Many barriers prevent schools from being ready to educate children with diverse needs

One of the reasons behind tracking a large proportion of learners with special educational needs (SEN) into special needs education tracks could be that school management and teachers in mainstream schools perceive themselves to be insufficiently prepared to educate these children. This was confirmed in the Learning Makes Sense survey regarding learners with physical disabilities, especially by respondents from kindergartens. Less than a quarter of them considered their own school ready to educate these children. The ability of schools to address the diversity of learners is influenced by many problems they face in the education process. They relate to insufficient organisation, finance, personnel and space. The biggest challenge according to respondents from mainstream schools is the diversity of children's needs as such, coupled with a high number of students per class, thereby inhibiting a customised approach from teachers. Although classroom size in Slovakia is similar relative to other EU or OECD countries, Slovakia has a higher average proportion of pupils per teacher at pre-primary and primary education levels. Moreover, there is often no teaching assistant to compensate for this state. Almost half of respondents from kindergartens and primary schools perceive the lack of teaching assistants to be a problem. Schools also lack other professional staff (school psychologists, SEN teachers, etc.). This is related to teachers receiving insufficient methodological support in educating SEN designated children, perceived as a problem by a fifth of respondents. This kind of support is important because teachers are not sufficiently prepared to teach children with diverse needs. Such support is needed both in pre-service and in-service teacher training. However, the Learning Makes Sense findings indicate that even at special needs schools, conditions for educating children with various needs are not optimal. Respondents from special needs schools claim there is a significant lack of funds and staff in this education segment (teaching assistants, professional staff, other support service staff). Also, Learning Makes Sense survey respondents claim that many schools lack sufficient support for educating SEN designated children from advisory and prevention centres. As many as a quarter of teachers at mainstream schools and a majority of teaching assistants responded in the survey that they do not get any external professional and methodological support at all. Across Slovakia, respondents expressed widely varying experiences with the form and quality of support provided by advisory and prevention centres. This could be caused by the lack of quality standards for services provided by centres, and inadequate methodological advice received by the centres themselves.

Analysis of the qualitative and quantitative Learning Makes Sense data is examined in more detail in the following sections:

Preparedness of schools to address the diversity of children's needs

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Challenges at mainstream schools

Mainstream schools face many problems related to the education of SEN designated children

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Challenges at special needs schools

Special needs schools do not have optimal conditions to support the education of SEN designated children

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Insufficient external support to schools

External support to schools related to education of children with diverse needs is insufficient

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Conclusions

Although the Learning Makes Sense survey data reflect mostly the views of school staff on how their own school is ready to educate children with diverse needs and what other problems they experience in this process, they also indicate the presence of systemic barriers on the part of the state education policies. These relate mostly to insufficient (or inadequately defined) financing, understaffed support services (e.g. teaching assistants or professional staff), inadequate equipment and spaces, and also weak professional and methodological support provided to teachers and schools. When conditions for educating children with special educational needs are inadequate, it eventually impacts negatively on the quality of education provided to these children, and furthermore, it significantly worsens the education process for all children at schools.