Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress
International
Special Education Conference
Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity?
1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland
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Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland |
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Alison Closs
until October 2004, Senior Lecturer
Department of Educational Studies
Moray House School of Education
University of Edinburgh EH8 8AQ
Email: alison.closs@ed.ac.uk
Vesna Radoman
Professor in the Faculty of Defectology
University of Belgrade
Serbia and Montenegro.
Email: radosna@infosky.net
Absent Co-author:
Virxhil Nano
AssociateProfessor, University of Tirana, Albania.
Email: virxhil_nano@yahoo.co
* Please do not cite this paper without permission from the lead author *
The paper will examine recent historical, social and economic factors in Albania and Serbia, identifying similarities and differences that may have a bearing on the provision of education. The focus of the paper is on the education of children with difficulties in learning and/or disabilities (the term ‘special needs’ will be used for brevity). The paper gives a summary of the past and present situation of children with special needs in both countries with special reference to education. The role and motivation of international funding agencies involved in developing inclusive educational policies and practices in both countries are examined. There are substantial barriers to inclusive education in Albania and Serbia. The authors identify and discuss these before looking at more recent positive developments in both countries. Two individual examples of schools making progress are profiled briefly, one from each country. Finally the authors look to the future in both countries, predicting further slow and uneven progress in inclusive education in Albania and Serbia, but suggesting that further help will be needed to support internal efforts.
While the focus of this paper is on children with special needs, and draws on research and other reports by the authors and other professionals involved with children with disabilities and their families in recent years, some of the points made would have relevance to other minority groupings present in both countries. Children from Roma and other ethnic and/or linguistic minorities, refugees and internally displaced, migrant or economic travelling families and returning nationals may all experience some social and educational exclusion. It is asserted that schools need to adapt previously held attitudes and values, as well as policies and practices in selection, assessment and teaching, if all children in their diversity are to be included in education both effectively and happily (Hrnjica 2004, Colin and Markovic/Save the Children 2004, Closs et al 2003).
Albania and Serbia are neighbouring south-east European Balkan countries whose histories are permeated with intermittent wars, invasions and violence.
Serbia and the other Republics of former Yugoslavia were deeply affected in the violent breakdown of former Yugoslavia – a non-aligned communist country (Silber and Little 1995, Popov 1996). International trade and travel sanctions were imposed on Serbia and Montenegro from 1992 to 2000 and Serbia experienced NATO’s eleven-week intensive bombardment in 1999. Serbia had been, during the early 1980s, a country with broadly adequate standards of living, comparable in its main cities with some other European countries. It had areas of productive agricultural and mineral resources. The economy worsened even prior to the sanctions and deteriorated rapidly throughout the period in which they were applied. The impact on necessary infrastructures, daily living, levels of pay, employment and professional functioning, was catastrophic. Direct professional contacts with the wider world largely came to a halt.
The Milosevic Government fell in October 2000 and was followed by a Government committed to pro-European reforms. Following the murder of Prime Minister Dzindzic in March 2003, reforms have slowed down and greater uncertainty has ensued. Current (2005) unemployment stands at 30%, average annual salary of employed people at €3300 and a teacher’s annual salary at €3,800. One of the products of the recent troubled history and poverty is the presence in Serbia of international advisers and aid organisations.
Meantime in Albania, Europe’s poorest country (Myftiu 2001), the isolationist pro-China Communist rule in Albania came to an end through 1990 and 1991. Its infrastructures were 50 or more years behind other European countries, including Serbia. It is largely rural with a few small and medium sized towns and Tirana, the capital. Tirana has the lion’s share of inadequate services and resources and is the focus of uncontrolled internal migration from the rural lowland and, especially, mountainous areas. The collapse of the centrally planned economy was followed by a severe economic depression, and then a period of improvement with a partly controlled transition towards a market economy. Rapid inflation then set in. In 1997 the collapse of financial ‘pyramid investment’ schemes triggered widespread social violence with over 1,500 deaths. The following Government appears to have stabilised the situation to a large extent – a necessary precondition for improving the country’s infrastructures, including human services such as education and health. Today, official statistics show unemployment in Albania stands at 15%, the average annual salary of employed people at €2350 (private sector salaries excepted), and the annual salary of an elementary school teacher at €1645. Most rural families scrape a marginal existence. As in Serbia, Albania hosts a large number of international agencies, present to assist and influence the country’s development.
Thus both countries lie close to other - relatively flourishing - European countries, share a communist-ruled past (albeit of different styles), periods of isolation, recent experiences of serious conflict with the resulting presence of refugees and internally migrated and diverse populations, and poverty especially - but not only - in rural areas. Both have substantial presence of international advisory and aid agencies. Both countries are also signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN 1989) and have produced the obligatory reviews and national plans for their countries’ children (Albanian Government 2002a, Government of FR Yugoslavia 1996). Neither country, however, is certain of the numbers of their children with special needs nor of where they all live.
However, it is important to remember that in development of education and other matters of importance, commonality of circumstances may not necessarily result in similar progress. There are also salient significant differences, some of which will emerge in subsequent sections of this paper.
A qualitative and quantitative research study of the situation of children with special needs in Albania (Closs et al 2003), including views of children, parents, governmental and non-governmental organisations (GO and NGO) officials and service providers, found that the situation for the overwhelming majority was extreemely poor. Despite some official goodwill and supportive extended family systems, there was also substantial public prejudice against children and adults with special needs (ADRF 1998). The state services – health, social services and education – were extremely inadequate. This was exacerbated by the lack of key personnel, especially beyond Tirana. This study confirmed and greatly extended data gathered in two reviews funded by the Albanian Disability Rights Foundation (ADRF 1998, ADRF/Nano 2002).
There is, as yet, no certainty about numbers of children with special needs in Albania nor any consistent form of records. Closs et al (2003) made an estimate based on likelihood. Within European countries with reliable statistical data a rough rule of thumb is that there will be around 2% of the child population with moderate/severe/profound and complex disabilities and pronounced specific disabilities, a further 8-10% with lesser but significant difficulties and yet more with mild and transient difficulties. Albania had around 1.2 million children age 0 -18 in 2002. Of these, 120,000 children could be expected to have a significant degree of disability or learning difficulty, of whom around 24,000 would be at the more severe end of the spectrum with half of them - 12,000 children - having extremely severe disabilities. Albania’s higher perinatal and early infancy death rates (40 deaths per 1,000 live births estimated in 2001) would reduce that last figure as some of the perinatal and early infancy deaths are likely to be children with the most severe disabilities. However, this reduction would be offset by the higher incidence of disabling perinatal and infancy trauma and morbidity resulting from what would be preventable or treatable conditions in better-resourced countries, such as prenatal rubella, ear infections and meningitis.
Of the identified children (Closs et al 2003), approximately 235 were in institutional Residential Centres (fortunately a small and now reducing number), 113 in Day Centres and 794 in Special Schools and Classes, giving a total of 1142 in GOs and an estimated further 1000+ children in contact with an NGO. Very limited special education began in the 1970s. There were also children with disabilities in ‘regular’ orphanages, estimated at 79 (Red Barnet NGO 2002) and a small number of currently uncounted children with disabilities in private/NGO orphanages. A small number of children with mild disabilities are already in mainstream schools (ADRF [Nano] 2002).
Thus there are almost certainly at least 9000+ children with very severe disabilities and, more debatably, up to a further 11,000+ children with lesser but still significant disabilities not receiving any GO or NGO services – Albania’s invisible children (Closs et al 2003:31). Of the children in educational or other GO and NGO provision, the nature of their programmes was very variable, much of it simply occupational, but some developmental and positive, especially where staff had received some training from international NGOs. There is no national qualification for teachers working with children with special needs and both psychologists and social workers are new professions with general degree level courses only instituted in the last eight years. Currently one University is working with an Italian NGO to provide training for Day and Residential Centre staff.
During the 1990s after the political changes, NGOs supported families in forming Parents Associations which, conscious of their children’s potential, pressed the government for more special and, increasingly, mainstreamed educational opportunities for their children. Some small pilot inclusion projects were run in the later 1990s. While Nano (ADRF/Nano 2002) found both willingness and resistance among mainstream teachers - and more willingness among pupils – to include children with disabilities, little had been done to prepare schools and staff for this until very recently (see later). Mainstream schools often struggle to meet the needs of existing pupils in classes of up to 45 pupils. Albania has not yet ensured ‘Education for All’ even for pupils without special needs. Mountainous isolation, lack of roads and transport, lack of commitment to education in some communities and harsh weather conditions all contribute to only part-registration. The curriculum is largely academic and rigid with children progressing up the school only on passing end-of-year tests. Nonetheless, legislation has been passed on mainstreaming in the 6-14 age band elementary schools (Albanian Government 2002b). Little had been done about pre-school provision for children with special needs.
As in Albania, numbers and locations of children with special needs are not known with any accuracy and there are no local/national databases. A variety of statistics has been put forward (Colin and Markovic/Save the Children 2004 and Serbian Ministry for Education and Sports 2003). However, assuming as in other European countries a figure of between 2 – 12% allowing for a continuum from profound and complex to moderate and mild disability, and with a child population of about 2,350,000 between the ages of 5 and 19, the numbers could be from 47,000 to 282,000. Colin and Markovic/Save the Children suggest that as few as 10% of children with special needs are included in targeted specialist services such as education.
Unlike in Albania, children with special needs were recognised legally from the early 1900s in former Yugoslavia. Societal attitudes to disability in Serbia (Closs 2003) tended to be complex and ambivalent; human warmth and pity, rejection and fear were evident – societal inclusion was not. Sretenov (2000) found evidence in her study of mainstream pre-school teachers of substantial antagonism towards even the idea of mainstreaming children with special needs. Special education provision in formerYugoslavia had, until the late 1970s, followed a pattern common in Europe and especially in Eastern and Southern Europe (Csanyi 2001, Ajdinski and Florian 1997) with semi-centralised institutions and schools, often residential. Some towns also had special day schools, with separate or mixed provision for children identified by assessment Commissions as having specific categories of impairments. Special classes attached to mainstream schools with children of diverse ages and with diverse disabilities were another common form of provision.
Special curricula were adapted to meet supposed common educational needs of the categories of impairment; differentiation was not practised. Some specialised learning aids, materials and texts were available, but never in sufficient quantity or quality. Children with severe cognitive or complex disabilities, deemed ‘ineducable’ by the Commission for Assessment and Placement of children with developmental difficulties (Ispanovic 2003) stayed at home or received medical and physical care only in care institutions usually deficient in accommodation, staffing, resources and respect for human rights. Living in extreme poverty is debilitating, especially for families with disabled members and, unsurprisingly, numbers of institutionalised children have continued to rise (Yugoslav Child Rights Centre, 2001).
Plainly, special schools also removed ‘non-conforming’ students from mainstream schools that usually have at least two ‘shifts’ of pupils and staff each day. Classes are large, classrooms impersonal, curricula academic, knowledge-laden and heavy. Pedagogy tends to be traditional front-led whole class didactics. Pro-inclusion educational reforms in Yugoslavia in the late 1970s were not implemented in Serbia. Special education remained poorly funded, and integration applied only to children with the mildest physical or sensory difficulties.
In Serbia the effects of sanctions and isolation (1992-2000) and the 1999 NATO bombardment on children with special needs and their families/carers were severe (Closs 2003). Serbia received large numbers of internally displaced and refugee families from other parts of former Yugoslavia, some of whom had children with special needs for whom there was little or no specialist support. Other children with special needs from Serbia living in institutions in other Republics of former Yugoslavia were cut off from parental contacts during hostilities. Many medical and other professionals were recruited into military service, or fled abroad to avoid being drafted, not returning afterwards– a continuing ‘brain drain’ from essential services including education. Medication was, and still is, scarce and unaffordable for many families.
Of currently identified children with special needs, 1,345 are known to be in six residential institutions. Colin and Markovic/Save the Children (2004) give school student data as follows: 8,213 children and young people attend 52 elementary and secondary special schools. If the special schools that combine elementary (6-14) and secondary (15-18) stages are separated as though the stages were separate schools, the number of special schools would be 85 (51 elementary and 34 secondary) Less than one fifth of special school students progress to secondary education, usually students with physical or sensory disabilities or mild cognitive disabilities. Of the 8,213 students in special school, 1,500 are in residential schools. There are also 70 regular schools with 211 attached separate special classes with 1,374 students. Numbers of pre-school age children are also not known and the relative dearth of pre-school provision and early intervention is a concern (Serbian Ministry for Education and Sport 2003). However, the recent development of 22 small pre-school groups in special schools and 14 special groups comprising 100 children located in mainstream pre-school nurseries is encouraging. The same document refers to a survey of 97 elementary schools in Serbia with over 8,000 mainstream pupils identified as having ‘special needs’. From descriptions, the special needs were mainly mild difficulties in school learning with around 4,000 having reading, writing, mathematical or emotional problems.
‘Defectologists’ (special school and special class qualified teachers with some additional therapy training) were and still are graduate trained in a separate faculty of Belgrade University. Teachers working with the pupils above are 1,785 defectologists in special schools and 155 defectologists and 97 teachers with other subject teaching qualifications in the special classes attached to regular schools (Colin and Markovic/Save the Children 2004)
More recent developments towards inclusive education are addressed in a later section of this paper.
The presence of both large – World Bank, UNICEF and other UN agencies, EU, OSCE, USAID, Open Society and Save the Children – and smaller international aid and development funding agencies is very evident in many fields in both Serbia and Albania. The work they have done over the last decade in relation to children with special needs – day care, social and medical support, rights advocacy, empowerment of parents, early intervention, inclusive education projects, toy libraries, deinsitutionalisation, to name only some – is invaluable and widely acknowledged (Closs et al 2003, Colin and Markovic/Save the Children 2004, Closs 2003). So too are some of the problems associated with NGOs – short termism, inter-NGO competition for funds, lack of co-operation and non-alignment with GO work, fragmentation and uneven distribution.
Financial and advisory support to countries, to rebuild infrastructures, build capacity, protect and develop disadvantaged sectors of communities, is most likely to be provided in areas of military strategic and potential market importance to the countries giving aid. In other cases, as in the substantial Italian aid given to Albania, aid may be given ‘in country’ to prevent the flow of financial emigrants from poorer to richer countries. Aid is almost invariably given with strings attached and focused on certain targets. This is not to suggest that such organisations are necessarily globalisation wolves in humanitarian sheep’s clothing; motivation may be relatively ‘pure’ or mixed. But where does their motivation lie in relation to inclusive education?
‘Education for All’ is one target in establishing societal cohesion and stability, although it is also perceived as a prerequisite for ‘the development of equal opportunities’, ‘education for democracy’, ‘social inclusion’ and ‘inclusive education’. Steiner-Khamsi (2000), suggests that phrases such as ‘Education for democracy’, or indeed for ‘equality’ or ‘inclusion’, are used to flag up to other countries and the international business world that a particular country is stabilising and is therefore a suitable partner for co-operation or investment. Certainly the need for investment in Serbia and Albania is huge.
Samoff (1999:253) and Silova (2005) identify mantra themes in development education that recur in international aid proposals and discussions. Silova (2005: 51) lists some, ‘an expanded role for the private sector, decentralisation of education authority, priority accorded to girls’ education, the development and distribution of textbooks and other instructional materials, and in-service teacher education’. She suggests that some countries may divert funds for donor purposes to their own priorities but she also refers to the writing of Mijatovic (1999:33) who describes how the powers-that-be in countries in transition from communism to capitalism may sometimes promote the relatively uncritical adoption of alien new systems from the donor or advisory countries. Such ‘imports’ may also build up resentment in the recipient country (Silova 2005: 52&53). Ignatieff (2002) challenging the self-interest of ‘outsiders’ in their promotion of certain developments, portrays it as, ‘the imperial kernel at the heart of our interest in reconstruction and nation building. For what is empire but the desire to imprint our values on another people?’.
So is international financial aid to develop education for all and inclusive education in countries such as Albania and Serbia a form of exploitation, opportunism and ignorance on the part of expatriate donors, and naivety and/or financial duplicity on the part of recipients? Is inclusive education presented as an undisputed and simple ‘good’, rather than as the contentious and complex issue that it is (Thomas and Glenny 2002, Lindsey 2003, Weddell 2005)? Are the difficulties in transferring educational policies and strategies from one culture and economy to another underestimated (Ainscow 1991: 1, Hastie 1997: 79)? ‘Sometimes, but only partly’, might be a fair answer to such questions. Certainly inclusive education of children with special needs has not, until the last decade of international aid and access to international educational ideas, featured on any official educational agenda in either Serbia or Albania. Indeed, only a small minority of children with special needs have been catered for at all, and then almost entirely in special schools and classes.
Yet the questions above underestimate and malign the perceptiveness and motivation of recipient countries’ professionals and parents caring for children with special needs. For them, the apparently ‘new’ ideas and related funds offer a possible way forward, however challenging, against the barriers to their children’s enrolment in any school. This issue has actually been troubling them for many more years than the time spent by expatriate aid-givers in their countries. Davies (2000) makes some very salient points in her book on conflict and education. She suggests that crisis offers an opportunity ‘ . . . to examine the shortcomings of old systems and attempt to search for new solutions’ (2000: 165). She also notes that countries may be prepared to accept conditions attached to aid from donors in order to achieve their own ends (2000:178). Professionals and parents of children with special needs in Serbia and Albania might hope, along with Thomas and Loxley (2001:118) and some international funders, that inclusive education and education for peace, democracy, etc, will contribute to creating more peaceful, democratic, richer, fairer and inclusive societies. They might also agree with Wedell (2005), that many mainstream schools are not even adequate for their existing mainstream pupils. However, for Albanian and Serbian parents, their support for (inclusive) education for all was based primarily on the reality that it was the only probable route that would get their children into school. The Salamanca Statement (UNESCO 1994), much quoted by local and international NGOs in Albania and Serbia, combines both the idealistic and the pragmatic rationales,
Regular schools with this inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society and an education for all . . .
For countries in such difficult economic circumstances building new separate special schools is unlikely even if this was thought desirable. With dropping population sizes and – in the longer term - more space in regular schools, some form of mainstream acceptance is a more realistic way forward. How far it will result in the ‘side-by-side- learning’ for all children at all times with their age peers, promoted by some donors and some western pro-inclusion advocates, is less clear. Whether, also, pro-inclusion developments will reach the ‘invisible children’ with severe/complex special needs in residential institutions, at home and in isolated rural situations, often ignored even by NGO inclusion projects for their abler peers, also remains to be seen.
Many of the barriers to inclusive education are common to both countries. These are:
There are, however, some significant differences between the two countries that may impact on whether they make significant progress towards inclusive education or not. Albania has only a small special education sector – a total of eight special elementary schools and seven special classes attached to four regular elementary schools. In Serbia there are 85 special schools (or 52 if those schools that have both elementary and secondary stages are counted as one school rather than two) and 211 special classes attached to 70 mainstream schools. Even allowing for Serbia’s larger population, pro rata its special school sector is very much larger than that of Albania. This is also true of institutionalised children where Albania has only 235 children in six smaller institutions while Serbia has 1,345 in six larger institutions.
There are no specialist special education teachers in Albania. The teachers who work in special schools are qualified to teach in mainstream schools and are usually selected to work in special schools be prause of their professional competence and interest. In Serbia however, there are 1,785 defectologists in special schools and 155 defectologists in the special classes attached to regular schools. Defectologists are not qualified to work as teachers in mainstream schools.
In Serbia the separate special sector of education and its defectologists are perceived by others and themselves as the only – and only qualified - educators of children with special needs. Their ‘power base’ in the Faculty of Defectology in the University of Belgrade is on record (Closs 2003) as being largely, but not completely, united against inclusive education. Ironically, the unconnected University Institute of Psychology is a leader in promoting increased inclusion (Hrnjica 2004). It has seemed that, until recently, Defectology Faculty staff members and their graduated students would reject any move towards greater educational inclusion. Combined with mainstream teachers’ animosity to inclusion (Sretenov 2000) and wider society’s ambivalence about disability, this would seem to be a substantial barrier. Without the modelling of inclusive behaviour in mainstream schools’ staff it is unlikely that parents and regular pupils would welcome fellow pupils with special needs. How far defectologists’ views might change if they were permitted legally to work as teachers in mainstream, cannot yet be answered.
It could be argued then that the Albanian special sector has less vested interest in opposing inclusion. With a small number of special schools and special classes and their teachers already qualified and experienced in mainstream teaching, resistance on grounds of job loss or of superior specialist training would not have the same strength as in Serbia. At the same time, teachers in Albanian special schools did feel that they were educating children who would not have survived in most mainstream schools. This view was borne out by parents of children who had left or been asked to leave mainstream schools or had been ‘sidelined’ from classroom activities (Closs et al. 2003: 54). Despite such examples, it did seem that some Albanian mainstream teachers’ attitudes were positive and ADRF/Nano (2002) found that regular pupils’ views were yet more positive about the possibility of having peers with special needs in class.
It might, therefore, be suggested that overall opposition to inclusive education is less strong in Albania and that, where little special provision has been developed there is less to undo while developing inclusion. Meantime in Serbia the concerns of defectologists about their own future employment and their condemnation, justified or not, of the quality of education that could be provided by teachers who were not defectologists, could create a substantial body of national opposition to inclusive education. Much, then, will depend on what pro-inclusion steps are taken in both countries to allay fears and doubts, test hypotheses and strategies, and take forward necessary steps at government level to allow progress.
There have been very definite steps towards inclusive education in both countries recently both at government level and in some local areas and even in individual schools working with NGOs. It seems likely that this combination of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches will have far greater impact than either on its own.
A review of the curricula for elementary and secondary education was published (Serbian Ministry for Education and Sport 2002) aimed at reducing the weight and scope of mainstream curricula and encouraging more child-centred, experiential and ‘democratic’ approach pedagogy. This would certainly enhance the prospects for inclusive education. A further document (Serbian Ministry for Education and Sport 2003), analysing the current situation of education for children with special needs and making proposals for its reform, was produced by a committee comprising a group of experienced professionals. These included Ministry of Education advisers, professors of defectology, an NGO representative (from Save the Children), and teachers/headteachers. The committee was highly critical of both the special and mainstream sectors for children with special needs and of the predominance of the medical/defect model of disability in legislation, the work of the Assessment Commission (of children) and of the Faculty of Defectology. It recommended that:
Thus a ‘three tier’ system – inclusive, mixed and special – would be developed but with no hard boundaries between them. In many respects this is not unlike practice in many European countries and, indeed, similar to the model proposed in former Yugoslavia and partly implemented in Croatia in the late 1970s! Racki (1982) described how pupils with mild to moderate difficulties were mainstreamed in Croatia and children with severe learning difficulties, autism and multiple disabilities, previously not in education, fell heir to vacancies in special schools.
The Serbian report also recommended that parents should be partners, that the use of both institutional care and boarding schools should be reduced, and that ‘Education for All’ should be fully implemented. Both this report (2003: 29) and that of Colin and Markovic/Save the Children (2004: 13) cited the research and very critical findings of Ispanovic (2003) on the work of the Assessment and Placement Commission of children with disabilities. They recommended that suggested improvements to the system - to humanise it and make its approach more holistic, include parents, be less orientated to the ‘labelling’ medical model and more positively formative should be taken further. The committee acknowledged that its recommendations were radical and would create problems in implementation, especially for mainstream schools.
As a first step, the Government undertook to fund, or part fund with local authorities and NGOs such as Save the Children, some one year pilot programmes in inclusion both in mainstream and in special schools and nurseries during 2004 and 2005: one is profiled later. Pilot projects included both full-time and part-time models of inclusion, mainly involving children with mild to moderate disabilities – physical, sensory and cognitive. Features of the projects have been the partnership of schools, advisory staff and NGOs and preparation of the staff, pupils and parents of the receiving school by the ‘base’ school. Overall the projects have been evaluated very positively. One product has been the first text for mainstream school staff to help them include pupils with special needs successfully (Hrnjica 2004) to which the project pilot schools involved contributed.
There have, however, been two changes of Minister for Education as well as a change of Government since these proposals were made which have served to delay changes and indeed even to call into question the current Government’s resolve in this work.
With a number of moderately successful pilot inclusion projects already undertaken (ADRF/Nano 2002) and with the support of legislation (Albanian Government 2002b), Albania made clear but very limited moves towards inclusion before 2004. Under the Law, schools were encouraged to move towards including more pupils with disabilities. Teachers with pupils with disabilities in their class had a right to extra pay, or extra non-teaching hours or a reduced number of pupils in class. However, except in NGO-assisted pilot projects (see profile of Prrenyas School, below) there was no budget to meet this expense. This risked alienating staff. Schools could also undertake outreach home teaching to pupils with very severe disabilities or medical conditions, and open special classes, but these had to be funded from the schools’ own or alternative non-governmental funds. Some schools made progress even without the additional funds, due to high staff morale and local community commitment. Starting from 2004, however, there have been improvements in teachers’ pay and a reduction in workload that should increase morale and motivation.
A recent study (Koka et al 2005) confirms the need for further initial and post-experience teacher education if inclusion is to make headway. Specific modules in Albania’s teacher education courses that emphasise inclusive pedagogical approaches and IEPs are in the process of development. Because there are no ‘specialist teachers’, all teachers have responsibility for all pupils. Some guidance booklets for parents and teachers are also in preparation. Such steps are vital if the Government’s most recent plans (Albanian Government 2004) are to be implemented. 12 inclusive nursery schools and 12 inclusive elementary schools are to be piloted during 2004-2006, followed by the establishment of a further 90 of each between 2006 and 2014. Each of these schools will have a team specifically to support inclusion, comprising a psychologist, a social worker and 2-3 part-time teachers. This programme will be phased in, starting from the larger towns.
Prrenyas Elementary School is located in a small town in the isolated mountains towards Macedonia with a very wide rural catchment area. Its headteacher is himself a member of the Macedonian minority in Albania. The school has 800 pupils in 30 classes run in two shifts daily. It is part of a large social and educational project in which an international NGO (Save the Children) supported a local NGO (MEDPAK) by funding a local inclusion project along with UNICEF and the local Education Authority as partners.
The school carried out a search in 2002 to identify children with disabilities not then registered in school. This school already had many children with mild disabilities on its register, who continued to be taught positively even when unable to keep up with their peers. Nine ‘new’ children were identified, seven came in to school and two with very severe and complex disabilities were educated at home. The school mainstreamed two of the new children and established a special class for five children with combined physical and mental disabilities. The children from the special class shared social and recreational time with the other children.
Three years later in 2005 there are five children in the special now part-included class and three children with moderate special needs in each of the three mainstream Grades 1-3. A volunteer teacher from the school receives extra pay through the Project funding to provide the continuing domiciliary service now to four children. IEPs are in use throughout the school as needed. Training for the mainstream and special class teachers was provided by the local NGO representative, a highly experienced teacher of children with disabilities and herself the mother of a young person with special needs.
Prrenyas School already had an overall positive ethos but staff found that their additional efforts with children with disabilities and their families also had a positive effect on all home-school relationships. The Education Authority continues to support the development, noting that the general pupil population has benefited socially and continues to maintain very high academic standards. The Director mentors other schools starting out on the road to greater inclusion and the Project funds meetings and staff development sessions for all involved staff.
Milan Petrovic is a very large special school in the city of Novi Sad in northern Serbia. It is staffed almost entirely by defectologists, many of them young, but there are some non-defectologist subject specialists. It is led by a defectologist headteacher who is also president of the professional association of defectologists and a member of the committee that recommended reforms of the Defectology Faculty and moves toward less special education and more inclusive education. The school is known for its mutually supportive relationship with its local community, with well-attended events and activities to engage all local children in shared activities; theatrical performances, sport and chess tournaments, a pet show, fashion shows, a masked ball for seniors and a painting summer school with subsequent sale of work. The school works with other Novi Sad schools to raise disability awareness and develop inclusive pro-social attitudes and behaviour.
Milan Petrovic School also practices partnership with parents and is willing to meet new challenges. In common with many other special schools it enrols a very diverse population of children with all kinds of impairments except manually communicating deaf pupils (a nearby town has a large school for non-orally communicating deaf pupils) and children who have been deemed ‘ineducable’ by the Assessment Commission. It does, however, now include children with autism who would previously not have been admitted.
The school is piloting the new role of ‘inclusion facilitator’ – put forward by the committee making reform recommendations (Serbian Ministry of Education and Sport 2003). The Inclusion Support Team comprises two defectologists specialising in learning difficulties, two speech and language defectologists/therapists, two defectologists for blind/partially sighted children, one defectologists for partially hearing children and one psychologist. They give the time necessary to ensure support of receiving schools’ staff and pupils, the ‘included’ pupils, and families of both included and host children. They support 14 children who were previously pupils at Milan Petrovic but who are now included full time in their own various local pre-school, elementary and secondary schools throughout the town and surrounding area. A further partially sighted child attends Milan Petrovic and his own school in a shared placement arrangement.
Evaluation suggests that the programme to date has been very successful with no placement breaking down. Receiving mainstream staff report their increased feelings of enthusiasm and of competence. Parents of all children appear very satisfied.
We have seen the ambitious hopes, reports full of recommendations, successful pilot projects and, in Albania’s case, concrete plans to develop education for all children and some forms of inclusive education. How far plans will materialise in both countries depends to some extent on both countries’ economic situation and political drive. This drive for inclusive education will come most strongly from committed professionals in Ministries, schools, NGOs and families, whose tenacity and hard work so far in very difficult circumstances can only be admired. However, political stability and the political drive towards European Community membership and standards – obvious in Albania but more ambivalent in Serbia’s current slow-moving government – may be a more decisive factor. Another element in the prognosis may be whether NGOs continue to work in the Balkans, with so much devastating poverty and problems elsewhere, and whether those NGOs that do elect to stay will continue to place children with special needs on their agendas. Their support, and the encouragement from other interested organisations throughout Europe, will be of critical importance to Albania’s and Serbia’s own efforts.
Ainscow, M. (1999). Reaching out to all learners, some lessons from international experience, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 11 (1), 1-19.
Ajdinski, L. &Florian, L. (1997). Special Education in Macedonia, European Journal of Special Needs Education, 12(2), 116-126.
Albanian Disability Rights Foundation/Nano, V.) (2002) Albanian Schools in the Integration Process: Study on the integration of children with disability in regular schools (Tirana, ADRF).
Albanian Disability Rights Foundation (1998) The Albanian Public Opinion and Persons with Disability (Tirana, ADRF).
Albanian Government (2004) National Strategy on People with Disabilities in the Republic of Albania 2004-2005 (Tirana, Albanian Government).
Albanian Government (2002a) Draft First Report of the Albanian Government for the CRC Committee, Geneva (Tirana: Albanian Government).
Albanian Government (2002b) Normative Dispositions for Pre-university Education, Article 57 – The Education of Pupils with Special Needs (Tirana, Albanian Government).
Booth, T. (1998) England: Inclusion and exclusion in a competitive system, in: T. Booth and M. Ainscow (Eds.) From Them to Us: An International Study of Inclusion in Education (London, Routledge), 193-225.
Closs, A. (2003) An outsider’s perspective on the reality of educational inclusion within former Yugoslavia, in: J. Allan (Ed.) Inclusion, Participation and Democracy: What is the Purpose? (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Klewer Books).
Closs, A., Nano, V. and Ikonomi, E. (2003) I Am Like You – An Investigation into the Position of Children with Disabilities in Albania (Tirana, Save the Children).
Colin, T. and Markovic, S./ Save the Children (2004) Children with Disabilities in Serbia – Discussion Paper and Recommendations for Medium Term Policy and Planning (Belgrade, Save the Children (UK)).
Csanyi, Y. (2001). Steps towards inclusion, European Journal of Special Needs Education, 16(3), 301-308.
Davies, L. (2004) Education and Conflict: Complexity and Chaos (London, Routledge Falmer).
Government of FR Yugoslavia (1996) Yugoslav Plan of Action for Children by the Year 2000 (Belgrade, Government of FRY).
Hastie, R. (1997). Disabled Children in a Society at War: A Casebook from Bosnia (Oxford, Oxfam).
Hrnjica, S. (Ured. [Ed.]) (2004) Skola Po Meri Deteta- Prirucnik za Rad sa Ucenicima Redovne Skole Ometnim u Razvoju (School for All Children –Manual for Working with Pupils with Developmental Difficulties in Regular School) (Belgrade, Institut za Psihologiju Filozofskog Fakulteta/Save the Children UK).
Ignatieff, M. (2002, 27 October). When a bridge is not a bridge, New York Times Magazine, on http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/27/magazine/27MOSTAR.html , accessed on 27 October 2002.
Ispanovic, V. (2003) Promotion of the Work of Commissions for Categorisation of Children with Developmental Disabilities (Belgrade, SMoSA/Handicap International).
Koka, Z., Haxhiymeri, V. and Nika, M./ADRF (2005) Inclusion of Children with Special Needs in Albanian Schools (Tirana, Albanian Disability Rights Foundation).
Lindsay, G. (2003) Inclusive education: a critical perspective, British Journal of Special Education, 30(1), 3-12.
Mijatovic, A. (1999) Democratic culture as a pre-condition for multiculturalism, European Journal of Intercultural Studies, 10(1), 31-37.
Myftiu, G. (Ed.) (2001) Albania: A Patrimony of European Values (Tirana, SIDA & FILD).
Popov, N. (Ed.) (1996). Srpska Strana Rata: Trauma i Katarza u Istorijskom Pamcenju (The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis) (Beograd, Republika).
Racki, J. (1982). Resultati i problemi u ostvarivanju preobrazaja odgoja i obrazavanja djeci i omladini s teskocama u rajvoju (Results and problems in the implementation of reforms in the education and schooling of children and young people with developmental difficulties), in: Proceedings of the Conference on Rehabilitation and Protection of the Disabled. Faculty of Defektology, Zagreb, July 1982. Zagreb, University of Zagreb,78-96.
Red Barnet NGO (2002) The Regional Situation of the Institutionalised Children: Alternatives to Institutional Care. (Shkoder, Red Barnet).
Samoff, J. (1999) Education Sector Analysis in Africa: Limited national control and even less national ownership. International Journal of Educational Development 19, 249-272.
Serbian Ministry of Education and Sports (2003) The Analysis of the Current Situation and Proposals for Reforms of Education for Children with Special Needs (Belgrade, SMoEaS).
Serbian Ministry of Education and Sports (2002) Strategija Razvoya Kurikuluma u Osnovnom I Srednjem Obrazovanju (Strategy for the Development of the Elementary and Secondary Education Curricula) (Belgrade, SMoEaS).
Silber, L. and Little, A. (1995). The Death of Yugoslavia (London, Penguin Books/BBC Books).
Silova. I. (2005) Travelling policies: hijacked in Central Asia, European Educational Research Journal, 4(1), 50-59.
Sretenov, D. (2000) An Evaluation of Attitudes of Pre-school Teachers from Different Social and Cultural Milieu in Yugoslavia towards Inclusion of Children with Mild Learning Difficulties in Regular Pre-school. M.Ed. Dissertation, University of Birmingham.
Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2000) Transferring education, displacing reforms, in: J. Schwiewer (Ed.) Discourse Formation in Comparative Education (Frankfurt, Peter Lang), 155-189.
Thomas, G. and Loxley, A. (2001). Deconstructing Special Education and Constructing Inclusion (Buckingham, Open University Press).
Thomas, G. and Glenny, G. (2002). Thinking about inclusion. Whose reason? What evidence? International Journal of Inclusive Education. 6(4), 345-370.
UNESCO/Government of Spain (1994). World Conference on Special Needs Education (Salamanca Statement) (Madrid, Spanish Ministry of Education).
Wedell, K. (2005) Dilemmas in the quest for inclusion, British Journal of Special Education, 32(1), 3-11.
United Nations (1989). The Convention on the Rights of the Child (Geneva, United Nations Children’s Fund).
Yugoslav Child Rights Centre (2001). The Situation of Children in Institutions of Social Care in Serbia (Belgrade, YCRC).
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