REPORT

Salvatore Nocera

 

 

THE BODY OF LEGISLATION ON INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

OF DISABLED PERSONS IN ITALY :

The history, the institutional aspects, and the applicable procedures

 

 

SEMINAR

Mainstreaming in Education

14 JUNE

 

 

SOUTHERN EUROPE DISABILITY COMMITTEE

5^TH PLENARY MEETING

Rome , 13-15 June 2002

 

THE BODY OF LEGISLATION ON INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

OF DISABLED PERSONS IN ITALY :

The history, the institutional aspects, and the applicable procedures

by Salvatore Nocera

 

WHEN IT ALL STARTED

From the first half of the 60’s, all disabled persons in Italy were educated in special schools or in boarding institutions as in the rest of Europe and of the world. In about 1966 and 1967 the ideas of the Berkeley University started to circulate in Europe challenging that the “capitalist system” crushes men only on the economic dimension (Marcuse).

These ideas, which were aimed at fighting against forms of marginalisation, spread in France , especially during the “May of the student revolution of 1968” and in Italy with the “hot autumn of the trade unions” of 1968. The operators of the special institutions for the disabled then convinced the parents to remove their children from these structures, which were considered “ghettos” and to enrol them in common schools. It was a massive phenomenon and several tens of thousands of disabled youths left the institutions and special schools, which nevertheless continued to exist.

Act no. 118/71 [1] takes note of this situation and establishes that also disabled students are to fulfil the obligation of compulsory education in common schools, except for the most severe cases (which included the blind, the deaf, the severe intellectually and motory disabled, such as the tetraplegics, that is those that cannot move their four limbs and often cannot speak).

            In 1977 Act no. 517 [2] established the principle that all disabled pupils of the primary and middle schools from the age of 6 to 14 years are to be included (imposing also that all the teachers of the class are obliged to prepare an educational plan, supported by a specialised teacher for “didactic support” and that the State, the Local Authorities, and the local health units are to make out an administrative and financial plan). Administrative relations among the different services had to be governed by “agreements” among the different public institutions, which could sign agreements with private organisations to fulfil the obligations they undertook with the “agreements”.

            In 1987 the Constitutional Court issued sentence no. 215 [3] recognising the full unconditional right of all disabled pupils, even in situations of severity, also to attend secondary schools, and imposing all the authorities involved (school administration, local authorities, local health units) to provide the services of their competence to support general school integration.

            In 1992 Act no. 104/92 was approved [4] , which with articles 12 to 16 establishes the principles of a good quality of school integration:

§         “The aim of school integration is the development of a handicapped person’s potential in learning, communication, relations, and socialisation” (article 12, subsection 3).

§         “The practice of the right to education and knowledge cannot be hindered by learning difficulties nor by other difficulties deriving from disabilities related to handicap” (article 12, subsection 4).

§         The need for a clinical diagnosis, drawn up by a health specialist, that should describe the disability of the pupil and a “functional” diagnosis”, written by a team of specialist doctors, psychologists, and social workers, that should describe the residual capacity and the potential that needs to be activated (article 6 of the same Act) guarantees prevention, diagnosis, and early rehabilitation, free of charge according to the Public Health Law (23^rd December no. 833).

§         The need for a dynamic profile, drawn up by the same team, plus the teachers and the family, that is a description of how the disabilities and the skills react after the first inclusion trial period.

§         The need for a tailored educational plan drawn up by the same group, that should include the general lines of the didactic project of scholastic and social inclusion, that is of the three associated projects, the rehabilitation, the social, and the scholastic project. The professionals of each of these three fields will prepare, accomplish, and test their respective projects.

 

HOW INCLUSION IS ACCOMPLISHED

In Italy there are no health, social, or educational boards, nor an administrative office to decide whether a pupil may or may not attend a school, or whether he/she should be addressed to a special school or to an ordinary one.

According to Act 62/2000 [5] , any state [6] or non-state (private, municipal, or regional) school in Italy that obtains official recognition is obliged to accept any pupil with disabilities, even if severe. Better still, it is a criminal offence for a school to refuse to enrol such pupils.

When parents enrol their disabled child at nursery school (after the age of three) or compulsory primary school (after the age of six), they hand in the diagnosis.

Based on the diagnosis, the class teachers, the family, and the socio-sanitary operators that follow the child prepare the Individualised Educational Plan (IEP) (Act 104/92, article 12, subsections 5, 6, and 8), which includes a summary of the rehabilitation, the socialisation, and the didactic projects (Act 104/92, article 13, subsection 1, letter a). In practice this team is called operational Work Group on a Handicapped child (WGH). It also sees to the periodical checks on the general results, while the results achieved on the didactic project alone are assessed exclusively by the teachers.

The tailored educational plan and consequently the didactic plan must be supported by personnel and tools, also technological, that should be adequate to the kind of handicap and its severity [7] .

            Thus, for example, a blind boy must receive a specialised teacher that knows the “Braille” raised dot alphabet (Act 104/92 art. 14); besides having a specialised teacher for deaf children and lip-reading ability, a deaf boy with a hearing aid since the age of one must also have a special “magnetic field” to reduce the noise produced on the hearing aid by the outside environment. Starting from middle school, we are also starting to require computers with “simultaneous subtitling” programmes, that is programmes that translate the words pronounced by the teachers into a line of moving words. If the deaf child does not have a good hearing aid and speaks and/or hears badly, he is entitled to have a “sign language interpreter”; a spastic child needs a specialised teacher, and if necessary an assistant to move him between classrooms and to take him to the toilet, who should also clean him if he does not have good control of his sphincters and soils himself; a child with an intellectual handicap, e.g. Down’s syndrome or severe mental retardation, needs a specialised teacher and specific didactic material, e.g. to learn how to count or speak or even communicate also with non verbal means.

The law also states that free transportation to and from school should be provided [8] .

            “Didactic support” teachers take a two-year specific specialisation course and are paid by the school administration as well as the assistants for mobility and personal hygiene.

Specific didactic material is supplied mainly by the Municipalities (city of residence of the pupil) and partly by the school administration (computer with voice synthesis for the blind, with a keyboard and large keys for the spastics …) [9] .

            Moreover, the local authorities, for example, supply books transcribed in Braille for the blind, an educator to help the deaf with their homework, assistants for afternoon home assistance for the motory or intellectually disabled. The local authorities also supply assistants to take the disabled to school, to the rehabilitation centre, to the vocational training centre, to the diurnal centre where the severe disabled can carry out game activities, swimming pool activities, to a show ….

            The “agreements [10] (nowadays “programme agreements”) among the different public institutions govern the modalities in which these services are supplied).

 

ASSESSMENT OF PROGRESS

The students with handicaps are assessed by their respective Class councils according to the tailored educational plan drawn up by them.

Those that follow a syllabus according to ministerial syllabuses, even simplified and reduced, in infant school, primary school or middle school, obtain a legal assessment as all the other schoolmates [11] .

Nevertheless at the end of middle school, except in the most severe cases, a middle school diploma is normally issued.

 

SECONDARY SCHOOL

            Experiments on mixed educational projects of teaching, vocational training, and work experiences are being carried out in secondary schools, especially for students with intellectual disabilities  [12] . This is done on the basis of agreements among three realities; the school, centres of vocational training, and the labour world. The initiative is taken by the schools. In secondary schools, by virtue of Sentence no. 215/87 of the Constitutional Court, intellectually disable students follow “differentiated” syllabuses compared to the official syllabuses done by the other schoolmates, and are assessed on the basis of these differentiated syllabuses, which have some elements of similarity with the syllabuses of their schoolmates. Intellectually disabled pupils take the state exams with their syllabuses, do not achieve the legal qualification, but a “certificate” describing the activities they took part in and the results achieved. [13] They may use these documents to attend vocational training courses or to be included in the labour world.

            Those pupils that are not in a position to work because of the severity of their disability use these documents to attend day centres for game or free time activities (Act 104/92, article 8, sub-section 1, letter 1) so as not to lose the degree of psychological self-sufficiency and the learning matured during the period of inclusion at school.

 

 

COMPOSITION OF CLASSES

The classes must usually have only one disabled pupil, exceptionally two disabled pupils may be included in the same class, as long as the severity of their disability does not require the special attention of all the teachers. Classes must not have more than 20 pupils, as long as there is a project that describes the objectives to be reached with the disabled pupil and the didactic strategies they intend to reach. In any case there can never be more than 25 pupils per class [14] .

The disabled pupils take part in the activities of the entire class. Clearly this is easier in nursery schools and in the early years of elementary school. In middle and secondary schools, in the case of severe intellectual disability, the educational plan may provide for moments in which the pupil leaves the class and attends more suitable activities in other classes (for example musical activities, painting, physical training, visits to shops to learn the use of money).

            The tailored educational plan may also provide for certain periods of the day or of the week dedicated to activities between the disabled pupil and the specialised teacher or the individual teachers of the class. In the case of severe intellectual disabilities, it may also provide for the attendance of “workshops” with small groups of disabled and non-disabled schoolmates (for example ceramics workshops, music workshops…).

 

THE ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANISATION OF SCHOOL INCLUSION

In every school there should be a Work Group made up of teachers, operators of the socio-sanitary services of the territory, representatives of the parents of the school, and in secondary schools, also a few students (Act 104/92, article 15, sub-section 2). This Work Group is in charge of the modalities of entry of new disabled pupils in the school, of their passage between grades in the school, of their passage to vocational training, and if they achieve the legal final qualification, of their passage to university.

            In each province (administrative subdivision of the land of a region that includes a few tens of municipalities) there is a Provincial Interinstitutional Working Group (GLIP) at the Decentralised office of the Ministry of Education, that is made up of representatives (2 of the schools, 2 of the Local Authorities, 2 of the Local health units, and 3 of the associations of the disabled and their families) (Act 104/92 art. 15 sub-section 1). It is the task of this Working Group to facilitate the agreements, nowadays called “agreement platform” among the different administrations, the solution of conflicts, and the assessment of the progress of inclusion in the schools in the territory of the Province. On of the members of this Group must be a specialised teacher that leaves teaching and works full time at a decentralised office of the Ministry of Education providing counselling to the individual schools especially in didactics.

            Carrying into effect the provisions on the autonomy of the individual schools and the decentralisation of the Ministry of Education, these GLIPs will be replaced by analogous groups (named Territorial Centres for Integration) made up of networks of schools present in smaller territories coinciding with the socio-sanitary districts (maximum 60,000 inhabitants) [15] .

            In a few regions a regional Observatory has been established, made up of officials of the different administrations and offices of the Region, with the task of providing counselling to the regional offices that decide on budgets and the allocation of economic funds to the individual local authorities. It would be advisable to establish these bodies in all the regions, since the expense flows for social policies will be programmed in them, as a result of the increasing administrative and fiscal decentralisation of the central State to the regions and local authorities.

A national Observatory made up of experts from the university, school administrations, and other local authorities, of a Council of national associations of the disabled and their families has been established at the Ministry of Education. The job of the Observatory is to provide counselling to the Ministry of Education on bills or general administrative deeds on the world of education that may have direct or indirect consequences on inclusion in schools. The Observatory is chaired by the Under-secretary of State appointed by the Ministry of Education.

 

OUTLINE ON THE INCLUSION OF THE DISABLED AT WORK AND IN THE UNIVERSITY

The disabled have a right to compulsory placing at work, with public bodies and private enterprise, according to the disability percentage recognised by a special medical-legal board. Thus the disabled with a disability percentage between 46% and 66 % have such a right and are called to occupy posts according to their position on the classification list, when an office or enterprise in need of employees is obliged to request a certain number of disabled workers in proportion to the number of non-disabled workers employed in the firm.

            Act no. 68 establishing the percentage of obligation of employment at 7% was approved in 1999. It also introduced the principle of “targeted employment placing”, that is based on a project that should take into account the skills of the employed person . [16] In this way a real matching between labour demand and supply is achieved; and offices are established capable of helping enterprises find disabled workers suited to their needs and facilitating the vocational training of the disabled worker through a mixed training period with teaching and working stages. This as a continuation of the educational project of school inclusion. [17]

            As regards the University, Article 16 of Act 104/92 provides that disabled students with the legal qualifications may negotiate syllabuses and examination modalities with the professors.  According to Act 17/19 [18] every university should have a professor in charge of the reception of disabled students and there must be “tutors”, that is undergraduates further on in their studies, ready to help the disabled pupils overcome difficulties regarding the organisation and at times the syllabuses of university courses; the University should guarantee the elimination of architectural barriers and there should be assistants to further the mobility of students in wheelchairs.

According to data supplied by the Ministry of Education and of the University, the handicapped students attending Italian Universities in the 2001/02 academic year are 4,816. [19]

 

WHAT HAPPENS IN PRACTICE

This is seen from a report that the Ministry of Education and the Regions must present to Parliament. Moreover, a national Conference is held every three years to discuss the way in which the basic Law on the social integration of disabled persons, Act no. 104/, is implemented in Italy . The bodies that take part in this national conference are the Ministries involved, for example the Health Ministry, the Ministry for schools, the Labour Ministry, and the Regions, the representatives of the associations of the Local Authorities, the trade unions of Workers and of the world or enterprise, the associations of the disabled and their families, the most important federations of volunteer organisations and the co-operatives that manage services on behalf of the local authorities.

 

HOW MANY DISABLED PUPILS ARE INSERTED IN ORDINARY SCHOOLS

Next year the disabled pupils enrolled in the ordinary schools of every rank and order will be 136,503, that is about 2% of all the pupils. ISTAT (National Statistics Agency) Data supplied by the Ministry of Education. A little over 10,000 of these attend nursery schools; a little less than 40,000 attend primary schools; about 50,000 attend middle schools (10 to 14 years of age) and about 20,000 attend secondary schools (15 to 18 years).

The following is the composition within the group of disabled pupils: sight handicapped about 2%; hearing handicapped about 7%; physically handicapped about 15%; intellectually handicapped of different types about 76%.

            There are still some special schools for the blind and for the deaf in Italy , the former without any pupils, the latter with very few pupils. There are still some non-State schools for the deaf and for the intellectually handicapped. A few thousands of pupils still attend special schools, very few of these also sleep at the special institutes. [20]

The specialised teachers that flank their colleagues in school inclusion are about 50,000. The expected figure for the scholastic year 2002/03 is 56,954. [21]

To reach an acceptable ratio of 1 teacher for every 2 handicapped pupils, for a sufficient quality of school integration, about 11,000 more support teachers will have to be appointed.

This is possible by virtue of the Decree on personnel for the 2002/03 scholastic year, in particular art. 9 [22]

 

THE FUTURE OF SCHOOL INCLUSION

            Up to about 15 or 20 years ago, news about parents of non-disabled pupils that contested the inclusion of disabled pupils in classes was considered topical. Nowadays these episodes no longer occur and the exclusion of a disabled pupil form school is prohibited by law and considered a public scandal on newspapers.

            Parliament [23] , the Government [24] , and the magistracy [25] are increasingly involved to guarantee the best quality of school inclusion, through standards and sentences more and more aware of this problem, even though one may get the impression that it is considered solved and made obsolete by more recent problems, such as that of the admission of students from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe to ordinary schools. These students today number 140,000.

The associations of the disabled and their families as well as public opinion continuously supervise the situation, since attained achievements can be lost and one always tries to improve the quality level of inclusion. The autonomy of the single school institutions which has definitively been attained offers risks and opportunities:

RISKS, because the individual autonomous schools may behave as commercial enterprises, which tend to reduce costs (disabled pupils are expensive) and stimulate competition to be successful at school and in life.

OPPORTUNITIES, because inclusion requires the achievement of a culture of solidarity, that can prove little by little that disabled pupils are resources for their schoolmates, as they force the teachers to tailor their didactic action, and that the non-disabled schoolmates are a resource for the disabled as they help them to grow in independence and socialisation. All this happens if the teachers are capable of building significant and useful mutual communication relationships.

            The reform of school independence is based precisely on the tailoring of didactic projects and on the flexibility of the groups of pupils that can temporarily form mixed groups of pupils from different classes, according to the opportunities and the didactic and experimental needs.

            The experience of the past thirty years in Italy , though with many successes and a few failures, has been the strongest factor of innovation and change in Italian schools, which are very slow to change. It has also been a strong factor of social change, since the presence of disabled pupils, at times severe, in schools has slowly got their schoolmates accustomed to considering them a natural thing on the trains, planes, swimming-pools, shops, offices, and workplaces; in brief, in civil society as well as within the Italian Catholic church, which is the majority church in Italy, disabled persons receive the sacraments with non-disabled peers, participate in the recreational activities of church communities and begin to come out of the special institutions managed by priests and the religious and take part in the community life of the faithful even though at times with a few problems of comprehension.

            The process of school inclusion that has matured in Italy is not perfect and is not free from criticism: a serious approach to the contents of university specialisation courses for didactic support teachers is needed. All non-specialised teachers need to be more specialised, the local authorities need a greater financial and professional commitment; we need greater collaboration among the public institutions and between these and the realities of civil society, such as volunteer organisations, co-operatives, foundations, and associations. I believe that in Italy we have by now abandoned the “ideological” phase of inclusion; we have adopted the choice of professionally achieved inclusion; but this choice still needs to be studied more in detail and especially it needs to be quality checked. Four years ago we started a critical analysis on quality check that should lead us to face the errors we committed to overcome these years. The more complex and global the society, the greater the need for a confrontation with other experiences, even of a different nature, in order to bring up again for discussion the modes of implementation of our choices and to analyse the reasons in greater depth.

Today’s meeting offers an opportunity to reflect on what has been done and what we are still doing in order to profit by the remarks of others.

 

Roma, 14^th June 2002