The greatest gaps of inclusive education: teachers’ attitude and preparedness

Yesterday during the press conference held at Media Center the question of the effectiveness of inclusive education was discussed. Quite significant views were expressed, especially on the scandalous incident occurred at school N125 of Yerevan, which, in fact, revealed the main gaps existing in the field of inclusive education. Let’s recall that the headmaster of the above-mentioned school refused to accept a 7-year-old boy with cerebral palsy arguing that the school’s multidisciplinary team has no experience necessary to work with him…

One of the participants of the discussion, the head of NGO “Bridge of hope” Susanna Tadevosyan mentioned two main problems in the context of this case, which are a serious obstacle to the path of inclusive education. First of all, it is the attitude of society, families, schools towards children with disabilities, and secondly – the lack of preparedness of professionals working with children. According to her, this case is not the only one – it just revealed that Pedagogical University develops not the skills of seeing person’s abilities but defects.

Specialist of the division of pre-school and secondary education of RA Ministry of Education and Science Anahit Muradyan added that all schools of the Republic of Armenia should be able to implement inclusive education according to all requirements of the law until 2025 and not just accept a child. They can accept children even today but they should be able to react adequately to the needs of each child.

Deputy Director of the school N 20 named after John Kirakosyan said that when their school became inclusive in 2006, they faced many difficulties, but today they have a professional team accepting this ideology.

According to Arevik Anapiosyan/ Executive director and researcher of the Institute of Public policy/ their study in the field of inclusive education revealed 5 important issues: The first one refers to the ideology of inclusive education and its perception, the second – the problem of uniqueness of the problem. The third is quality – inclusion should be made not at the expense of decreasing the quality but that of increasing. The fourth problem refers to the issue of teachers’ preparedness. And the fifth one is mechanisms of financing.

Full text in Armenian