Contributions from: Omer Ure
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyse the development of Turkish special educational provision for children with special educational needs after the new Turkish Constitution was accepted by the Members of Parliament in 1982. In this study, the, information given is descriptive and analytical because there are two reasons; first, the Turkish government accelerated provision for children in SEN mainstream schools; and second, despite the new Turkish Constitution, the provision made for children has been under the criticism by Turkish educational professionals and administrators since 1982. The researcher wants to develop the cognitive idea about how provision can be well maintained in line with the needs of those who need special education. The discussion draws the attention to the important issues (identification and assessment, curriculum and resources) based on the Turkish SEN legislation 2916 which came into practice in 1983 which seemed not well implemented in Turkish mainstream schools.
The conclusion indicates that the legislation and its practice to make the best provision for children with SEN in mainstream schools needs to be harmonised in accordance with the needs of children with SEN. The conclusion also indicates that professionals' and administrators' motivation needs to be increased using the best strategies in implementing the policy. The report is intended to serve as an informative and comprehensive document for people who are involved in special education.
1. Rationale
In recent years, the issue of mainstreaming of children with SEN has come very much to the fore in Turkey. According to the Turkish Special Education Legislation 2916, which affected the Turkish National Congress for revision of General National Curricular and Special Education issues in 1991, children with SEN should be integrated into mainstream schools making provision in each school where they attend.
According to the Turkish researchers, Eripek (1996) and Ure (1996), what pupils who have special needs need is education, not only integration. Placing them in an ordinary school is not an end in itself, but a means towards the end of securing them an appropriate education. According to Garner et al. (1995) and Gross (1996) four factors, which influence provision are: 1. policy and legislation, 2. efficient identification and assessment procedures, 3. efficient use of resources, and 4. curriculum.
The researchers believed that the process for identification and assessment procedures of children with SEN has not been undertaken in Turkey as required by the legislation because there are few experts to be able to identify and assess all the children's needs and there is a lack of standardised tests to assess children, even if Turkish Special Education Legislation 2916 legislates schools to identify and assess the children in consistent with the legislative stages. The researchers also believed that there are poor relationships between experts working in different departments to help each other in the identification and assessment of children in Turkey.
The first primary education curriculum was presented to all schools in Turkey in 1948. This curriculum was revised many times such as in 1968, 1995 and 1997. There was also a National Congress for Educational Programmes in 1991. Many experts argued that all curricular issues should be revised and a new curriculum should be constructed and adapted as much as possible. After the National Congress (1991), differentiated programmes were offered to the schools which should be prepared by classroom teachers according to the children's special needs. Although an Individual Education Plan is compulsory for children, many teachers are not expert in this kind of planning. In Turkey, the limited attention paid to special educational provision in mainstream schools by administrators and professionals is a cause of concern for children with SEN. Primary and secondary schools have been failing to meet the needs of many pupils and may indeed have been adding to them (Ozsoy et al. 1995; Eripek, 1994; Sari, 1993 and 2000).
Some educational professionals and researchers criticise the quality of provision for children with SEN in Turkey (Eripek, 1996; Kircaali-Iftar, 1996). The researchers who have experience of teaching students with SEN in mainstream schools in Turkey, felt that the SEN provisional approach and style in Turkey could be developed and improved in the Turkish mainstream schools. Therefore, the researchers believe that this study would provide an informed basis for future developments of provision for children with SEN in Turkey.
2. Overview
The majority of children begin infant or first school at the age of six years in Turkey. A sizeable proportion (perhaps as many as 14%) of schools' intake may have SEN that requiring attention from the outset (Ozsoy et al. 1996). These difficulties may occur in one or more of seven areas: vision, hearing, coordination, mental ability, speech and language, and social and emotional development. Estimates of the prevalence of various kinds of difficulties have to be interpreted cautiously because they could occur for any child at any age in any part of the curriculum (Armstrong et al. 1993; Bowers and Wilkinson, 1998; Derrington et al. 1997; Altay, 1995).
Special educational provision is defined as 'provision which is additional to, or otherwise different from, the educational provision made generally for children' (Emanuellson and Person, 1997; Farrell, 1998; Friel, 1995). For such provision, three general principles are outlined: 1) special education provision should be as undivisive as possible, 2) like all education, it should maximise cognitive skills, 3) special provision should enhance the view of all those learners who are part of it.
In Turkey, many pupils with SEN are educated in mainstream schools with varying degrees of support (Eripek, 1996). The government intended that the National Curriculum (NC) would offer a positive step towards integration or inclusion. Therefore, the prime purpose of the schools and LEAs should be to provide rich and varied learning experiences for children with and without SEN (Turner et al. 1998; Rouse and Agbenu, 1998; Rayner and Ribbins, 1999).
According to Friel (1995), SEN legislation is of paramount importance to provision for children with SEN because it articulates and reinforces a country's policy on special education. Although a special education policy should be clear and detailed, Turkish schools and LEAs appeared to suffer from not having clear SEN policy and legislation. Children with SEN are both the same as, and different, from other children in a number of fundamental respects (Armstrong et al. 1993; Bowers and Wilkinson, 1998; Emanuelsson and Person, 1997; Garner et al. 1995). Because of the fundamental respects in which they are the same, to receive adequate provision as human being, their lives should be integrated with those of other members of the community in schools and in the society (Simmons, 1998; Rouse and Agbenu, 1998; Turner et al. 1998). However, children with SEN need adequate resources, which differ from other children in mainstream schools (Ozsoy et al. 1996). These resources should be made available for LEAs and schools to help those children integrate with their society in which they live (Rayner and Ribbins, 1999).
As stated in Webb and Vulliamy (1998), Tufekcioglu (1992) and Gursel (1997), educational professionals' and administrators' main aims should be to improve special education arrangements within mainstream schools, to support the work of teachers and to provide specialist teaching for children with SEN by making necessary provision. In Turkey, although there are some problems about providing for children with SEN, many improvements have taken place in mainstream schools (Eripek, 1996; Sari, 2000). Nevertheless, provision appeared to be neglected in Turkey (Sari, 2000; Ure, 2000).
4. Children with SEN in Turkey
Eripek (1994) emphasised that although the size of the population of primary age children with SEN in Turkey is difficult to measure, the estimated number is approximately 6,850,000. According to the Ministry of National Education Report (MEB Report, 1996), there are approximately 3,691,000 children with SEN aged between 1 and 18 years. The world prevalence rate for impairments was estimated by World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1978 and this figure was accepted by Turkish professionals. According to WHO's data, the disability rate is between 10% and 14% of the whole population (Ozsoy et al. 1995). Table 1.1 below shows the general prevalence of children with SEN according to their age groups.
Table 1.1: The prevalence of children with SEN in Turkey in 1996 (Ozsoy et al. 1996).
| Age groups | 0-6 | 7-14 | 15-18 | Total population |
| Children without SEN | 9,769,944 | 10,284,151 | 4,627,868 | 24,681,963* |
| Children with SEN | 1,597,792 | 1,656,781 | 426508 | 3,691,081* |
* indicates approximately
More than one million children will be starting their primary education when they are at the age of six or seven. Additionally, more than one million children with SEN are currently educated in primary education. More than half a million students in secondary education need special education. Table 1.2 below shows the prevalence of children with SEN according to their difficulty type.
Table 1.2: The prevalence of children with SEN aged between 1 and 18 years according to their impairments in Turkey (Ozsoy et al. 1996).
| Disability | % | Total |
| Visually impaired | 0.2 | 52,742 |
| Hearing Impaired | 0.6 | 158,226 |
| Speech impaired | 3.5 | 922,985 |
| Physical impaired | 1.4 | 369,194 |
| Epileptic and others | 1.0 | 263,710 |
| Gifted | 2.0 | 527,420 |
| Mild Learning difficulties | 2.0 | 527,420 |
| Moderate Learning difficulties | 0.3 | 79,113 |
| Emotional difficulties | 1.0 | 263,710 |
| Total | 14 | 3,691,940 |
| All children | 100 | 28,871,001 |
According to Table 1.2, more than half a million children have mild and moderate learning difficulties and nearly one million children have speech difficulties in Turkey. Approximately half a million children have different physical disabilities. Turkey does not make special provision for children with speech and emotional and behavioural difficulties but there are a few private places in the big cities such as Ankara, Istanbul and Eskisehir where educational opportunities for these children are provided (Eripek, 1996). Table 1.3 indicates the prevalence of children with SEN currently educated in Turkish special and mainstream schools.
Table 1.3: The prevalence of children with SEN in current education in Turkey (The Ministry of National Education Report, 1997)
| Schools | No. of schools | No. of students | No. of Teachers | Student and Teacher ratio |
| Special schools for the visually disabled | 9 | 1,101 | 206 | 5:1* |
| Special schools for the hearing impaired | 52 | 6,948 | 965 | 7:1* |
| Special schools for the physically disabled | 5 | 196 | 45 | 5:1* |
| Special schools for children with mild learning difficulties | 32 | 1,816 | 236 | 9:1* |
| Special schools for children with moderate learning difficulties | 29 | 987 | 329 | 4:1* |
| Vocational education centres for children with SEN | 11 | 359 | 56 | 7:1* |
| Special classes and units | 2,489 | 7,630 | 1,105 | 7:1* |
| Mainstream schools | 2,919 | 8,100 | ||
| Total | 5,546 | 27,137 | 2,942 |
According to Table 1.3, approximately 36,000 students with SEN are currently educated in special and mainstream schools. Provision for children with SEN has improved remarkably over the past decade in Turkey (Eripek, 1994; Tufekcioglu, 1992). Nonetheless, it is patchy and the quality of education and SEN provision has not reached the level required by the legislation because of insufficient resources (Akcamete, 1996; Altay, 1995). The majority are being educated by state schools to the best of their ability, though with varying degrees of support from their local community, government and non-governmental departments (MEB Report, 1996).
5. Special Education in Turkey
Many children with SEN are educated in special schools, mostly residential schools which include nursery and primary education. However, some children with SEN are taught in totally or partially separate classes or units in mainstream schools or centres (Ozsoy et al. 1996). Few students are educated in private institutions, voluntary organisations or other research and practice centres in the universities such as 'Isitme Engelli Çocuklar Egitim ve Uygulama Merkezi' (IÇEM) 'Training and Research Centre for Hearing Impaired Children' in Anadolu University (Tufekcioglu, 1992). Thirty thousand students with SEN are currently educated in Turkish schools. In general, three placement services exist for the education of children with SEN in Turkey: i) integration of children with SEN in mainstream classrooms; ii) special schools with and without residential provision; iii) special classes or units in mainstream schools. Increasingly, as primary education progresses, a few children with severe difficulties are educated in mainstream schools. Some students with multiple disabilities were totally excluded both from mainstream school and from segregated facilities because of lack of resources and specialist people to teach them (Ozyurek, 1996).
According to the Turkish SEN literature (Eripek, 1994; Kircaali-Iftar, 1996) between 10% and 14% of the school population needs special education. With the significant expansion of primary education in the last two decades, some children with SEN were enrolled in mainstream schools (Eripek, 1996). While this is encouraging and laudable, many of these children cannot survive the system in Turkey (Eripek, 1996). This group of children may have a variety of impairments and disadvantages that translate into SEN. They are often at risk of repeating or dropping out because of environmental reasons and lack of resources (Ari et al. 1998; Yilmaz, 1997).
The General Directorate of Special Education, Guidance and Research Services has responsibility for the allocation and placement of students with SEN (MEB Report, 1997). The directorate is also responsible for running the Guidance and Research Centres 'Rehberlik ve Arastirma Merkezleri (RAM)' where those who need special education are identified and assessed for their provision in schools. The government has special schools for children with hearing, visual, mental and physical difficulties. However, in Turkey, children who have special difficulties other than those described above, such as epilepsy, are served by separate private institutions not available in every LEA.
6. Turkish legislation and constitutional issues
1982 Turkish Constitution outlaws any kind of discrimination and advocates equal rights for all citizens regarding employment, education, self development academically, socially and culturally in accordance with the National Education goals and objectives. These goals and objectives are also explained in the legislation 1739 (National Education Foundation Legislation, 1739) which addressed how schools could prepare a child with SEN to make a valued contribution to the community.
According to the Turkish Constitution 1982, schools should give priority not only to ensuring that pupils become competent in the basic living skills, but also to a social independence skills and the use of language and communication skills for all round-development. Pupils should also have full access to schools, sports grounds and other entertainment places.
The Turkish Constitution stresses that the government should provide mainstream schools and pre-vocational programmes to enable more effective preparation and more direct training for employment (MEB Report, 1996). Under the Turkish Constitution, pupils with SEN should share the same statutory entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum, including access to the National Curriculum. The aspiration of curriculum entitlement is one that has become a legal requirement. According to the Turkish Constitution (1982), the state's constitutional duty is to provide free primary education and to supplement and aid private and corporate initiatives as well. All state schools must be financed entirely by the state through the Ministry of National Education to meet the needs of children. However, this issue appeared to be neglected by the Ministry of National Education because many schools are having scarcity of resources and scarcity of suitable places.
7. Current Turkish special education provision
After the 1980 revolution, the new Turkish Constitution 1982 was accepted by the Members of Parliament in 1982. After this, new legislation (2916) for special education was accepted by the Members of Parliament in October, 1983. It was modified in December 1985 (Special Education Committee Report, 1991). After passing legislation 2916, special education came to the fore as one of the most important issues in Turkey. According to legislation 2916, and the Turkish Constitution 1982, all special schools which belong to the government should be organized for curricular issues, resources and teacher training.
In 1991, there was a National Congress for special education organised by the Ministry of National Education in Turkey (The Ministry of National Education - MEB Report, 1991). In this meeting, several categories of pupils were defined: 'blind, partially sighted, deaf, partially deaf, learning difficulties (mild, moderate and severe), sick children, physically handicapped, and those with specific speech defects, gifted children, and children with emotional and behavioural difficulties'. Children falling into other categories could attend either mainstream or special schools. After the National Special Education Congress, integration of children with SEN was advised as far as was practicable (Ozsoy et al. 1995). In the progress, special schools with their smaller classes and greater possibilities appeared to be an obvious solution to educate children with SEN because of availability of suitable buildings. The result was a considerable expansion in the number of special schools. This continued up to the 1990s while a number of mainstream schools were integrating some students with SEN (Ozcelik, 1987; Eripek, 1994)
Special schools do not have different curricula, admission procedures, administrative or financial arrangements, or different career patterns for their teachers in Turkey (Special Education Department Report, 1997). According to Eripek (1994), mainstream schools should be providing a more appropriate education for the large number of their own pupils who are failing to achieve and they should be capable of educating many pupils who are attending special schools.
The Turkish government increased annual grant and funding of teachers in special schools, and established special education departments in the Ministry of National Education after 1990 (MEB Report, 1997). The expectations of the voluntary societies challenged governments to decide on national policy. During the past a few years, governments have assumed greater responsibility in special education, though non-governmental organisations viewed their governments' actions with mixed feelings (Ozsoy et al. 1996). Fewer than 10% of individuals with SEN can be provided with adequate services through private institutions in Turkey. If governments were sufficiently sensitised and supported them with adequate resources they would be able to respond in a meaningful way to more than 80% of children with SEN (The SEN Regulation 573).
In Turkey, new ideas and trends about special education has been developing for the last a few years. As stated in Julian and Ware (1998) and Bangs (1998), inclusive education became to be an umbrella term to describe the restructuring of special education to permit all or most students to be integrated in mainstream classrooms through reorganization and instructional innovations such as co-operative learning, collaborative consultation and team teaching. They suggested the redesign of traditional special education to integrate students into regular education classrooms and to promote collaboration between educators in regular and special education. However, in the Turkish context, this term 'inclusive education' was recognized in recent years but lack of resources, lack of expert teachers, professionals and administrators who are expert on SEN issues to make individual education plans for children with SEN according to their needs, lack of information exchange among external services and institutions and lack of collaboration between administrators, professionals, teachers, parents and external services make difficult to implement this kind of education model for children with SEN (Eripek, 1994; Ozyurek, 1991).
With the help of the Ministry of National Education in 1997, the special education committee succeeded in maintaining collaboration with other institutions such as the universities for teacher training (The Ministry of National Education Report, 1997). However, this corporation still needs to be modified and clarified in terms of the way in which the institutions communicate with and help each other to provide the best provision (Special Education Committee Report, 1992). However, in Turkey, special education still needs further development in terms of teacher training, equipment and resources, curricula and appropriate teaching situations. The MEB reports (1997) reaffirmed the principle of active participation by all pupils with SEN, whether in special or mainstream schools, with or without statements.
Since 1982, many LEAs in Turkey have been supporting an increasing number of children with SEN in regular classes. However, this support usually takes the form of additional teaching without adequate resources. Even if large resource commitments have been made, this often happens without a policy framework and as a response to individual cases. Many teachers who spend their time in classrooms giving extra sessions for children with SEN are rarely either experienced or trained in special education (Eripek, 1996).
The Turkish SEN legislation (2916) makes it clear that all children have the right to be educated and no one should be deprived of this right. However, in the researchers' experience some children with SEN are still not fully educated and do not always have the opportunity to go to school because of lack of adequate resources and suitable curricula in their LEAs. Some children with SEN are faced to be excluded from the education system or receive less favourable treatment within it than other children (Ozyurek, 1996; Sari, 1993). This is compounded by a scarcity of educational opportunities in adult life as well.
The right to education is also contained within the Turkish National Education Foundation Legislation 1739, which not only guarantees primary education but also encourages secondary education. Children with SEN, like other children, are encouraged to participate in further education after primary and secondary schooling since this is required by law (Turkish Constitution 1982, statement 42).
In Turkey, while what is happening in practice should be precisely planned, most descriptions of special educational provision remain very general and non-specific (Eripek, 1996; Kircaali-Iftar, 1996; Sari, 2000). In Turkey, schools seldom describe their special educational arrangements in detail. Support services and facilities appeared to be insufficient to meet the needs of all children with SEN (Ure, 1996). Education authorities have not had a national framework within which to develop co-ordinated special educational provision, which is therefore, managed and developed by each LEA in isolation from central and collaborative management.
According to Eripek (1994), although Turkey recognises the rights of children with SEN to receive a suitable education, the right to special education has not been upheld in practice as required by the legislation. The quality of provision for such children depends on educational professionals' and administrators' interpretations of and their motivation to implement policy (Gray and Denicolo, 1998; Gross, 1996; Rayner and Ribbins, 1999; Herr, 1993). The researcher believes that when educational administrators and professionals have positive attitudes, understanding, beliefs and opinions they are more likely to make better provision in accordance with the children's needs as determined by government legislation.
8. Conclusion
Although Turkey has a policy for children with SEN, the situation appears to be no clear. Turkish educational professionals and administrators are often aware of the presence of pupils with SEN in mainstream schools but are not sure how to tackle their learning difficulties effectively. Whether any child is placed in an ordinary classroom or in a special setting and how much constructive support s/he receives to help overcome her/his learning difficulties are often matters of chance and availability rather than the result of careful assessment, planning and evaluation. Many children with SEN continue to require various kinds of help throughout their school careers, which inhibits their cognitive, linguistic and/or social development. There are, however, some differences between Local Education Authorities (LEAs) and schools in the way they implement legislation for SEN provision. Such differences in the implementation of legislation may reflect differences in the interpretations, understanding, values and beliefs of educational professionals and administrators as mentioned in McConkey (1998) and Williams and Maloney (1998).
The struggle to develop compulsory education for the majority of children takes precedence over the needs of children with SEN in Turkey. The right to equality of educational opportunity is routinely accepted as a general principle, but is widely ignored in practice. The researchers believe that the problem is more than the customary gap between rhetoric and reality in that it is caused by scarce resources. Even where there is a commitment to implementing policies, it seems difficult to establish what is required in practice because of lack of adequate resources and curriculum experts. In addition, policies are unclear regarding the roles of professionals and administrators in Turkey.
The policy for special education seemed to encourage professionals and teachers who are more willing to share expertise and resources in schools, rather than just expecting the special needs teachers or SEN co-ordinator to do everything. They need to look at the curriculum offered to children with SEN, and try to make it more interesting and relevant. There needs to be a very good collaboration and co-ordination between special schools and mainstream schools in order to better integrate the students and train teachers in curriculum development and the effective use of resources in the classroom. They should have better communication with each other to provide for children with SEN in each school. As explained in (McConkey, 1998; Gray, and Denicolo, 1998; Gross, 1996, and Yilmaz, 1995), special education provision requires appropriate funding and resources. Good schools and LEAs provide many advantages such as the concentration of expertise in teaching pupils with various disabilities, modified curricula and programmes of work. These are very important factors for integration but if they are absent in mainstream schools they may make the integration ineffectual in educating children with SEN. The challenge appeared to find ways of sharing all the professionals' and administrators' expertise and resources between schools and embedding them in a wider educational context. Co-operation between external agencies and schools should have been a dominant theme and almost universally accepted since the publication of the legislation 2916 and the SEN Regulation 576 (1997). However, despite the Legislation, it seems that there is still a gap between rhetoric and reality, particularly, in the partnership between the schools, external services and parents to meet the needs of children with SEN.
Implications for practice
The recommendations made by this paper have arisen from the central issue of how to best provide for children with SEN in Turkey.
References
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