Recente studie: Inclusief onderwijs & 'School for all: grote afstand tussen 'inclusieve' wetgeving & retoriek en de dagelijkse klaspraktijk anderzijds

Inclusief onderwijs staat al vele jaren centraal in de onderwijswetgeving van de Scandinavische landen en Rusland, maar is al bij al nog niet zo sterk doorgedrongen in de praktijk  We citeren even de twee belangrikste conclusies uit een recent studierapport  “Learning from Our Neighbours: Inclusive Education in the Making” van 2013 (zie verdere referenties achteraan)

*In most, if not in all of the visited countries, there was a vision  to create a ‘common school for all’ that takes into account   every learner’s needs. This view was mostly presented in formal  documents and discourse and not to that extent in practice. …The  rhetoric of inclusive education does not necessarily turn into actions.

*In  all  visited  countries,  inclusive  education  is  not  yet  conceptualised nor is it built as an alternative, principled way  of providing education that combats all forms of discrimination.  Traditional special education structures – special schools and  special classes and disability-specific qualifications – seem to still  be the basis of developments in inclusive education.

*There is  plenty of evidence in international research that special education  structures seem to maintain the status quo – a parallel system  of specialised education and more general education – and  reinforce thinking that the responsibility of addressing the needs  of those learners who need more support is mainly the task of  specifically trained professionals. Inclusive education requires a  common understanding of shared responsibility for all learners,  and a conviction that all teachers can address the diverse needs  they encounter in their daily work. (NvdR: dit laatste is de vrome wens van de 10 professoren die de studie opstelden en die alle voorstanders zijn van radicaal inclusief onderwijs.)

Referentie
Essi Kesälahti & Sai Väyrynen (ed.)  Learning from Our Neighbours: Inclusive Education in the Making (2013)A School for All – Development of Inclusive Education
Report produced as a part of A School for All – Development of  Inclusive Education project, funded by the EU (Kolarctic ENPI CBC).

P.S. In een rapport over Denemarken lezen we:

Since 1993 public schools in Denmark (Folkeskolen) have been obliged to differentiate education according to students’ needs in general and not by transferring students to special needs education. However, the developments have shown that schools need tools to engage in mainstream teaching to really differentiate the use of methods, educational materials curriculum for students with differences in development, abilities, language and culture.

The clear goal of public schools to be more inclusive, delivering quality education to all students did not come true. The number of students in special needs education in special classes and in special schools has been increasing, and schools have not become more inclusive. One reason for this was the lack of the description of tools schools can use for inclusive education in order to be able to offer relevant and efficient education to more students.

28-11-2014 om 11:57 geschreven door Raf Feys  

Kritiek op inclusief onderwijs in Engeland= falend systeem: vier berichten

*Bericht vooraf

*Bericht 1. inclusion= “illusion, confusion, delusion” Dr Rachel V. Gow

Special educational needs: The current miserable state of affairs (facebook)

 In 2008, The Bow Group published a report titled – SEN: The Truth about Inclusion. In my opinion, their report provides a firm rationale for a renewed government inquiry into the current miserable state of affairs in relation to the exclusion of children with special educational needs in England. This next section provides a summary of their findings but for a more comprehensive overview of their report please refer to the link provided in the footnote below .

 Let’s first begin by briefly uncovering some of the history surrounding the educational provision of children with special educational needs (SEN). In 1978, Baroness Warnox wrote a highly influential report highlighting the unjustified marginalization of children with SEN. Up until this point, children with SEN had been treated as if they were some type of “social pariahs”. The Warnock report argued for the inclusion of children with SEN into mainstream society in every way.

 Taking the content of this report into consideration, a short time later the Conservative government enforced this aim for inclusion into robust legislation – the Education Act (1981). This act entitled children with SEN to appropriate educational provision; for the first time these children’s specific needs were safe-guarded. The act enabled the evaluation of the child in a series of stages starting with a statutory assessment and ultimately leading to the allocation of a statement of special educational needs. A statement is a legally binding document which makes clear the child’s needs, appropriate provision and placement which a local education authority (LEA) is then legally bound to put in place.

 During the 1990’s the Government went one step further and gave children with special educational needs an entitlement to attend mainstream education if appropriate and parents the right to appeal to a SEN tribunal. There was now a formal Code of Practise which served as guidance to both the Local Authorities and schools on how to govern the process.

 However, in 2001 under the rule of New Labour, a new Education act made a quantum leap:The starting point is always that children who have statements will receive mainstream education. (Inclusive Schooling Guidance, 2001, paragraph 22).

 The new legislation now insisted that children with SEN must be educated in mainstream schools unless overwhelming evidence was provided to the contrary. This evidence was based on two points:

1.Whether the child would disproportionately disrupt the rest of the class.2.Whether it was cost efficient. Arguably, the act was also open for misinterpretation by local education authorities who perceived it as an obligation to educate children with SEN in mainstream schools. The act also had the additive benefit of potentially saving substantial amounts of money for LEA budgets. It also meant that the child’s needs assumed secondary importance and that parents had to now battle for the recognition of their child’s needs.

In 1997, the number of children in the U.K. in maintained special schools was 93, 020 and in non-maintained: 5,230 so a total of 98,250 children. In 2007, the figures reduced dramatically to 84,680 in maintained schools, 4720 in non-maintained schools with a total figure of 89, 410 children. Somehow a total of 8,840 places have been lost over the course of that decade alone. We have witnessed not only a reduction in the issuing of statements but also an increase in the number of statemented pupils in mainstream schools as a direct result of the closure of special schools.

Bear in mind, children without a statement cannot get a place at a special school and therefore have no legal entitlement to appropriate educational provision or support. Non-statemented students are ordinarily divided into 2 categories:

 2.School action (this is the lesser need category and gives the child extra attention + help).2.School action plus (external help is given in the form of therapy or extra tuition).In primary schools in 2003 there were 475,290 students on School Action and 209,810 on School Action Plus. In Secondary schools, these figures equated to 308,870 and 121,210 respectively. In 2007, there was a 36% increase in the number of students receiving School Action plus in Secondary school alone bringing the figure to 165, 120.

Persistent fixed-term exclusions and permanent exclusions may result in the inappropriate placement of a child with SEN into a pupil referral unit (PRU). PRU’s can be considered as the last chance saloon and reserved for those children thought to be uneducable in mainstream schools. In 2006, Ofsted identified PRU’s as the least appropriate place for children with SEN to be educated. The original aim of PRU’s was to reintegrate children back into mainstream school if the behaviour of the child improved. However, the referral to a PRU can also result in the complete breakdown of a student’s education and worse still increase the risk of exposure to gang affiliation and more serious anti-social and criminal behaviour. The problem is that PRU’s were never designed to cater for children with SEN and the number of suspensions given to SEN children in PRU’s arguably highlights their complete inability to cope and meet their specific and complex needs. There is enough evidence to suggest that the placement of children with SEN in PRU’s is a complete failure of the government to fulfil a commitment or responsibility to these children. It is arguably wholly inappropriate and must be re-considered with better care and attention.

Not so fun facts and figures

Approximately 9000 places at special schools have been lost.The number of statements and statutory assessments for children with SEN has fallen by over one-third.

In relation to truancy, children on School Action Plus schemes are twice as likely as other SEN children to truant.1/5 of all School Action Plus children are persistent truants.

In relation to exclusions, children with special educational needs comprise the majority of all pupils expelled (permanently excluded) from school at 67% although they only make-up 17% of the school population.Children with SEN are more likely to be suspended more than once a year. Out of the 78, 600 students excluded more than once in a single year, just under 50% were students with SEN.

In 2008, over 50% of all suspensions from secondary schools were students with SEN.In 2008, over 50% of students suspended from pupil referral units (PRU’s) nearly 3/4 ‘s were children with SEN.

66% of all SEN students at PRU’s end up being suspended.The education of SEN’s students in PRU’s has risen by 70% since 1997.Over 50% of all appeals are against a LEA’s decision not to assess or statement a child.

 The statistics are appalling and quite frankly an embarrassment in this modern day and age given all the knowledge we have about the impact and enormity of educational failure. It seems very little is being done to address this miserable state of affairs. An urgent independent review of the entire system is long overdue and warrants immediate investigation. We cannot continue setting children with special educational needs up to fail. The burden of this failure is huge and the implications are far and wide beyond the devastating effects to both the individual and their families but are evident from a socio-economic, medical and psychological perspective. We only have to refer to the clinical research which now confirms that an estimated 50% of all incarcerated adults meet diagnostic criteria for ADHD. This is ultimately a very real end point of educational failure, of not meeting the child’s needs; a PRU to prison trajectory when the reality is that the entire situation is so utterly preventable. Much better investment needs to go into prevention and research. We need to be much more accountable in recognizing that these children are arguably being set up to fail.

 The answer is a professional re-evaluation of the current situation which ultimately necessitates a paradigm shift in the way we think about the education of these young people. The result of exhaustive investigations has to be updated policies. It seems that some policy makers in the U.K. are so out of touch with the reality of this failing system. A new model of education needs to be implemented; there is no doubt that it is time for change.

*Berucht 2: Inclusion, inclusion, inclusion = illusion

It seems the general consensus is that 1 child cannot take precedence over another 29, it is better to side-line 1 child than risk the others failing too. However, an important point is that about 1 in 5 children in an average class today are now estimated to have some type of special educational need (defined here as: emotional, behavioral, specific learning difficulties e.g., reading/writing etc, linguistic e.g., non-English speaking, health/medical, physical e.g., dysphasia, mobility) so that equates to approximately 6 children in a class of 30. If there are 4 classes in the average Year (UK) or Grade (US) that is 24 children with special educational needs – multiply that by the number of total number of classes in each Year or Grade in the entire school – well you can do the maths – but put it this way enough kids to fill a small school of its own (estimated total children with SEN in a U.K. school with an intake of 120 children per year (4 classes x 30 children): 168 in a Secondary school; 144 in a Primary school; 312 in an all-through school, that is Infant and Primary combined). In England, our ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair was very determined to push his “Inclusion, inclusion, inclusion” policies forward. The 3 words that spring to my mind in respect to this policy were more along the lines of “illusion, confusion, delusion” and I will explain why.

Arguably, the notion of integrative inclusion was the rationale also behind closing or terminating funding for a large number of government funded special education schools. Not surprising multiple and complex issues arose as a result of this change which will not be critiqued here because they deserve much closer and more detailed attention than I can give. But, in brief, issues related to League Tables and more critically – the rapid creation of rather large Assessment and Learning centres which in fact were somehow allowed even though they went against everything the bill was designed to achieve. Essentially, they re-created a type of social segregation system; one which separated those with special educational needs from the rest of the school on the basis they needed specialized intervention. Even more ironically was the promise of re-integration into the main school which was distastefully used as the carrot on the end of the stick. Arguably, as a means of coercing the child in question to achieve better standards of behaviour – such as learning to control those ADHD symptoms.

Of course, the inclusion changes by Blair forced many children with special educational needs into mainstream schools where arguably the majority of them struggled to cope. It would be interesting to calculate the exact number of children with special educational needs who were permanently excluded during this period (roughly 1997 to 2007). Some schools remained, in particular, for those considered “intellectually disabled”, in other words, those with IQ’s around or lower than 70. The only other option for parents were places at private day or residential schools which unless you were self-funded required a statement and more often than not a tribunal. However, attendance at some of these private residential schools arguably created an altogether different situation. Some of them appeared to operate in a business sense, ad libitum to cherry pick boarders by way of interview and then exclude those that proved too burdensome. Unfortunately, not all these schools specialized in one specific type of learning difference or diagnosis e.g., dyslexia. It is surprisingly uncommon in the U.K., although some do exist, to find private schools focusing simply on for example just ADHD. In fact, some schools won’t take children with ADHD opting instead for a focus on diagnoses which are arguably less behaviourally challenging such as Dyslexia. While other private specialist schools will group children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders together with children with language processing difficulties, dyslexia, Tourette’s syndrome or ADD and the result is often unmanageable chaos and an increased risk of permanent exclusion for some. This brings us back to the square peg / round hole situation. Another valid point is that teachers are not psychologists – nor are they expected to be – yet the amount of special educational needs training they receive in the U.K. is arguably miniscule compared, for example, to the U.S. where special education is highly developed in universities and results in specialist qualifications and a higher volume of qualified professionals.

*Bericht 3: Special-needs education: Does mainstream inclusion work?

Labour wants children with learning difficulties to attend mainstream schools. But critics say that the policy of inclusion isn't working. Hilary Farr Wilce investigates a very political issue

David Cameron has a disabled son, and speaks up about it. Tony Blair was angrily confronted recently by Maria Hutchins, the mother of an autistic child. Baroness Warnock has been beating her breast about getting the policy wrong on special-needs education. Never have the needs of children with physical and learning difficulties been so much in the political spotlight.

All parties made a commitment to improving services to such children in their general election manifestos; the Conservatives have set up a commission on special educational needs; and the Commons education select committee is sinking under record piles of paperwork as it conducts a wide-ranging enquiry into the future of special-needs education.

But whether anything productive will come of it all remains doubtful. Observers say that problems with the current system are deeply entrenched, and they fear that more will be thrown up by the Government's plan to establish independent secondary schools that will be able to select their own pupils.

Meanwhile, "special needs" remains a vast umbrella, under which huddle all kinds of children, from the primary-school pupil with a mild hearing problem, to profoundly autistic adolescents and children with complex physical disabilities. "Special needs is just an administrative category," says Alan Dyson, professor of education at Manchester University, who has a specialist interest in the area. "The only thing these kids have in common is that they've been labelled special needs."

The groups fighting for their interests are equally disparate. Parents of children with difficulties are desperate for their own particular child to be safe and happy in school. Every disability group fights its own corner, while broader lobby groups tend to adopt strongly ideological positions about how society should treat difference.

This shows most strongly in the arguments about inclusion. Labour is committed to a policy of including as many children as possible in mainstream schools, and 93 special schools have closed down since l997. This is broadly in line with policies embraced throughout the Western world. But many of those children have been inadequately provided for, and as a result the pendulum has swung back towards demands for more special-school provision.

Last summer, Baroness Warnock, whose report in 1978 started the bandwagon for inclusion, said the policy had backfired, leaving "a disastrous legacy", and the Conservatives have called on the select committee to look into "the bias against allowing parents to choose special schools".

But Richard Reiser, the director of Disability Equality in Education, is dismissive of the way the select committee's enquiry has been launched in response to the Warnock U-turn. "This isn't even an issue any more. The question is not whether to include children, but how to do it effectively. You need inclusions, not placements, and for that you need more resources, more training and a mandatory code of admissions.

"Disadvantaged children should be given priority above all others. That would be the way to change the skew we have now. And there should be a limit on the use of special schools in any area. Some areas use them 10 times more than others," Reiser says.

Sir Bob Balchin, chair of the Tory enquiry into special education, disagrees. "The ideology of inclusion ought to be consigned to history. We need to look at the whole thing in a more pragmatic light. Some people gain enormously from having their needs met in a specialised environment." A forthcoming report from the enquiry team, he says, is likely to suggest a moratorium on the closure of special-school places. "Although that is not to say that every special school is sacrosanct. We need to put the individual before doctrine."

For Brian Lamb, who chairs the Special Educational Needs Consortium, the issue is how to make the best use of all resources. "We basically back the Government's presumption towards the mainstream. It is the direction everything has been moving in.

"What we want to see is more resources going into special education and a closer inter-relationship between special schools and mainstream schools, with more use of specialist expertise, and maybe regional specialist resources." Inclusion, done properly, is expensive, Lamb agrees, "But special schools are expensive, too. The more we can get the two worlds together, the better."

Peter Farrell, professor of special needs at Manchester University, sees the Government jumping in response to a strong parents' lobby that says inclusion doesn't work. "But there have been a lot of myths about how special schools are very special, with more one-to-one and so on, with not a lot of evidence that that is the case. What there is evidence of is that if children with special needs mix with others, it helps to make people in society more accepting of difference."

A second thorny issue is whether to reform the way children's special needs are identified and supported. Everyone agrees that the system of statementing, and the appeal system that backs it up, are bureaucratic, time-consuming and geographically inequitable. Both systems tend to favour articulate parents who know their rights.

There are also deep concerns that some local authorities are making statements deliberately vague, in order to evade having to pay for specialist provision.

The Conservatives want to replace statements with a simplified profile system, which will assign a child one of 12 levels of additional provision, and allow parents to take that money to whichever school they deem right for their child. "We need to look again at the whole process," says Sir Bob Balchin. "At the moment it is far too adversarial. In our view, it ought to be taken out of the hands of local education authorities who are both the assessors and providers."

But many lobby groups see the system as important for protecting a child's rights and want to reform it, not scrap it. The Advisory Centre on Education, which advises 6,000 parents a year about their rights, told the select committee: "Problems with the system arise from maladministration of the system rather than the system itself, which we believe was ahead of its time."

"The select committee is wrestling with a whole lot of deep-seated issues," says Alan Dyson, pointing out that the system of providing for children with special needs has remained fundamentally unchanged since the mid-1970s. "The Government's main priority since then has been not to turn over too many stones. There aren't any votes in reforming special education, after all. But what we have now is an education system with different structures, targets, curriculum, everything. We have to fundamentally rethink what we mean by special education, and I would hope the committee would come out at the end and say that fiddling with the system is no longer an adequate response.

"In an ideal world, special education would not be a distinct system at all, but just part of an education system that gives due consideration to all sorts of kids, with all sorts of difficulties, in all sorts of schools."

But this looks unlikely to come about. "The Education Bill is talking about more schools getting more autonomy," Dyson says. "The local authorities will be left with the responsibility for special needs provision, but they will have no power and no resources. It is, potentially, an absolutely unmanageable system."

The best of both worlds?

Peter Gordon runs Hazel Court school, a special school in Eastbourne for children with severe learning difficulties - 70 per cent of pupils are autistic - on the same site as a mainstream school. He also runs a further education unit for 16- to 19-year-olds alongside a local FE college.

He believes his students get the best of both worlds. "We've got specialised staff and superb facilities here. We've got a hydrotherapy pool and a soft play area, but we've also got access to two dining halls, an assembly hall, sports facilities and the library in the mainstream school.

"Half our children go to some lessons in the mainstream school, and loads of their youngsters come over to us every day to help with classes. They look at what our children achieve, and learn to have respect for them. This is quite a deprived part of Eastbourne, but we've never had one incident of bullying. We share the same uniform and we join in on school trips.

 "There is a strong argument for having children with moderate difficulties in mainstream schools, but the curriculum needs to be totally different for children with severe difficulties. I've seen children stuck in a classroom, isolated, where staff have no support and can't call in a psychologist or language therapist. It's heart-breaking. You do need specialised provision, but co-location is definitely the best way to do it.

*Bericht 4

Conservative Party 2010 manifesto:  The most vulnerable children deserve the very  highest quality of care, so we will call a  moratorium on the ideologically-driven closure of  special schools. We will end the bias towards the  inclusion of children with special needs in  mainstream schools (page 53).

Bericht 5 Belangrijk boek voor M-decreet-debat: Special Educ. Needs: new look Mary Warnock e.a http://books.google.be/books?id=T6tHoTSw554C&pg=PA11...

Warnock (2005: 36-38), de vroegere pleitbezorgster van radicaal inclusie onderwijs, bekende in 2005 dat zij en haar commissie zich in 1978 deeerlijk hadden vergist.  In een rapport van 2005 maakte zij een onderscheid   between the physical and emotional participation. She argues that many children with severe learning problems, while undoubtedly a physical presence in mainstream classrooms, do not feel that they are full participants. This may be brought about by the behaviour of other pupils (through various forms of bullying) or by the treatment they receive.They may, for example be excluded from various curriculum activities, and/or arrangements of within-class grouping may restrict their opportunities for interaction with the teacher rather than a classroom helper.

26-11-2014 om 00:00 geschreven door Raf Feys  

1 Andere visie en praktijk in Finland dan in Noorwegen

De Finse visie op passend onderwijs staat bijna diametraal tegenover die van Noorwegen dat voor doorgedreven inclusief onderwijs koos. In deze bijdrage willen we dit verduidelijken.De Finse visie op passend onderwijs vertoont veel gelijkenissen met de klassieke Vlaamse zoals die vorm kreeg heeft in de Belgische wet op het buitengewoon onderwijs van 1970. Het M-decreet neigt in de richting van de Noorse visie.

Noorwegen is het land dat in Vlaanderen de voorbije 18 jaar door de radicale inclusievelingen het meest geprezen werd voor zijn doorgedreven inclusief onderwijs met slechts een paar % leerlingen in het buitengewoon onderwijs. Dit belet niet dat de Brusselse orthopedagoog Frank Defever enkele jaren geleden nog stelde dat hij zelfs in Noorwegen nog geen echt inclusief onderwijs aantrof.
Finland is nooit voorstander geweest van doorgedreven inclusief onderwijs zoals ook de Unesco dat al lange tijd propageert. We stellen zelfs vast dat het aantal Finse leerlingen dat afzonderlijk klassen voor buitengewoon onderwijs bezoekt, nog aan het toenemen is. Dat aantal steeg er van 5,7% in 2002 naar 8,5%. En het aantal leerlingen dat er parttime buitengewoon onderwijs volgt – een aantal uren per week - steeg van 20,8% in 2002 naar 22,5% in 2002. In dit land laten de gewone leerkrachten de ondersteuning van leerlingen met specifieke behoeften meestal over aan gespecialiseerde leerkrachten. Door de beperkte bevolkingsdichtheid in Finland en in veel andere landen, is het uiteraard vaak onmogelijk om leerlingen met specifieke behoeften te groeperen in aparte scholen. In Vlaanderen was/is dat wel mogelijk en zo kon Vlaanderen vanaf de uitvoering van de wet van 1970 aparte scholen voor kinderen buitengewoon onderwijs inrichten en de leerlingen er ook per niveau groeperen.

We lazen onlangs een Fins rapport waarin de aanpak in Finland vergeleken wordt met deze in Noorwegen en waarin veel kritiek geformuleerd wordt op de Noorse aanpak (zie punt 2).Tegelijk lazen we een bijdrage waarin gesteld wordt dat in Noorwegen sinds ongeveer 2005 de vraag naar speciaal onderwijs en orthopedagogische aanpakken sterk toegenomen is als gevolg van de zwakke leerprestaties van de Noorse leerlingen voor PISA e.d. ... (zie punt 3).

2 Recht op passend onderwijs in Finland versus recht op inclusie in Noorwegen

2.1 Recht op fysieke integratie versus recht op effectief onderwijs
In de Finse bijdrage stellen de Finse experten dat in Noorwegen bij de invoering van inclusief onderwijs in de jaren tachtig het fysieke integratierecht centraal stond. In Finland was dit niet het geval. Daar domineerde/domineert het leerrecht, het recht op leren en op aangepast onderwijs. Voor de Finnen is het volgen van de gewone lessen voor leerlingen met een beperking slechts zinvol als de leerlingen voldoende profijt kunen halen uit die lessen en zich voldoende betrokken (geïncludeerd) voelen bij het les- en klasgebeuren. Dit is ook de stelling die we al sinds de start van het debat in 1996 met Onderwijskrant gepropageerd hebben. (Effects of History and Culture on Attitudes toward Special Education: A Comparison of Finland and Norway, Marjatta Takala & Rune Sarromaa - Hausstätter Hindawi Publishing Corporation, 2012, zie Internet).
Noorwegen stuurde – net als de Unesco overigens - aan op een andere onderwijsgrammatica, op het totaal omturnen van de aanpak in het gewoon onderwijs, op sterk geïndividualiseerd onderwijs, aanpassing van de leerplannen e.d. Finland wou het niveau van de gewone scholen voldoende hoog houden. Daarvoor was volgens de Finnen voldoende klassikaal onderwijs nodig en was het aansturen op een individueel leerparcours en en child-centered leren niet bevorderlijk.

2.2 Gescheiden settings (klassen/scholen) vaak beter
De Finse onderwijskundigen schrijven verder: “In tegenstelling met de inclusieve aanpak in Noorwegen, ging Finland ervan uit dat dat het recht op leren vaak beter gegarandeerd wordt in gescheiden settings.” Ook de onderzoeksconclusies luiden: “Students’ experiences in special classes have been largely positive, with sufficient support from the most educated teachers”.
We lezen verder: “De relatief zwakke PISA-resultaten van Noorwegen – en van de zwakke leerlingen in het bijzonder - wijzen er op dat de Noorse scholen, niettegenstaande hun sterke focus op inclusie, nog ver af zijn van het creëren van een ‘good school for all’. De klemtoon op inclusief onderwijs in Noorwegen doet ons denken aan Low’s concept of ‘stupid inclusion’, meaning that it is neither politically correct nor is it allowed to label some needs as special”.” Volgens het Fins rapport leidde “het feit dat men de specifieke noden niet meer als speciaal/bijzonder en als handicap mocht benoemen, dat ze ook gemakkelijk vergeten konden worden.”

2.3 Verschillende onderwijsvisies en maatschappelijke prioriteiten
De Finse onderwijskundigen stellen verder; “In Finland, it first means the right to learn because in a historical context Finns had an obligation to learn in order to support their country. In Norway, inclusion is connected to the social aspects of learning as the right to participate. In a historical context, this can be related to a political project of creating a national identity based on the Norwegian state’s responsibility to its citizens. The Finnish state wants to guarantee equal educational opportunity to all citizens and this goal is partly reached via early intervention in the form of special education with highly educated professionals. Norway wants to guarantee similar study places to all, so that no one is excluded.” In Noorwegen wordt het absolute recht op sociale participatie en fysieke integratie beklemtoond. Finland streeft onderwijs met een hoog maatschappelijk rendement na en vindt tegelijk dat het nastreven van faire onderwijskansen ook betekent dat men voor leerlingen met specifieke behoeften vroegtijdig speciaal onderwijs met specifiek gevormde leerkrachten voorziet. Voor 9,5 % van de Finse leerlingen gebeurt dit momenteel in aparte settings (klassen/scholen). 22,5% van de leerlingen volgt parttime buitengewoon onderwijs – een aantal uren per week en gegeven door gespecialiseerde leerkrachten.

3 Noorwegen: kritiek op inclusief onderwijs en grote nood aan special education

In de recente bijdrage ‘Special Education Today in Norway’ beschrijven de professoren Rune Sarrormaa Hausstatter and Harald Thuen de historiek van het speciaal (buitengewoon) onderwijs (verschenen in: Advances in Special Education, Volume 28, 2014 en op het Internet). In die bijdrage wordt duidelijk dat Noorwegen destijds ambitieus koos voor inclusief onderwijs en voor het in sterke mate reduceren van het speciaal onderwijs. Sinds ongeveer 2005 is echter de vraag naar speciaal onderwijs in Noorwegen weer sterk toegenomen.
De Noorse professoren schrijven: “Als gevolg van de radicale keuze voor inclusief onderwijs kwam er vanaf de jaren tachtig een geleidelijke, maar sterke reductie van het ‘speciaal onderwijs’: van 5% in de late jaren 1990 to 0,93% in 2004. In 1993 waren de meeste scholen speciaal onderwijs al gesloten en vervangen door inclusief onderwijs binnen het gewoon onderwijs, een jaar nog voor de Salamanca-verklaring van 1994.” Het doel van de invoering van inclusief onderwijs luidde: “to reformulate the regular school system to meet an increased diversity of students.” Het gewoon onderwijs moest radicaal omgeturnd worden om tegemoet te komen aan de grote diversiteit van de leerlingen en (bijna) iedereen moest toegang krijgen tot de gewone school in de omgeving. The political area had a strong drive towards fulfilling the normalization reform, and in this context special education was understood as not compatible with the goal of inclusion. In other words, the choice of this strategy meant that the approach of special education was reduced, and Norwegian educational policy from the mid-1990s was highly influenced by the criticism raised by advocates for inclusive education and the goal was to reduce the amount of special education to a minimum.

Rond 2005 stuurden de beleidsmensen het beleid echter grondig bij en nam de vraag naar ‘speciaal onderwijs’ weer sterk toe. Naast het feit dat er grote problemen waren met de uitvoering van inclusief onderwijs in de praktijk, speelde vooral ook mee dat de Noorse leerlingen in landenvergelijkende studies als PISA vrij zwak presteerden. ... Daarnaast was er ook de invloed van de school reform van 2006, ‘the Knowledge Promotion Reform’, waarbij voor nationale prestatietests werden ingevoerd. The reform clearly focused on increasing the academic standard of the Norwegian student; one central strategy here was the introduction of national school tests and competition between schools.” (Ministry of Education, 2006),

Er kwam ook een nieuwe onderwijswet waarin gesteld werd dat “Students that do not benefit from ordinary education have the right to special education (§5-1)”. De inclusie-scholen waren/zijn blijkbaar geen ‘good schools for all. Maar de sterke vraag naar veel meer ‘special education support’ stond wel haaks op het vroegere streven naar radicaal inclusief onderwijs en op feit dat als gevolg daarvan de interesse voor orthopedagogische aanpakken sterk gedaald was.
Een derde reden voor een grotere noodzaak aan speciaal onderwijs was volgens de auteurs het feit dat in Noorwegen in het kader het inclusief onderwijs veelal gekozen werd voor ‘the student-centred approach’ waarin gefocust wordt op de mogelijkheden van elke individuele leerling, op sterk geïndividualiseerd onderwijs: “Individualization of teaching through methods as individual plans, work schedules, and well as individual approaches, learning styles, focus on intrinsic motivation, portfolio assessment of individual work, emphasis on the individual instead of the comunity”. Het probleem met deze aanpak was/is wel dat aldus het individueel leren gepropageerd werd en dat dit nogal haaks staat op de filosofie van de inclusieve leeromgeving waarbij alle leerlingen samen en sociaal betrokken zijn bij het les- en klasgebeuren. De voorbije jaren is de vraag naar ‘special education’ als gevolg van die drie ontwikkelingen weer sterk toegenomen. De auteurs stellen echter dat jammer genoeg door de invoering van inclusief onderwijs de verdere uitbouw van de orthopedagogiek en orthodidactiek werd afgeremd. Momenteel is er volgens de auteurs in Noorwegen wel weer meer aandacht en steun van de overheid voor de orthopedagogiek. Het komt er volgens de auteurs nu vooral op aan dat er fors geïnvesteerd wordt in orthopedagogiche aanpakken die ook effectief zijn.

4 Besluit

Het streven naar faire en passende onderwijskansen voor alle leerlingen staat volgens de Finnen niet haaks op aparte settings voor leerlingen met bepaalde handicaps en op de rechten van leerlingen met een beperking. Integendeel. De Finse onderwijskundigen beweren ook: “Students’ experiences in special classes have been largely positive, with sufficient support from the most educated teachers”. Zij gaan er verder vanuit dat uiteindelijk die ‘special class’-leerlingen aldus beter gevormd zullen zijn en zich zo later beter betrokken (geïncludeerd) zullen voelen bij het maatschappelijk gebeuren. Zo kan apart onderwijs op termijn tot een grotere inclusie binnen de maatschappij leiden. Dit alles haaks op de standpunten van de Vlaamse inclusie-hardliners. De Finnen nemen dus ook afstand van de radicale interpretatie van inclusie in het VN-verdrag en in Unesco-rapporten. Zij zijn er ook van overtuigd dat doorgedreven inclusie als in Noorwegen, er ook tot een sterke niveaudaling zou leiden.

In Noorwegen leidde inclusie er blijkbaar ook niet tot meer optimale leerkansen voor de inclusie-leerlingen, tot ‘good schools for all”. De zwakkere leerlingen presteren er zwakker dan in veel andere landen. En precies door de aanwezigheid van inclusie-kinderen worden ook de andere leerlingen van de klas benadeeld in hun ontwikkelingskansen. Zo werden b.v. de leerplannen en leerstofeisen afgezwakt. We merken echter dat men ook in Noorwegen heeft vastgesteld dat veel leerlingen meer ‘speciaal onderwijs’ nodig hebben. Daar de speciale scholen en klassen grotendeels werden afgeschaft is het echter moeilijk om terug op het juiste spoor te geraken.

We zouden dus kunnen stellen dat in Finland en Vlaanderen probleemleerlingen - die weinig kunnen opsteken in gewone lessen, meer faire leerkansen krijgen dan in Noorwegen en dat het buitengewoon onderwijs op termijn een integratie in het maatschappelijk leven bevordert i.p.v. afremt. We blijven dus pleiten voor het leerrecht en voor passend onderwijs, en tegen louter fysieke en zogezegd sociale inclusie.

Nog dit. Het feit dat landen met meer doorgedreven inclusief onderwijs als Noorwegen, Zweden ... zo zwak scoren voor PISA e.d., heeft blijkbaar wel als gevolg dat de Vlaamse voorstanders van radicale inclusie de voorbije jaren niet meer zo vlug naar die voorbeeldlanden verwezen.

26-11-2014 om 00:00 geschreven door Raf Feys  

Mail online 25 nov 2014

Ministe (UK) r tells schools to copy China - and ditch trendy teaching for 'chalk and talk': Teachers speaking in front of a class 'much more effective than independent learning'

Education Minister Nick Gibb said 'whole class teaching' is more effective  It involves the teacher instructing all pupils together using blackboard Remarks follow scheme which saw teachers from UK visit Shanghai  Researchers have found children in China achieve 30% higher marksMethod was used in UK until '50s when it was deemed too authoritarian

By Jonathan Petre for The Mail on Sunday 15 November 2014  |

Schools are being urged to go back to ‘chalk and talk’ teaching that was once widespread in Britain – in order to reproduce the success the traditional methods now have in China.

Education Minister Nick Gibb said having a teacher speak to the class as a whole from the front was much more effective than children working on their own – the method which has become dominant in schools over the past 40 years.

Mr Gibb’s intervention, which will infuriate many in the educational establishment, follows a Government scheme in which more than 70 maths teachers from British primaries went to Shanghai to study the teaching styles of their Chinese counterparts.

Education Minister Nick Gibb has said having a teacher speak to the class from the front was more effective Researchers have found that children in China achieve marks in maths up to 30 per cent higher than English pupils of the same age.

25-11-2014 om 20:07 geschreven door Raf Feys