International Conference on Inclusive Education in the context of E.F.A.

Chisinau, Republic of Moldavia May12-15;2003

Inclusive education in France in the context of recent evolutions

Denis Poizat

Université Lumière Lyon 2

The actual international trend to install a real inclusive education in the poorest countries as in the OCDE ones is the occasion to have a comparative approach in terms of efficiency, planning, legislationand, more generally, in the principles of inclusive education. In France, the objectives of what has been called integration for years is currently being transformed in an inclusive education strategy. The aim of this paper is to describe in a simple synthetic approach the principal points of actual french evolution educational system in the square of inclusive education.

The general approach of public and private formal education system (more or less 10% private schooling from pre-elementary to secondary second grade) is to fulfil the goals of integration/inclusion of children and adolescents in mainstream schools. Recent laws and legal directions (1975, 1989, 1999, 2002,2003) are putting the importance of national and European convergence in this field.

European institutions and French education policy’s relations are organised in the square of subsidiarity. The potential co-operation with European institutions is, for the moment, underemployed, in comparison with some different approaches in others educational fields (mobility, ECTS…)

First point : the discuss about inclusion / integration is not a central point in the French context. The official surveys, reports and analysis (Education Ministry) do not use inclusion as an official denomination. The influence of international vocabulary (inclusion) is more observable in lobbying of families, association members than in public policies. In other hand, it is difficult to ignore the Italian, English, Swedish influences in the concrete experiences more than in terminology or concepts.

I will use indifferently integration and inclusion even if structural differences can be noticed in scientific international terminology(International education classification ISCED-CITE 97).

A very general observation is the following : the education hole system is concerned by integration, from pre-elementary to university. It is easy to observe that inclusion is more important in the lowest grades than at the university level. The actual effort consists in an important and dynamic policy in the highest levels of formal system, as in professional integration of young people with disabilities.

Places

The way to integrate children or adolescents in disability situation can be individual (in mainstream schools, with non-disabled children) or collective (still in mainstream schools but in “special classes”). In the French system, the frontier between individual and collective integration is sometimes difficult to indicate.

On primary level, children with disabilities can be schooled in ordinary classes with / without any special pedagogical accompaniment. Some of them can use for short times the help of open adaptation classes for specific education needs.

The collective integration (CLIS) is a special class in a mainstream school. The actual discuss is about this collective approach, its efficiency and the necessity or not to conserve this kind of integration.

On secondary level

Adolescents can be schooled in ordinary classes as well as professional an general adapted sections (SEGPA). These sections school every kind of children, with disability or not.

Collective integration is organised through Integration Pedagogical units, created in the last decade for the first grade of secondary level.

Some special structures for specific disabilities still exist. Some parents insist to school their children in such structures.

Between the three different ways, the most problematic one is the SEGPA, its situation is not clear, it appears as a segregate solution, even if it should be an integrative one.

General description and trends

  1. First observation : most of children who are currently integrated in mainstream schools are in collective structures. The challenge is to overview solutions to augment individual integration cases.
  2. Second observation : during the 1990-1999 period, the augmentation of integration (individual and collective) is important : 46% and in the same time, we observed on a national scale a diminution of age-scholar population.
  3. Third observation : the augmentation between the decade 1990-1999 of inclusion on secondary level (firs and second grade) has been important : 38%, we observe in the same period a diminution of age-scholar population.
  4. Forth observation : special structures with pedagogical and medical assistance are still over-peopled in comparison of the objectives of a full integration in mainstream schools. For medical structures, the problem is different (depends on medical necessity).

Scholarship without school

Some families have an important scholar paper and need pedagogical assistance, with special pedagogical accompaniment at home, some teachers are also connected with medical structures. The national centre for distance education provides helpful assistance, e-learning and e-training with medical structures and home education.

Human resources

Mobile teachers have been trained to assist parents and provide education accompaniment in medical structures.

For primary level, teachers have to succeed to a one more year training, to be “specialised teachers”, focussed on different types of disability. The challenge is to make the training obligatory for all the teachers in initial training as well than on the job training. A new way of working has been to organise pedagogical assistance between teachers, parents, children, psychologists and health professionals through a institutionalised networking.

History

Before 1900, pioneers Braille, Bourneville, Seguin…have given to the french education system an integrative stimulation.

After 1900 : three movements

  1. Separate education with measurement, categorization, scientific optic, classification, technical approach for separate education, testing period)
  2. Integrative gestation (discussion about measurement and scientific validity, struggle against inefficient segregative approach)
  3. 1975 : integrative intention : disability is an official term, one point to notice : recognition of interactive interaction between disabled and non disabled people, pedagogical optic. In numerous countries, the seventies have been a laboratory of inclusive experiences (Warnock Report, 1977 Law in Italia, Non-discriminative laws in USA/ADA )

Perspectives

The job is not achieved, the objective to put integration or inclusion in act requires the following conditions

  1. the legal impossibility to categorise people from an ethic and scientific point of view. The different categories (national one more often) are inefficient to describe the children, they make a stigmatisation effect.
  2. The official recognition of positive effect of melting
  3. The obligatory character of training for new teachers in different modalities
  4. The link between education reform and global society approach for disability

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