Each child is allowed to attend a mainstream school

An article on the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream schools was published on Spiegel Online. Here is an excerpt of the article:

Hitherto, children with a disability ...

To date, children with a disability have been sorted away at special schools - even against the will of their parents. This is to change in the next years. In an interview, international law expert Eibe Riedel explains how parents can already now get involved for a place at a regular school.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Professor Riedel, Germany violates international law when children are sent to special or special schools?

Riedel: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Disabled assumes an inclusive education system, which in principle does not exclude anyone, but is open to all children, regardless of the form and degree of impairment. The children should therefore not be taught at special schools, but at regular schools together with non-disabled children. Germany acceded to the Convention a year ago and is accordingly obliged to implement the provisions at national level. Since most of the questions are the responsibility of the federal states, the federal states are called upon to do so.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do the federal states have to do?

Riedel: The school laws of the countrys are to be changed or reinterpreted: Every child must first have automatic access to a regular school. Against the will of the parents, children may only be sent to a special or special school if there is no other way.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: However, most of the federal states have not yet done much. What can parents do as long as the laws are not changed - only hope and wait?...

reader comment per school

My son goes with enthusiasm to the G-School and is supported there within the scope of his possibilities. He, Down Syndrome, has a personal limit like any other person. More just doesn't fit in. Pupils of the same age at a secondary school are now probably already calculating equations with 2 unknowns. He already fails at the adition of 2+4. What should he, in the opinion of the good people, please do in math lessons? Ultimately, the ordered inclusion is about saving and not about people. In any case, my son would be endangered without the protected environment. At his school he has a sense of achievement that would be utopian at a regular school. He learns practical things that do not occur at regular school at all. He is just different from the normalos, I have no problem with that. I have a problem when some people think that he could be led to a school-leaving certificate, just like others. He has contact with non-disabled children at school and especially in his free time. He is neither locked away nor isolated, but happy. And I will not let a school combine, let alone a state decree, ruin that for me. Including physically handicapped children makes a lot of sense to me. Children who need a protected environment without pressure to perform do not belong to the mainstream school.

You can find the whole article here: www.spiegel.de.

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

Nach oben