Special needs education and care in mainstream education (special needs pupils)

Pupils that require extra care to allow them to go
to school may receive additional individual
funding. This ensures they get additional care in
mainstream education or a place in special needs
education. The number of special needs pupils
and the attendant educational facilities have seen
tremendous growth in past decades. But since
2006, growth in special needs facilities has
plateaued, in part as a result of targeted policy
measures. Secondary special needs education
forms an exception and is still growing.
The Education Council has published a number of
advisory reports about care in the education
system. The most important of these are set out
below.
Strengthen cooperation between mainstream
education and other facilities
In 2004, the Education Council advocated
cooperation between schools and external advisors
for special needs pupils. The Education Council
advocated the deployment and improvement of
care advice teams (Enhancing young people's
educational experience ), which embody a form of
cooperation between schools and experts, such as
social workers, youth psychologists and youth
doctors, allowing the parties to consult each other
and take decisions on special needs pupils. The
Education Council proposed that schools should
take the lead role in these teams and should retain
responsibility for the pupil as long as possible. It
also proposed that schools should be given credits
entitling them to enlist the help of certain experts.
Strengthen the capability of schools to deal with
behavioural problems
Dealing with behavioural problems in schools starts
with good education and good teachers (Schools
and pupils with behavioural problems, 2010) Ideally,
schools will have a clear educational climate, clear
rules and the right amount of attention for pupils.
Desirable behaviour will be practiced and
rewarded, while undesirable behaviour will be
ignored or, where necessary, punished.
Common sense and critical
Actors in the education community and
policymakers at the Ministry of Education must
take a common-sense and critical approach to the
increasingly nuanced classification of problem
behaviour, because behaviour is not static, but can
be changed by the pupils in question themselves
with help from teachers, school principals, parents,
and assistants. The Education Council believes that
schools and teaching teams should agree to
remain critical regarding the use of medical and
psychiatric terms to describe behaviour. Also bear
in mind that while teachers have an important role
to play in pointing out the problems they see, it is
the sole reserve of behavioural specialists to make
a diagnosis.
Support schools in dealing with behavioural
problems
The government should help schools strengthen
their capability to deal with special needs pupils.
Giving access to practical case studies, training
and more classroom staff are tried and tested
methods. The effective conduct of some teachers
is easy to describe and teach to others. It is
important that the basic attitude is positive,
instruction is effective, classes are effectively
managed, there is a strong relationship between
teachers and pupils and the behavioural change
actions are planned. Teachers need support with
these processes from teacher training colleges, the
school's governing body and school leaders.
Improve the quality of special needs education
In recent years, there has been criticism of the
quality of special needs education (primary school
age) and secondary special needs education, and
this has led to the introduction of core objectives
for special needs education in order to provide a
stimulus for an outcome-oriented approach. In
2008, the Education Council agreed with the
introduction of core objectives, but believed that
they needed to be further specified ( Kerndoelen en
leerstandaarden voor het speciaal onderwijs (Core
objectives and learning standards for special needs
education )). The Education Council called for the
introduction of reference levels specially modified
for special needs education.
In 2010, the Education Council responded to
proposed legislation that intended to improve the
quality of secondary special needs education by
introducing three school-leaving profiles
(Wetsvoorstel vso (Secondary Special Needs
Education Bill), 2010). The key recommendations
of the Education Council related to the principle
that education should focus on the independence
of the child. Furthermore, the Education Council
also believed that the purpose of special needs
education should always be to enable transfers to
further education or entry to the labour market.
Participation at day activity centres cannot therefore
be considered equivalent to a school-leaving
profile, except in special cases. Finally, the
Education Council proposed that the action plan
should not be replaced by the development
perspective, as this represents a vision of the final
goal of education for a specific pupil, while the
action plan is an instrument that includes the
development perspective as one of its constituent
parts.
Introduce ‘appropriate education’ legislation
carefully and gradually
The aim of ‘appropriate education’ policy is to
ensure that pupils that need extra support are
offered appropriate education, preferably in
mainstream education, and at the same time
reduce the strong growth in numbers of special
needs pupils. The basic principle of the proposal
is the introduction of a duty of care on school
governing bodies and new collaborative
partnerships with primary and secondary education.
Duty of care means that the governing body of the
school where parents enrol their child must make
arrangements so that the child obtains an
appropriate education place within the collaborative
partnership. This means that the parents no longer
have to make the arrangements themselves. Each
region must have a varied offering of appropriate
education so that special needs pupils do not end
up at home in the long term.
In 2011, the Education Council published its
recommendations on the Appropriate Education Bill
(wetsvoorstel passend onderwijs) in its report
Passend onderwijs voor leerlingen met een extra
ondersteuningsbehoefte (Appropriate education for
pupils requiring extra support ). While it supported
the objectives of the Bill, it proposed a three-
pronged approach: basic care (by the teacher),
broad care (at school, including in cooperation with
external parties) and deep care (outside school, in
special education centres). The Education Council
emphasised the central role of teachers in the
success of appropriate education, requiring
professional teaching staff, high quality initial
training and good in-service training pathways.
The Education Council believed that the timeframe
set out in the Bill allowed insufficient time to put
the intended measures in place. Furthermore, a lot
is still unclear because the legislative process is
still ongoing. This is the case, for instance, for
cooperation through new collaborative
partnerships. The Bill should therefore only become
law two years after it is passed by the Senate.