Mr Mohandas Vaidya,

How is this innovation applied in your country?

In Canada, there have been some differences from Province to Province. In our Province, Alberta, children with severe disabilities were generally not served in public schools until the 1970s when the courts found that they colud not be excluded. Until then, some were served in hospital schools and otehrs in parent organized programs, while others got no education at all. SInce the late 1970s schools began to serve them in special classes, but since that time there has been a trend toward integrating them into regular classes. In spite of some resistence, this has generally worked very well.

-Dick Sobsey

Dear Dick Sobsey,

Thank you very much for sharing the experience in Canada.

In England we have a new assessment and support procedure being trialled and discussed by Parliament and stakeholders called the Single Education, Care and Health Plan. It is designed to promote early identification of children's SEND, provide a vehicle for transdisciplinary practice, increased parental partnership and parent ownership of the budget their child is entitled to to provide for their needs and support the child/young person from birth to the age of twenty-five years. Children can then be taught in the school most appropriate to their individual needs and according to parental choice. That is the theory anyway, there is much discussion about it's practical application and whether children with very mild learning difficulties will get their needs met under such a system.

In Germany, most children with severe SEN are sent to special schools. We have recently investigated how these differences between the UK's (integrative) and Germany's (segregative) educational systems affect children's attainment chances and indeed early inlcusion in normal schools combined with special support seem to make a huge difference (paper under review). Both the UN and the EU are currently enforcing more inclusive schooling Germany.