All Means All has made a submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council as part of Australia’s Fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Our submission focuses on Australia’s failure to uphold the right to inclusive education under Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Despite numerous inquiries, decades of research and clear guidance from international human rights bodies, successive Australian governments have continued to invest in and expand segregated education and failed to ensure a universally accessible, quality and inclusive education system.
While we acknowledge the breadth of human rights issues raised by other organisations in this UPR cycle, our focused submission reflects the urgency of this issue. We are especially concerned by recent regressive developments in education policy in Australia, suggesting a reorientation towards ‘co-location’ of new segregated ‘special’ schools with existing mainstream schools that will further entrench the ‘dual-track’ system and increase segregation of students with disability, together with the refusal by governments to commit to a planned and time-bound transition to inclusive education, including a strategy to phase out segregation over time, as recommended by the three ‘lived experience Commissioners’ in their recommendations in the Final Report of the Disability Royal Commission.
You can read our full submission here: