just like our abled peers.

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Don't scrap non-medical support for disabled students!

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