The daily Star - More special needs students to attend school, says minister, February 21, 2012

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Education Ministry launched a national plan Monday to integrate children with special needs into the education system.

Speaking at a national education meeting at the Educational Center for Development and Research in Sin al-Fil, Education Minister Hassan Diab laid out a broad plan to expand enrollmentin schools, retrain teachers and begin tests for students with special needs and disabilities that are currently left out of mainstream public education.

“The aim of the plan is to integrate disabled people and remove gaps between students, especially in the field of primary education, while focusing on ensuring equal opportunity,” Diab said.

Currently disabled children are educated separatelyfrom the public school system, if at all.

Diab said state education experts had worked with the Social Affairs Ministry and the private sector to develop an integration plan.

The plan was “based on the right of people regardless of religious and political affiliations ... to equal opportunity in field of education,” the minister said.

The overall plan is meant to bring Lebanon in line with an international push to integrate disabled children and those with special needs into education systems.

The educational integration plan will include the development of a national curriculum, the training of teachers to work with disabled students and a testing component to help gauge student progress.

“This project stems from our commitment to human rights and to provide anti-discriminatory services to these group of people,” Diab said.

He wants to improve educational and administrative support to institutions that will provide primary education to disabled children.

Officials at the conference also said that the move toward the greater disabled student enrollmentwould be coupled with a national push to upgrade disabled access to schools, with ramps, handrails and elevators becoming more widely available.

Public schools have a legal requirement to provide education up to the age of 15, without discrimination. Integrating disabled children in that group brings the state further in line with its legal obligations, Diab said.

The project’s coordinator Martha Tabet said the plan “will allow the education system to absorb all types of students and provide greater support, especially for disabled people who are still outside the education system.”

In October Minister Diab unveiled a major shake-up of the nation’s traditional education system.

The plan is designed to bring technology into classrooms and increase student international competitiveness. It includes changes to primary and secondary education, vocational education and reform within the Center for Educational Research and Development.


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