DEVELOPMENT OF INTEGRATION/INCLUSION

The reforms of school administration in the 1990s with decentralisation of decision-making to the municipalities have decreased the number of special schools, while special classes have been founded in mainstream schools. The state maintains eight special schools providing comprehensive school education. These schools are primarily intended for pupils with hearing or visual impairments or with a physical or other impairment.

The state-owned special schools are national development and service centres, which provide expert services for municipal and other schools and temporary education and rehabilitation for pupils of compulsory school age studying at other schools, in order to support their studies. The schools may also provide rehabilitation for disabled people under compulsory school age and those who have completed comprehensive school. The tasks of state-owned special schools are to develop basic education and the related rehabilitation, curricula, teaching and rehabilitation methods, teaching aids and learning materials; to provide guidance and information services for pupils at other schools, their parents or other guardians, teachers and other staff; to steer the preparation of education and rehabilitation plans; and to promote the transition of pupils into further study, working life and society.

It is the duty of the municipality and the individual school to include pupils with SEN in the mainstream educational system. The first alternative for providing special needs education is to include pupils with SEN in mainstream classes and, when necessary, provide special needs education in small teaching groups. Only when this is not feasible is the second alternative considered: the provision of special needs education in a special group, class or school.

Inclusion has developed in Finland as follows:

1. Separate curricula of special education have been abolished and all pupils use the same curriculum individualised by individual education plan. In the curricula the concept ‘Need for special support’ will be used when referring to special education.
2. The pupil welfare-services are to be included in the curriculum and municipalities and schools will be obliged to include the services they offer in the curriculum.
3. Development of inclusion and production of models regarding municipality, school and pupil-level planning, organisation and implementation of inclusive special needs education in co-operation with various interest groups.
4. The statistics on provision, resources and costs of special needs education will be elaborated upon in order to obtain a continuous view on the state of special needs education nationwide, as well as to acquire comparative data on the effects of regional and municipal differences.
5. Several projects are developing the virtual school for the needs of special education according to the national strategy. The actors of these projects represent private and public sector, state, municipalities, universities and research centres, both in the humanities and technical areas.
6. There are several projects for preventing exclusion of pupils by developing productive learning models and models to teach and support pupils with mental illnesses.

The fourth period of education (see 1.1) started with the 1995 evaluation of the status of special education, which formed the basis for two projects dealing with qualitative development of special education running from 1997 to 2001 and from 2002 to 2004. The national project for 2002–2004 to develop the quality of special education integrated the operating systems of education in mainstream and special education and in vocational education and training. Its purpose was to reform the operating cultures and joint guidance of education and instruction as well as support services (health care and social administration, day care and youth services) by supporting the integration of the service systems on regional and municipal levels. The activities were based on continuous co-operation, evaluation and steering across administrative boundaries, which took the roles, tasks and operating models of different experts into account. This also involved ensuring that instruction and support services were organised in accordance with pupils’ age level and abilities and so as to promote the healthy growth and development of pupils. Pupil welfare services was to be organised in co-operation with the authorities responsible for implementation of social and health care services.