Inclusive Education in Europe

Christine O'Hanlon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138304062
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351397612
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1995, this book offers a crucial view of the implementation of legislation for the integration of pupils with special educational needs in EU countries at the time. The match or mismatch between the rhetoric and reality, between the policy and the practice are reviewed by presenters from a recent appraisal of progress in individual national contexts. Authors are critical of the situation in their own countries and call upon recent and relevant research sources to support their views. The relationships between particular themes in the education of pupils with special needs are observed and compared in a broad European context.

Chapter 1
The Danish Efforts in Integration

Susan Tetler

The Danish efforts of integration have roots all the way back to the school-policy debate of the 1940s and the 1950s; a debate about the undivided school, a debate about structure, which little by little created a political majority for the opinion that the differentiation of students after a test in the fifth form - had life-long consequences for the students. That, in other words, the differentiation of students, in fact already determined their future social situation. This debate later split up into two movements, 'the movement for a comprehensive school' and 'the movement for "a school for everyone"', both of them with integration as their main aim.

The comprehensive school

The movement wanted the implementation of the comprehensive school and in a broader sense the integration/inclusion of all ability students, or more correctly, non-segregation.

In 1958 an amendment of the law for the primary school was passed, according to which each school was not allowed to divide the students in the first seven years of schooling, and in 1975 The Primary Act on the Folkeskole, 'in principle', established a comprehensive basic school from the first to the tenth form. In the same period, however, and until about ten years ago, the number of supportive lessons spent on special education increased quite a lot, and these lessons were mainly special arrangements outside the classroom in so-called clinics.

As a Danish politician, Finn Held, then put it: 'We did not suppress the division of school. It is now turning up in another design'. It is exactly this paradoxical incompatibility between, on the one hand, the principal agreement about the aim, 'being willing to integrate even more in general education', and on the other hand, the actual increasing segregation of students and teaching outside the ordinary classroom, which has been the focus of the debate of integration in Denmark. Whereas formerly the school system concentrated on the learning difficulties of the students, attention from now on increasingly turned to the conditions of the school, the conditions which are creating difficulties for the students. This point of view is reflected in the recent legislation. For example, in the Government Notice about special education, where it has been pointed out that 'it lies with every teacher to plan and to carry through his teaching with so much differentiation that to the greatest possible extent it accommodates those differences in learning conditions which the students are having' (Ministry of Education, 1990a).

In 1993 a new law for the primary school was passed. In this law the demand for differentiation in teaching has also been stressed (Lov, 1993).

As the idea of a common norm applied to all students in school now seems to be abandoned, a parallel shift in teacher work becomes possible. Instead of seeking out and naming student learning differences and deficits, teachers from now on shall focus on creating and tailoring the curriculum and teaching so that schooling is in fact working for every student.

The school for everyone

The debate about the comprehensive school in the 1940s and 1950s was mainly about the children who had mild 'special educational needs' and did not do well in school, and this formed the basis of further debate about the schooling of children with more serious and severe learning difficulties.

In the law of 1959, a law about The Care of the Mentally Deficient, the right to education from then on included all children, and as a consequence, the other movement arose - 'The school for everyone'. All children with severe disabilities and handicaps were from now on considered fit for education and with a right to demand a meaningful education. This was an education which strove to comply with the various needs of the students so that all students would be comfortable in a shared teaching environment, and where special arrangements were taking place in a way that made the students as little 'special' as possible. The principle that 'the teaching of handicapped students should be broadened in such a way that the children could be taught in an ordinary school system', was formulated in the Parliamentary Resolution of May 1969, and this resolution at the same time implied four main principles, which became guidelines for local authorities:

1. The principle of proximity. This means that assistance to a handicapped child must be offered as close to the child's home and school as possible.
2. The principle of minimum interference. This means that a child should not receive any more help than is necessary in order to overcome his or her handicap or its consequences.
3. The principle of efficiency. This means that the situations prepared for the child must be worked out in such a way that a handicap can be surmounted, and/or its consequences can be eliminated.
4. The idea of integration/inclusion, is based on democratic values: that all human beings are equal and have the same right to fall participation, a view which gives everyone the chance to become an important and valued member of the community.

The new ideas were optimistic; they were breaking new ground and had as their foundation principles like integration, normalization and decentralization.

This point of view formed a striking contrast to the former view of segregation. Previously it was seen that a handicap was an individual defect, which could not be helped. Contrary to this the new point of view stressed that a handicap was in some way related to the environment and therefore possible to relieve. According to this perspective, one must act on the basis of a concept of equality, saying that disabled persons - to be set equal - have to be treated differently. As a Danish philosopher, Ole Thyssen puts it:

To create equality is different from practising equality. Actually you have to discriminate in order to make equal. Equality does not mean uniformity, but rather to be in a position to be educated and to develop. Therefore - equal opportunities to be different. (Thyssen, 1980)

Integration is, seen in that perspective, a step in the direction of diversity and variety.

The new ideas in the 1960s and 1970s were deeply rooted in a socioeconomic period of growth and with a consequent optimism, but before the ideas were carried out at all, the material conditions had changed very dramatically - the socio-economic crisis had begun.

At the end of the 1970s, when the principles for the next big educational intervention implemented this reform, 'The decentralisation of the care of handicapped children' had been reduced to only an administrative reform (Lov, 1978). The passing of this law implied that children and young people who so far had been receiving education according to the law of the 'mentally deficient' would in the future receive education according to the law of the primary school.

In January 1980 legislation related to the primary school was modified, which caused a division between the municipalities and the counties. In future the municipality had to take care of the support of students with moderate social and learning difficulties, while the county had to take care of students with more severe disabilities. The then minister of education, Ritt Bjerregard, stressed at the second reading of this reform in Folketinget that it was primarily intended as an administrative reform, meaning that it would not be necessary to decide in the Parliament which way to integrate and to what extent (Bjerregard, 1977). The combined effects of the principles of administrative decentralization and legal normalization meant that the processes of integration and inclusion were determined locally. There is no direct legislation on integration, only guidelines.

By making a point of administrative decentralization, it became more and more a matter of physical integration in so-called 'normal' environments - and with the idea that the social integration was certain to occur. This way of relating to integration implied in Folkeskolen, for example, that the individual integrated students were allocated a number of supportive lessons, but in addition to that they had to adapt to the principles of mainstream/ordinary education. It was seldom a matter of mainstream schools trying to adapt to the needs and backgrounds of these children, as a Danish survey in 1990 showed (Jensen, 1990).

A consequence of this has often been that it has depended exclusively on the individual student and teacher, whether integration would succeed or fail. The role of the school was very seldom referred to with respect to the evaluation of inclusive practices.

The Danish self-image

According to the Helios programme, a resolution concerning 'integration of handicapped children and young people in general systems of education' was passed on 31 May 1990, and it lies with each EU country to intensify its efforts of integration.

According to this resolution the Danish ministry of education has presented a statement about 'The development of the Danish Public School towards a school for all'. This statement shows great satisfaction with the level of Danish integration - since only a half per cent of the students in the primary and lower secondary school have been educated outside an ordinary school environment (Ministry of Education, 1990b). The conclusion in the Danish statement is that, 'in Denmark we have nearly fulfilled the intentions of the Helios resolution. That is why no initiatives have been taken centrally', and that in Denmark there is a remarkably high level of integration. If you regard integration as a matter of physical integration in the ordinary school there is good reason for the Danish satisfaction, but if, however, the intention is that this physical integration should be experienced as meaningful, too, for everyone, more qualitative research is needed before such confident conclusions can be supported,

Only in a group in which the student or pupil with special educational needs (SEN) or a disability is able to establish mutual social relations, is getting linguistic stimulation and has good opportunities for communication, is able to feel well, secure and accepted, feels that s/he belongs, can the person concerned be said to be integrated. Everything else may, in its utmost consequence, be considered just a school arrangement, or a physical intervention.

Danish research into integration

At the end of the 1980s Danish research into integration was started at the request of LEV (Danish Society for Persons with Learning Disabilities), because of the reports which they had received from a lot of parents telling them about how their individually integrated children seemed to be pushed too hard in their respective classes.

The first part of this research was carried out by Poul Erik Jensen, of The Danish Institute for Educational Research, and is a description of the kind and the extent of educational integration for all children with severe learning disabilities who were enrolled in ordinary classes in the school year 1987/88 (Jensen, 1990b).

The second and third part of this research give a more general picture of whether teachers, other groups of staff and parents felt that Folkeskolen was able to teach students with severe learning disabilities. In the second part, Ole Varming and Ole Eistrup Rasmussen from The Royal Danish School of Educational Studies focus on situations in school, and they do this on the basis of inquiries and interviews with teachers, social educators, headteachers, school psychologists and educational advisers (Varming and Rasmussen, 1990). In the third part, which also contains interviews, Gugu Kristoffersen tries to convey the experiences of the parents concerning their lives with a child with a disability (Kristoffersen, 1990).

The first part shows that the number of students who are recorded as students with severe learning disabilities (2,546) has been constant. Seventy per cent of them have been taught in county special schools, and only 8 per cent have been individually integrated in the ordinary classes in Folkeskolen. It is with those 8 per cent that the research is concerned. It is a common and distinct feature of the process of integration that it falls apart as the students grow older, and the number of students in mainstream education is reduced suddenly after the seventh form. Poul Erik Jensen, who has prepared the results, suggests that a more suitable school solution is found after the seventh form, partly because of the high level of abstraction expected in lessons after the seventh form, and partly because of the social neglect of students by their classmates. The tendency is clearly that the child with a disability starts his/her earlier school years in an educationally integrated situation, which little by little becomes more isolated.

The research points to the basic question of whether the integrated students are present in the classes they are supposed to be taught with. The results indicate that most of the individually integrated students have been wholly or partly segregated from several of the subjects taught in the school. Many students are excluded from certain subjects, and a great number have only a few lessons with their classmates, and there are often lessons where the work is individually planned, and which focus on skills training.

In the second part of the research the interviews indicate that the process of integration in the schools often has an accidental character. Not all schools, for example, have followed a certain strategy or a school policy or plan. It appears as if most of the practical work of including the student, which actually ought to be the joint responsibility of the school, has been left up to individual teachers. This implies that individual teachers or the teacher-team have to initiate or assume the responsibility that their students are to be included in the activities of the school. An another important conclusion which can be drawn from this research has to do with the internal and external relations of cooperation, which according to the teachers interviewed are of a highly varied quality. While the teachers express themselves positively about the internal cooperation taking place between the teachers in a class, they express discontent in relation to the other teachers in the school, the school psychologist, the counselling service, the administrators and the staff of the youth centres. Ole Varming and Ole Eistrup conclude that the teachers miss much-needed support from the psychologists, and in general it is characteristic that the further you move from the classroom, the less cooperation you receive and it is seen to be of poorer quality.

In the third part of the research, half of the parents said that schoolmates did not visit their disabled classmates in their homes, nor did the child with a disability have any local playmates. As few of the parents mentioned teasing, it appears that children with a disability are not being teased in the school. The students with disabilities are able to make relationships within the school, but those relationships seem not to develop into friendships outside of school. Also, many of the parents said that they don't feel that they have had any real choice regarding the choice of school for their child with a disability (Kristoffersen, 1990). Some parents got the school they wanted, for others it was the only choice, but very many found it important that it was a small-sized local school.

There appears to be no homogeneous procedure in municipalities and counties when a decision is being made about where and when the child is going to start school. Apparently it depends on where the parents live. The parents express a wish for a broad range of proposals; they want both/and, not either/or. What is good at one moment may not to be good at another. The message is one of relativity and the need to constantly check on the child's educational needs which change from year to year (ibid.)

A decentralized strategy of development

There is no doubt that in Denmark we have had the best intentions in regard to integration. Why then have even the best intentio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• The Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Denmark
• 2. France
• 3. Germany
• 4. Greece
• 5. Ireland
• 6. Italy
• 7. The Netherlands
• 8. Portugal
• 9. Spain
• 10. UK
• 11. Belgium