The Education of Handicapped Children

The various categories of deficiencies related to special medical or educational responsibilities are itemised in Hungarian legal regulations. However, the borderlines dividing classes defined in accordance with different kinds of deficiencies frequently appear to be indistinct. In 1986 national and county level committees were established to assess physical and mental handicaps, sensory or speech impediments. National boards of experts deal with the examination of visu-al, hearing and speech abilities. Examining and supervising professional boards are operated in the capital as well as at the county level. These committees consist of teachers of the handi-capped and leaders with such degrees, psychologists and medical specialists. The committees form their opinions regarding the examined handicapped child which serve as a base for rec-ommending possibilities for his/her positioning in school or nursery school. Educational Counselling Services operate in each district of the capital and in every major town on an out-patient basis with a mission to explore, diagnose and surmount problems in the behaviour, edu-cation and learning process of children under family care between the age of 3 and 18.

Professional services for speech therapy function in divisions according to districts in the cap-ital and to regions in the country where those with speech impediments may receive individual or group therapy. Boards of teachers of the handicapped might decide not only on sending chil-dren to special classes but also on transferring chilchil-dren from special classes into normal ones.

On the other hand, according to the provisions of the 1998 Act on Equal Opportunities, par-ents of handicapped children do have the right to decide which of the offered institutions shall educate their children.

Early development is of key importance in the case of handicapped children. The teachers of the handicapped have two types of responsibility: one is counselling in reference to the prob-lems of the parents and the direct environment of the child, the other concerns the control of a deficiency-specific improvement. As a travelling educator, the teacher of the handicapped in charge of the controlled counselling and specific development personally visits the family home or the parents attend the counselling service with their child.

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Thhee E Edduuccaattiioon naall SSyysstteem m ffoorr tthhee H Haan nddiiccaappppeedd

The nursery schools and primary schools for the handicapped – complete with accommodation in a students’ dormitory or day-care services – are educational institutions dealing with those

‘teachable’ children with special needs aged 3–16 who entered the institutional system.

Additionally, certain normal nursery and primary schools also have groups, classes or divisions for the education of the handicapped (for children with speech impediments or with slight men-tal deficiencies, in particular). Those handicapped of kindergarten or school age whose person-ality development might be optionally arranged, with special educational help, within nursery or primary schools may pursue their studies fully or in a partially integrated manner with other children. This form of teaching, however, is currently less typical. The general practice in pri-mary school education is special schools or school classes for the children and youth with defi-ciencies. In the scholastic year of 1998/99 approximately 200 institutions and 481 primary school divisions were engaged in the education of handicapped school-age children, these were attended by 44 339 pupils. 0.5% of nursery school children, 3.35% of pupils in primary schools and 0.87% of those in secondary schools attend institutions for the handicapped. Approximately 12 000 children receive speech therapy. In accordance with the Public Education Act parents are entitled to choose the educational institution on the basis of an expert opinion given by the Expertise and Rehabilitation Committee for the examination of learning abilities and by the National Expertise and Rehabilitation Committee. However, the parents’ freedom of choice is somewhat restricted by the act as well, since it declares that handicapped students may only enrol in educational institutions that have the necessary staff and funds for this special form of education.

Normal and special forms of school education converge in several respects. While designing their programmes, the institutions participating in the education of the handicapped are obliged to take into consideration the principles issued with reference to the education of children with deficiencies. In public education (apart from special schools educating the mentally handi-capped) education is performed along a largely common curriculum regulated by the National Core Curriculum. This enables handicapped children to complete primary school studies and to further continue their studies in secondary or higher education. Each school or other educa-tional institution for the handicapped has the right to decide which methods they regard most sufficient to use in the process of education and care. Education in school classes with a small number of students appears typical, however, individual (speech therapeutic) or individual and small group corrective activities are also widely practised. Handicapped students usually receive a final school-leaving certificate identical with that of able students. There are a total of 2 500–3 000 children with visual, hearing or speech impediments, motor and complex defi-ciencies, and nine or ten times as many students attending schools for the mentally handi-capped. This number includes 90% of those who attend schools for children with slight mental deficiencies or separate special classes in primary schools. This rate is regarded as an excep-tionally high proportion even in an international comparison.

The high proportion of pupils with a slight mental deficiency or, in other terms, children with slight learning difficulties in Hungary might be explained with differences in definition. One rea-son is that a large number of Gypsy children are directed to special schools, another is that, in lack of sufficient conditions, institutions with normal curricula are unable to admit these pupils.

For most handicapped children the possibility of continuing their studies in secondary or even in higher education is rather limited.

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Teeaacchheerr T Trraaiin niin ngg iin n tthhee E Edduuccaattiioon n ooff tthhee H Haan nddiiccaappppeedd

Teachers for the handicapped are trained in a four-year programme of Bárczi Gusztáv Teacher Training College for Teachers of the Handicapped, in Budapest. From January 2000 the college functions as the Faculty of Education for the Handicapped within the ELTE (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest). The training is organised in majors according to the main deficiency groups. Another prestigious institution that trains experts (so-called conductors) to deal with the physically handicapped is the Hungarian Petõ Institute. It has been observed in many cases that regular teachers and teachers of the handicapped should obtain each others’ degrees as a sec-ond diploma in the related fields through post-graduate training. Institutions for the education of the handicapped, especially in rural areas, struggle with a significant shortage of experts.

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Poossssiibbiilliittiieess ffoorr IIn ntteeggrraattiioon n

A distinctive feature of the education of the handicapped is the fact that the Hungarian school system tends to educate pupils with deficiencies in strongly specialised and isolated institutions.

While in several other countries some pupils with slight mental deficiencies are taught in nor-mal classes, this is virtually non-existent in Hungary. In primary education separate institutions function for the blind and the visually challenged, for pupils with hearing impediments, physi-cal and mental deficiencies. These isolated schools – while performing their educational duties at sufficient, or rather, excellent standards – often hinder the social integration of their students.

Work-related and other social consequences of educational isolation are obvious for the hand-icapped. Still, there is no general agreement on the integration of children with a slight defi-ciency in Hungary. A major difficulty hindering such a consensus is the fact that normal educa-tional institutions, from many aspects, are not yet capable of achieving the professional stan-dards of institutions specialised for the education of the handicapped.

One of the most important new objective of the education of the handicapped is to help the handicapped individual in adapting to a normal society at school, in workplaces and in other fields of life. This aim will make it necessary in the future to establish a harmonised development in the integrated work of teachers and teachers of the handicapped. The 1998 Act of Equal Opportunities contains specific regulations in this respect – though allowing for a due time of notice – declaring that if it is beneficial from the point of view of the development of the handi-capped child’s skills he/she should be educated in a common class or group together with other children. One of the most problematic elements in the school training of children with slight mental deficiencies is the selection and counter-selection functioning at school. In teaching the mentally handicapped, social problems are often mistaken for educational problems. According to schooling data, 90% of the handicapped attend schools for the mentally handicapped, where-as a mere 8% of all the handicapped are registered where-as individuals with a mental defection.

Official numeric statistics regarding the number and proportion of the handicapped also make it clear that individuals with slight mental deficiencies, as they step into adulthood, are absorbed in the society of the able to such an extent that a significant proportion of them can no longer be identified as handicapped. Besides legal regulations, there is still a lot to be done in order to provide the appropriate conditions of integrated education. Such means are the establishment of pedagogic methods for integrated education, the introduction of training integrative teachers, the development of new educational training types in order to raise awareness and increase the social sensitivity of the teachers as well as new financial incentives.

Special Needs in Education 119

Teachers specialised in the given type of deficiency or perhaps travelling teachers might assist teachers engaged in the integrated education of handicapped children. In the early 1990s the admission of handicapped children into normal schools started to gain ground spontaneously, mainly due to demographic and financial reasons. This spontaneous integration is called ’aus-tere integration’ since these schools usually lack the technical, pedagogic and concept-related conditions for the joint education of able and handicapped children. This spontaneous integra-tion, which is estimated to affect several thousand children in primary school with handicaps or learning difficulties, however, does not change the present state which could be described as segregated.