The second of three contributions on inclusive policy and practice in Flanders focused on recent initiatives taken by the Department of Education of the Ministry of the Flemish Community. Given the well-developed system of special schools in Flanders, policy measures in encouraging inclusive education focus on the promotion of the co-operation between mainstream and special schools. The aim is to exchange expertise in order to help mainistream schools and classroom teachers to deal with pupils with special educational needs. To achieve this goal some experimental projects have been set up to bring special and mainstream schools closer together.
The contribution focused on the position of children with special educational needs in the Flemish schoolsystem and the current policy of the Flemish government in this matter.
To start some figures are given about the participation of children with SEN at the Flemish schoolsystem and two characteristics that are of great importance in relation to inclusive education. Secondly an overview is given of the different measures taken by the government to support schools to deal in a better way with children with disabilities or SEN in general. To conclude some challenges for our government to give inclusive education better chances, are emphasised.
1. Some figures
In Flanders less than 0.1% of all children in the compulsary school age (6-18 years old) are not enrolled in a school. So we nearly reach full education. But, in the last schoolyear (1999-2000), 3.9% of all children in the age-group of 2,5 - 18 year olds (for some categories of pupils with disabilities school attendance goes up to the age of 21), were enrolled in a special school. Looking at the different levels of education the percentages are :
- 0.8% of the children are enrolled in a special school for pre-primary or nursery education (2,5 - 6 years old);
- 5.7% in a special school for primary education (6 - 12/13 years old) ;
- 3.7% in special secondary education (13 - 18/21 years old). Since the beginning of the early nineties, these percentages of participation in special education have gone up. The population in special nursery schools has grown with a quarter, in special primary education with one third and in special secondary education with about 15%.
In comparison, the number of pupils with disabilities integrated in regular schools, although it is growing each year, stays very small (0.1%). It concerns mainly children and youngsters with a physical, visual or auditory impairment.
This does not mean that there are no pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools. At the end of primary education 15% of the children have one or more years of delay (meaning they are not part of their age-group at the end of primary education). The percentage at the end of secondary education goes up to 37%. A lot of youngsters leave school without a certification.
Although the educational reality is a complex one and figures don't tell us everything, they surely give an indication that there are problems in the schoolsystem concerning the handling of differences between children and the inclusion of pupils with SEN within mainstream schools. The growing number of pupils referred to special schools, points to a tendency of exclusion.
2. Two important characteristics of the Flemish educational system
In relation to inclusive education, the following two characteristics of the Flemish educational system are important to understand the specific situation in Flanders :
- the freedom of education
- the strong developed system or
structure of special education
2.1. In Belgium the freedom of education is written down in our
constitution. This means on one hand that parents are free to choose the school
for their children and on the other hand that organisers of education are free
to offer education on the basis of their own pedagogical project and with the
use of their own methods. This freedom of education has as a consequence that
the goverment can not impose a certain view on education, as it is the case
with inclusive education. The government is in a position where she can
facilitate and create the right conditions, but she can not oblige.
And
although most or all schools proclame that they want to give every child the
maximum of chances, we see in practice that when it has to do with children
with SEN, a lot of schools are somewhat reserved to be seen too much as a
school with special attention for pupils with SEN. Most of them fear to be too
attractive for these pupils so that they are not capable any more to deal with
them. In their opinion a large number of pupils with SEN within the school
could threathen the quality of education.
2.2. A second important element is the strong developed structure of
special education. Untill 1970 The Flemish educational system, like in many
other countries, had special classes located in regular schools. In these
classrooms children with different problems and disabilities were brought
together. Because these classrooms were regarded as marginal and poorly
managed, the 1970 Act on special and integrated education led to the supression
of these special classes attached to mainstream schools.
In a period of 30
years, a completely autonomous system of special schools, divided in 8 types
based on the pedagogical and didactical needs resulting from the specific kind
of impairment - mental retardation, visual impairment, serious learning
disabilities,…) was built up with very few links with regular schools.
Together with this option of the legislator, the resources for special
support for children with SEN were, and still are at the moment, mainly spend
in the separate system of special education. This way of financing special
needs education is a very important and maybe a determining factor for the
extend in which inclusive education can be developped in the future.
3. An overview of the measures taken in the past by the Flemish government to promote integration or inclusion
As already said before, an important decision concerning the education of children with special educational needs was taken by the legislator in 1970. Based on a strong concern for the quality of education and care for handicapped children, a separate system of special school was set up. Schools, teachers and guidance centers were, in some way, encouraged to refer children with special educational needs to these special schools when they felt that the mainstream system had not enough to offer.
Under the impulse of the integration and normalisation movement,
integrated education was made possible in 1980. The target group, at that time
and untill 1994, consisted of pupils with a physical or sensorial impairment.
The support for these pupils (pedagogical and/or therapeutical) comes from
teachers and therapists of special schools.
The number of pupils making use
of integrated eduction however, stays low. In relation to the content,
integrated education is mainly based on giving support to the pupil in order to
adapt him/her to the mainstream curriculum. The adaptations made, have to do
with the infrastructure, the adaptation of learning materials (eg. books in
braille), adapted furniture,… but the curriculum often remains unchanged.
In the nineties, government's education policy is characterized by the growing
attention for several different target groups.
In 1991, the educational
priority policy was started to deal with the problems of immigrant children,
together with a specific policy towards refugee-children who don't speak Dutch.
The aim is to tackle the delay in education and the neglect of these target
groups within education and to promote their integration.
On the analogy of the education priority policy, the government started
the extending care programme in 1993. An evaluation of the Belgian educational
system by the OECD showed the quality of education, but also the high numbers
of children with educational problems and pupils who have to repeat their
schoolyear.
The extending care programme therefore focused on the problem
of school failure in the transition phase between nursery and primary education
and later also on the specific situation of children from underprivileged
families.
Mainstream schools can participate in these special programmes if
a certain percentage of their schoolpopulation belongs to the target group. In
addition they have to describe in an action plan how they are going to develop
an educational approach that takes into account the language problems of the
target group, the etnic and socio-cultural diversity, how the will prevent and
remediate learning difficulties, how they will promote the socio-emotional
development of the pupils and how they will work together with the parents.
Additional resources are given on a temporary basis.
In the framework of
the extending care programme, possibilities of working together with a special
school were introduced. As said in the beginning mainstream and special schools
developed independently from one another with very few links between the two
systems. The cooperation is made possible in the way that mainstream schools
can transfer teacher periods to the special school to 'buy' expertise and
support. In return the special school sends a support teacher to the mainstream
school.
In addition a pilot-project was started during three years the
create local cooperation networks between one school for special education and
four or five regular school (primary education). The aim was to help mainstream
schools in dealing with SEN-pupils by setting up activities on classroom and
school level and to influence in this way the referral processes in mainstream
schools. In general the important conclusions of this experiment were that :
- only a minority of the mainstream schools used the cooperation with special education as an instrument to optimize their own proficiency in dealing with pupils with special educational needs. They wanted to learn more about methods concerning curriculum differentiation, other learning methods used in special education, ways to analyse and discuss problems , ways of working together with parents ;
- most schools expect from the special education teacher immediate answers for the problems they face with certain pupils. The traditional approach of learning difficulties consisting of referral the problem to a specialist remained unchanged;
- most schools didn't question their own ways of working. On the contrary, working more closely together with a special school confirmed them in their conviction that special education is much better equiped for dealing with pupils with SEN and that they would refer even quicker in the future.
This was a confirmation of the overall policy of searching solutions for pupils with learning difficulties outside the classroom and more and more outside the own school.
It seems that the measures taken by the government to stimulate the broadening of care in mainstream schools, have had as result that the sensitivity of teachers for problems has grown. We also see that new ways and methods of working are introduced. But untill now we cannot conclude that these changes are translated in a decrease of the number of pupils referred to special education. At this moment evaluation studies are going on the examine the effects on the levels of pupil performance and changes within schools.
On account of the advice on inclusive education of the Flemish Council of Education the focus of the experimental cooperation networks were changed.
As inclusive education is based on the adaptation of the education
itself to the demands and possibilities of children, and because of the
experience that curriculum-differentiation seems to be difficult for mainstream
teachers, the government started a project for the inclusion of children with
moderate or severe mental retardation in mainstream classrooms on the level of
primary education. Schools that already did efforts to include these pupils
were supported. To realise this project we kept the cooperation with a special
school as an instrument to deliver the necessary support to the mainstream
school.
The option for children with this kind of problems was deliberate.
The needs of these pupils on the level of primary education would be of such a
kind that adaptation of the way teachers work had to be questioned, otherwise
the inclusion of these pupils would fail.
With this project we want to
bring into practice the principles of inclusive education : full participation
of the child within the regular classroom and participation at the normal
activities of the other children (of course on the level of performance of the
child in question), support of the classroom teacher concerning classroom
management and interaction with the children with SEN within the classroom
context, adaptation of the educational content, materials and evaluation to
meet the needs and possibilities of the child, the creation of an individual
educational plan,... together with attention for the school level (eg how to
organise internal consultation, working together with parents in setting up and
evaluation of the educational programme for their child,… To do this work
in one school one fourth of a fulltime teacher post is made available as
support.
After one year of work we can already make the following observations :
- the inclusion of these pupils with SEN doesn't create problems with the quality of education, on the contrary it seems to be a stimulation for mainstream schools and teachers to question their ways of working ;
- the social integration of the pupils with SEN is of great importance. Classroom teachers observe a growing cohesion between the pupils ;
- the possibility of the child to work independently for at least a limited period of time and their working attitude seem to be important aspects ;
- mainstream school teachers need enough support in the classroom situation itself to meet the needs of children with SEN in a satisfactory way. The way this support is made possible within the project was, for most of the teachers new . On the other hand we stiil see that additional support already existing before the project started, is mainly focused on the child and its preparation for a better participation in the classroom. Sometimes the question can be raised whether there is some overconsuming of support. The added value of some therapies are not always clear.
- with sufficient support mainstream teachers succeed in including pupils with SEN of whom generally is tought that they would be better off in a special school ;
- mainstream teachers are to dependent on their programme (they experience much more pressure in recent years to reach the goals) and seem to be not sufficiently trained to adapt the programme in accordance to the needs and possibilities of individual pupils ;
- trough the project support teachers of special schools get another idea of the possibilities of mainstream schools in including children with special educational needs.
To conclude the main challenges in our educational system are :
- a change in the way resources are distibuted over schools to deal with special educational needs. More resources have to become available for mainstream schools. Taking into account the specific situation of the Flemish system with a strong system of special schools, it is obvious that possibilities for cooperation between mainstream and special schools have to be stimulated.
- instead of referring the child to a special system, support has to be brought towards the child and the teachers working with it ;
- the initial and in service training of teachers have to pay more attention in how to deal with differences between the pupils within a classroom.
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