DEVELOPMENT OF INTEGRATION/INCLUSION

Actions supporting the school integration of disabled students undertaken by the Ministry of Education are reinforced by the law of February 11, 2005 on the equality of rights and opportunities, participation and citizenship of disabled persons. The law states disabled students' rights to education as well as the responsibility of the educational system in guaranteeing the continuity of the individual's schooling and training route. This law has been enforced since January 1, 2006. It creates the obligation to:

- Ensure that the student has access to schooling in an ordinary educational environment close to home whenever possible
- Closely associate parents in the orientation decisions concerning their child and in all phases of the definition of his personal schooling project (PPS)
- Guarantee the continuity of the educational route, adapted to the student's capacities and needs
- Guarantee the equality of opportunities for disabled and ordinary candidates by providing a legal framework for appropriate adaptation of exam conditions

In the future, the student's schooling route will therefore mainly take place within an ordinary educational environment. The modalities of his schooling route are defined in his PPS. Since the begin of the 2006 school year, all disabled students are forthwith assigned a reference teacher, who will monitor the student throughout his time in the educational system.
Although some difficulties persist, namely in the form of budgetary constraints and training of all actors involved (teachers, management personnel, school personnel), school attendance of disabled students has progressed significantly. Thus, the number of disabled students in the public education system has increased by more than 12 % compared to 2004. At the beginning of the 2006 school year, 200 additional integrated learning units (UPI) were created in secondary and high schools. The implementation of the UPI was planned in such manner as to eliminate all geographical access problems, taking into account reasonable transportation constraints. During the 2006 school year, there were 6078 active school carers (AVS) in the school system and 4640 of these worked on an individual basis with over 13,500 students.