Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities in the EU
**Educational Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in the European Union**
The inclusion of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is one of the most important and influential innovations that education systems have incorporated into their policies and practices in recent decades. In the 1960s, B. Mikkelsen, W. Nirje, and Wolfensberger proposed the principle of normalization for people with mental retardation. This principle asserts the right to develop a way of life as normal as possible and by means as normal to them as possible. Extending this principle to education, educational integration was permanently enshrined in the **Warnock Report in 1978**.
**Basics of the Warnock Report**
- The aims of education are the same for all.
- Educational needs form a continuum.
- Special education provision has an additional or supplementary nature and is not independent and parallel.
**Urgent Priorities**
- The importance of education starting immediately upon diagnosis of the deficiency.
- Extension beyond the usual boundaries of educational systems.
- Ensuring sufficient basic and continuing education for teachers.
The report highlights the mainstream school as a standardized framework and standardization of education, the restructuring of certain special schools into resource centers specialized for specific needs, the generalization of Guidance and Support Services, the involvement of families as main actors, fundamental cooperation of NGOs of disabled people, and, as a backbone, a change in attitude that ensures equal rights, especially through education and social integration of these people.
**The Inclusive School**
Insufficient and poor implementation of the principle of inclusive integration leads to the **Inclusive School**. This strives for a system of education for all, based on equality, participation, and non-discrimination in the context of a truly democratic society (Arnaiz, 2003). Inclusion:
- Highlights the fundamental right of everyone to receive a quality education.
- Embraces the human reality of diversity as a value.
- Raises ordinary means as the most realistic, natural, and effective to carry out such education.
- Requires the participation and sharing as targets of members of the education process.
- Requires the development of a functional curriculum, common and adapted to both the individuality of each student, promoting meaningful, cooperative, constructive, and thoughtful learning.
- Ultimately involves the whole school community and society itself as frames and education partners.
Inclusive education is an attitude, a system of values and beliefs, a better way to live together (Armstrong, 1999; Pearpoint and Forest, 1999). These demands have guided the latest international declarations.
**International Declarations**
Some significant milestones of this process are:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
- The Universal Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959)
- The Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons (1971)
- The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)
- The World Conference on Education for All (Jomtien, 1990)
- The International Consultative Forum on Education for All (Dakar, 2000)
- The Letter of Luxembourg (1997)
- The Thessaloniki Declaration (2003)
**Milestones Toward Equity in Education**
- Salamanca Declaration (1994), at the conclusion of the World Conference on Special Needs Education
- Madrid Declaration (2002), proclaims conclusive European Congress on Disability
- Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, signed at the UN by 136 countries (2006)
- The 48th International Conference on Education, as recent progress in this fight
**The Signatories of the UN Convention**
Ensure an inclusive education system at all levels and education throughout life, in order to:
- Fully develop human potential and a sense of dignity and self-esteem and strengthen respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, and human diversity.
- Develop the personality, talents, and creativity of people with disabilities, as well as their mental and physical skills.
- Enable people with disabilities to participate effectively in a free society.
They undertake to ensure that:
- People with disabilities are not excluded from the general education system on grounds of disability, and that children with disabilities are not excluded from free and compulsory primary education or secondary education on the basis of disability.
- Persons with disabilities can access inclusive primary and secondary education, quality education on an equal basis with others in the community in which they live.
- Reasonable accommodation is provided depending on individual needs.
- People with disabilities receive the necessary support within the general education system to facilitate their effective education.
- Personalized and effective support measures are provided in environments that maximize academic and social development in accordance with the goal of full inclusion.
**Definition of People with Disabilities**
People with disabilities are those with physical, mental, or sensory impairments which, in interaction with various barriers, may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. Some of these students require curricular adaptations and teaching aids to access a significant level of personal autonomy and social participation, while for others the task of education is virtually useless, and health care action is needed to ensure their maximum comfort possible. Specific Centers schooling is less than 1%. Countries that meet this indicator are Italy, Greece, Portugal, Norway, Cyprus, Iceland, and Spain.