Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

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Disability and integration in France: a study in Picardy

Christine Berzin, maître de conférences,
Centre Universitaire de Recherche en Psychologie et en Sciences de l’Education
Université de Picardie, chemin du Thil, 80025 Amiens , France
Christine. Berzin@u-picardie.fr  

Special education: from exclusion to integration

Three educational ways of thinking can be found in the history of special education in France (Zaffran, 1997). The first one, based on a segregated system, consisted in placing some pupils in a separate school environment, in special classrooms called “classes de perfectionnement”. The purpose was to make a distinction between children with medical problems and children with school problems, which was based on their ability at being educated or not. The children who could be educated were directed to “classes de perfectionnement”. The curricula of these special classrooms stressed on vocational training as well as basic regular classroom learnings.

            The second educational way of thinking was a turning point in the evolution of special education “from exclusion and segregation to protection and adaptation”. The notion of “maladjusted children” emerged in the forties, to refer to children having social, family, school or professional disorders and that one must try to rehabilitate. “Is maladjusted a child, a teenager or more generally a young person who is less than 21, whose abilities insufficiency or his or her character’s defect are conflicting on a long-term basis with the reality and the requirements of   the people around him or her that are in accordance with his or her age and social background” (cf. the definition quoted by Plaisance (2003) that was suggested after the works of the council for the mentally deficient and morally endangered children, created in 1943). Most of the special schools were created at this time and more and more children were excluded from the school system.

            Faced with the increase in the number of special schools, the concept of an educational method of adaptation appeared to limit exclusion. Medico-psychological centres (“centres médico-pédagodiques” –CMP-) placed under medical authority were created in 1963, followed in 1970 by the set up of educational psychology assistance groups (“groupes d’aide psychopédagogique”-GAPP-), of special school divisions (“sections”) and of adaption classrooms (“classes d’adaptation”) within the state education system. The CMPs intended to practise “the diagnosis and the treatment of children with mental retardation, those whose maladjustment is linked up to neuropsychological disorders or behavioural disorders and who are likely to follow a medical therapy, a medico-psychological rehabilitation, an educational psychology or psychotherapeutic rehabilitation under medical authority” (decree of 1963).   The GAPPs, the “sections” and “classes d’adaptation” aimed at discovering and then compensating for the pupil’s deficiencies in rehabilitating him to school’s requirements. Children revealing a heavy impairment were temporarily taken out from regular school environment to be placed in “sections” (for children from pre-school) or “classes d’adaptation” (for children from elementary school) that “intended to welcome children, who for various reasons had difficulties in pre-school and who seemed to be doomed to failure in elementary school, that is to say, chidren with mental retardation, children suffering from affective disorders, from various psychomotor disorders, children whose family or social background delayed their communication skills development, presumed mentally deficient children, slightly physically spastic or slightly cerebral palsy children and physically impaired children (circular of February 1970). As for the GAPPs, its work was mainly directed to the prevention of difficulties. The pupil’s adaptation also requires the school’s environment adaptation. In this way, directives published in 1977 recommended the organization of a support educational system placed under the responsibility of the classroom teacher and all the teachers of the school. This responsibility was reasserted in 1990 within the context of the circular of April 1990 which created “les réseaux d’aide spécialisés aux élèves en difficulté” (the appropriate networks of support for children with difficulties) to replace the GAPPs. It mentioned that “the first support to bring to children had to be given by their their own teachers, within the context of a differentiated educational method. The setting up of these directives showed the beginning of a new way of thinking integration in special education.

            The Act of march 30 th, 1975 in favour of disabled persons, affirmed the necessity that “each time the abilitities and the family background of the disabled persons allow it, the action that is carried on provides the access to the disabled persons, minors and adults, to the institutions that are open to the whole population and their maintenance in a regular living and working environment”. Although it was not precisely defined within the text, the notion of handicap substituted for maladjustement. Was seen as a disabled person, each person who was acknowedeged like this by the counties Committees of the “commission de l’éducation spéciale” (CDES-Special Education Commission) and of the “commission technique d’orientation et de reclassement professionnel” (COTOREP - technical Commission for guidance on courses and professionnal rehabilitaion). We had to wait for the joint circulars of 1982 and 1983 from the Social Services Ministry and the Ministry of Education to see the appearance of the word “integration”. Two strategies of integration were then defined: on the one hand, the individual integration that consisted in integrating a child with special needs   in a regular education classroom and on the other hand the collective inclusion that consisted in gathering several children with disabilities in a special classroom integrated in a regular school. The “classes d’intégration scolaire” (CLIS - school integration classrooms) within the context of elementary school substituted in 1991 for “les classes de perfectionnement” whereas in secondary school, the “unités pédagogiques d’intégration” (UPI - educational units for integration) were created in 1995.

The CLIS welcome children with disabilities who can take advantage of a schooling appropriate to their age, their abilities and their handicap in a regular school environment. Moreover it aims at seeking the steady involvement of the pupils from the CLIS and the UPI in the activities of the other classrooms of the elementary school or secondary school. Parallel to the evolution of the special classrooms, it aims at not considering the mental deficiency “in an univocal way as a definitive and fixed state, on which only a limited and adapted learning would suffice” anymore (cf circular of october 30 th, 1985). The purpose is not an adaptation to the work environment anymore, but a social integration. Beyond this social integration, - at the time of the preparation of the new law “for the equality of rights and chances, the involvement and the citizenship of disabled persons” adopted by the French National Assembly February 3 rd, 2005 -, the associations of disabled persons claimed a real compensation that would make allowances for the context in which the disabled person evolves. This is why the handicap’s characterization, in accordance with Wood’s tryptic, suggested by the World Health Organization, can have been regarded as denoting a negative vision of persons (Plaisance, in CRESAS 2003). From now on, the three elements composing the handicap, i.e the lesion (the deficiency), the functional limits caused by the deficiency (the inability) and the social repercussions (the disadvantage) will not be analysed successively anymore but will be thought in an interactive way and according to the functioning norms of the context in which the disabled person evolves. Thus, the importance given to the environment of the person and to the contextual factors shows the widening of the notions concerning the handicap.

The examination of the three ways of thinking special education (i.e the segregated system, the adaptive system and the inclusive system) displays an undeniable evolution in the way of regarding the handicap, which is attested, if need be, by the successive titles of the teaching diplomas that are delivered to special teachers. After being first entitled “certificat d’aptitude à l’enseignement des inadaptés” (CAEI – professional certificate for malajusted children teaching)) and then “certificat d’aptitude aux actions pédagogiques spécialisées d’adaptation et d’intégration scolaire » (CAPSAIS – professional certificate   for educational specialised actions for adaptation   and school integration), the diploma is now called « le certificat d’aptitude professionnelle pour les aides spécialisées, les enseignements adaptés et la scolarisation des élèves en situation de handicap » (CAPA-SH – professional certificate for specialised aids, adapted teachings and the schooling of pupils with disabilities). A complementary diploma for adapted teachings and the schooling of pupils with disabilities (2 CA-SH) was also set up for the non special staff in secondary school. How does this evolution take place in the reality of the institution’s functioning?

The situation of integration/inclusion in France today

As Plaisance indicates (2003), the implementation of the educational ways of thinking previously evoked was disappointing in the 80s/90s. The graph of the evolution, at the national level, of the number of disabled children who are sent to regular classrooms in elementary school between 1982 and 1992, that is mentioned in Zaffran’s book (1997) corroborates this disappointment very well.

Evolution’s graph of the number of Chidren with disabilities in elementary school.
In Zaffran, J. (1997). L’intégration scolaire des handicapés. L’Harmattan. (page 61)

He thus points out a reduction of the number of disabled children who are integrated (from 11.8% to 10.7% that represent 15,314 children out of 143,591) in favour of an increase of the rate of children provided with a health special education.

Plaisance (2003) tells that in accordance with the estimations performed over the schoolyear 1999/2000, the proportion of disabled children who are integrated in a regular classroom is said to be of 10% for full individual integrations, from 12 to 13% if we take into consideration both full integrations and part-time integrations. Other datas from the Department of the curriculum planning and the development (DPD: “Direction de la Programmation et du Développement”), quoted by Lesain-Delabarre (2001), show that the individual integration in ordinary school environnemnt is still a “real obstacle course” and remains “a minority form of schooling, in spite of an often reasserted policy” (in elementary school, it represents 24,978 disabled children who are individually full-time or part-time integrated in regular classrooms and 50,156 children who are collectively integrated in special classrooms). In the same way, the IGEN/IGAS report (1999) noticed for the past few years a reduction of the integration rate of the disabled chidren as they advance in their schooling, a progressive cut in the time devoted to integration in pre-school, a fragility of the schooling process. The report also points out that many guidances on courses are made without any selection audit, according to available places and not to the child’s needs, contrary to the 1982 Act that provided for adapted solutions to each type of handicap. These observations clearly show that it’s still got a long way to go, so that the school integration can be conceived, to quote the words of the authors of the report IGEN/IGAS, “in words of law more than in words of toleration”. Indeed, “its purpose is to bring a radical change in the minds”.

             As Plaisance wrote (2000), quoted by Lesain-Delebarre, “time has come to pull down the obstacles to a concerted policy, nationally as well as locally, in favour of measures of integration (...) and to testify   of the positive experiences”. The CURSEP : the University Research Centre in Educational science and Psychology (« Centre Universitaire de Recherche en Sciences de l’Education et en Psychologie ») tried to make its contribution to this task. The purpose was to track down the different forms of resistances that can put obstacles in the effective generalization of school integration and to identify the conditions of a successful integration for the pupil as well as for his or her family and the different involved institutions. As we noticed, through the datas previously evoked, a certain weakening of the integration process during the transition between pre-school and elementary school, our study focused particularly on the transition between pre-school and elementary school. The analyzis of all the datas from this study not being finished at the deadline given to send this text, we will only present the implemented methodology and emphasize the few elements of reflection resulting from the analysis of the exploratory interviews. These questions are likely to go under closer examination within the oral presentation that will occur later.

What are the obstacles in the way of integration? A study in Picardy

As different regional studies attest it, in accordance with the national datas that we previously evoked, Picardy, which was the subject of our study, is concerned by these difficulties that affect the integration in the ordinary school environment as well as in the special education environment. They reveal the lack of special schools (CLIS, UPI, and above all the SESSADs, the special education and care services -“service d’éducation spécialisée et de soins à domicile”-, which plays an important role in accompanying the school integration), they notice a limited rate of schooling regular classrooms (from 7 to 13% from a county to another) and emphasize the predominance of integration in elementary school.

            Different factors have been mentioned within the IGEN/IGAS report to explain this situation: the lack of training of the teachers who welcome disabled children in their classrooms and above all in secondary school, the non inscription of integration in the school establishements projects, the insufficiency of the associated services (limited number of UPIs and assistants, unavailability of the RASEDs, lack of special teachers).

            Nevertheless, the matter of means cannot only explain all the difficulties encountered to make the integration a right. Some studies, which were more qualitative (CRESAS, 1994) emphasized, for instance, the teachers’ wish to be assisted in welcoming disabled children that very often implies practical improvements to take into account the various difficulties. As Belmont and Verillon have showed it (2000), the teachers rely on the support of specially trained staff who is following these children. This demand is problematic. It questions the methods of collaboration to set up between teachers and specially trained staff, including the parents who are still too rarely associated to the decisions, as the IGEN/IGAS report points it out.

            Other studies allowed us to ponder over the role of the non disabled children in the socialization process of the integrated children. Zaffran (1997) shows thus, that if the integration is supposed to reduce the social disparities in mixing different pupils, it doesn’t always work successfully. He notably points out the loneliness of the integrated children among their non disabled peers. Thouroude (2000) also notices, within a study on social relationships in pre-school, that disabled children who are in a situation of individual integration are not very much interactive. Besides, the integration process is neither independant from the teachers educational model nor independant from their attitude when confronted to the handicap (Thoroude 1997).Insisting on the things children have in common (even when the chidren are very different, at school and in their behaviour) rather than insisting on the differences would help the interactions between the peers. Those interactions would also increase with the frequenting of an integration classroom and would remain easier in pre-school (Ionescu and Bouteyre, 2000).Integration in pre-school is being facilitated by the fact that the non disabled children don’t make any distinction in the way of the exclusion or the rejection of their disabled schoolmates.

            These few observations clearly illustrate that the benefits of integration cannot be dissociated from the context in which they took place. We chose in our interviews to stress on the elements of this context, which make an integration more or less successful. In order to do so, we directed the interviews towards the different aspects of the collaboration between teachers, parents and professionals involved in the integration project, towards the interactions between the peers inside the classroom and inside the school, towards the limits and supposed benefits of integration. We will focus on the speech of the teachers who welcome in their classroom a disabled child full-time or part-time in some cases. As we said previously, the following comments are the result of a partial analysis and have to go under closer examination once the analysis is finished.

The teachers’ speech on integration

            Welcoming a disabled child in one’s classroom can be founded on different sorts of motives and requires different levels of involvement. For some teachers, it is the implementation of the fundamental right for each human being to have access to school. For others, it is a decision that is imposed to them by the texts. The integration of a disabled child, whether it is the result of a real willingness from the teachers or whether they are subjected to it, means a lot of fear and anxiety, which are most of the time linked to their lack of knowledge about the various handicaps.

The teacher has first to stand back from his personal reactions to the handicap. Once the teacher has gone beyond this first reluctance, he is often torn between the fear of not doing enough for the disabled child and the fear of neglecting the other children of the classroom.

These teachers have thus many doubts regarding the impact of their intervention on the integrated child’s progress. The disappointment is often present when the results they think they have obtained are too far from the target they had set. Were they up to it? Do they have the requisite abilities to take into account the child’s needs? This questioning is very important in elementary school since the school demands concerning the pupils’ abilities to develop are stronger. As pre-school is more a place where you learn how to live together than a place where you have to acquire a certain number of abilities, the difficulties encountered by the teachers seem to be less important. Moreover, the teachers can rely on the auxiliaries (ATSEM) who are attached to pre-school whereas in elementary school the teachers are confronted by themselves to the child.

            The lack of training is often put forward to explain what could be interpreted as a feeling of powerlessness. Moreover, the teachers would like to receive support in the integration process with material and human means as well as to be able to communicate better with the different partners of the integration. The elaboration of an adapted individual school project, that replaced the integration agreement, must aim at specifying the role and the missions of the different contributors and exchanging the information related to the child, as each situation of integration represent a singular case that has to be treated singularly. Indeed, many teachers insist upon the necessity to deal with each situation one by one and wish they could have an institutionalized time to do so as the consultations often occur on their personal time, giving them extra work. Concerning the collaboration with the specially trained staff, some teachers also evoke the resistance of some partners, who under the cover of the medical secret, refuse to give an account of the child’s difficulties although a better knowledge of the child’s impairment would be very helpful for the teacher.

            As a conclusion, and to quote a teacher’s words, “integration can be very productive, providing that you use all possible means to succeed”, that is to say material or human means -such as the reduction of the number of pupils or the increase of the number of auxiliaries of integration, introduced by the ministry of education in 2003 to help teachers, instituting a narrow collaboration between the different partners or following the necessary training to go beyond the first apprehensions.

Bibliography

CRESAS (1994). Enfants handicapés à l’école : des instituteurs parlent de leurs pratiques. Paris : L’Harmattan.

CRESAS (2003). Diversité et handicap à l’école. Quelles pratiques éducatives pour tous ? CTNERHI et INRP.

Belmont, B. & Vérillon, A. (1997). Intégration scolaire d’enfants handicapés à l’école maternelle, Partenariat entre enseignants de l’école ordinaire et professionnels spécialisés. Revue française de Pédagogie, n° 117, 15-26.

Belmont, B. & Vérillon, A. (2000). Intégration scolaire : pratiques de collaboration entre enseignants d’accueil et professionnels de structures spécialisés. Actes du congrès AECSE Bordeaux 1999, CDROM.

Chauvière, M & Plaisance, E. (Dir) (2000). L’école face aux handicaps. Education spéciale ou éducation intégrative ? coll. « Education et formation », Paris, PUF, 2000.

IGEN-IGAS (1999). Scolariser les jeunes handicapés. La documentation française/Hachette/CNDP

Ionescu , S. & Boutyere, E. (2000). L’intégration : cadre général et évolution des pratiques. Psychologie et éducation, n° 43, 37-59.

Lesain-Delabarre, J. M. (2001). L’intégration scolaire en France : une dynamique paradoxale. Revue française de Pédagogie, n°134, 47-58.

Lesain-Delabarre, J.M. (2000). L’adaptation et l’intégration scolaire. Innovations et résistances institutionnelles. Paris : ESF.

Thouroude, L. (2002). L’entre-deux de l’intégration et l’intégration de l’entre-deux à l’école maternelle. Psychologie et éducation, n°50, 61-75.

Zaffran, J. (1997). L’intégration scolaire des enfants handicapés. Paris :   L’Harmattan.

Official Texts for integration

Loi d’orientation en faveur des personnes handicapées n° 75-534 du 30 juin 1975.

Circulaire n° 82-048 du 29 janvier 1982 : Mise en œuvre d’une politique d’intégration en faveur des enfants et adolescents handicapés.

Circulaire n ° 83-082 du 29 janvier 1983 : Mise en place d’actions de soutien et de soins spécialisés en vue de l’intégration dans des établissements scolaires ordinaires des enfants et adolescents handicapés, ou en difficulté en raison d’une maladie, de troubles de la personnalité ou de troubles de comportement.   

Circulaire n° 91-304 du 18 novembre 1991 : intégration scolaire des enfants et adolescents handicapés.

Circulaire n° 95-15 du 17 mai 1995 : Mise en place de dispositifs de regroupements pédagogiques d’adolescents présentant un handicap mental : les UPI.

Décret n° 2004-13 du 5 janvier 2004 (JO n°5 du 7 janvier 2004) créant le certificat d’aptitude professionnelle pour les aides spécialisées, les enseignements adaptés et la scolarisation des élèves en situation de handicap et le certificat complémentaire pour les enseignements adaptés et la scolarisation des élèves en situation de handicap.  

Circulaire n° 2004-117 du 15.7.2004 : Intégration des élèves handicapés.

Loi n° 2005-102 du 11 février 2005 pour l'égalité des droits et des chances, la participation et la citoyenneté des personnes handicapées, J.O n° 36 du 12 février 2005.   

This study was made in collaboration with C.Brisset, G Delameziere and E.H Riard. It is the result of a contract between the CURSEP and the DRASS of Picardy. It   was financed by the Ministry of Health. We would like to thank all the persons who answered our questions and the heads of departments of the Ministry of Education who allowed us to meet the staff confronted to situations of integration.

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