IDENTIFICATION OF SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION

In public psychological-pedagogical advice centres there are teams of experts who issue opinions on:

1. existing needs for special education including directing children to remedial classes for severely mentally disabled pupils
2. existing need of individual teaching for children who are not able to come to school on a regular basis due to their health problems

These teams recommend the form of special education to be provided - in mainstream schools, inclusive schools or classes, in special schools or classes in special educational centres.
Assistance for children with special educational needs in Poland comprises guidance and counselling, outpatient’s services, care and assistance in school, education and care in special schools and kindergartens. Guidance and counselling services are provided by Guidance and Counselling Centres (Psychological and Educational Services Centres). Their tasks include the following:

1. recognising the state of psychological and physical development of children and young people aged 3 to 18 (and over), and registering deviant children living in their area;
2. medical diagnosing (physical development and its impairments), psychological diagnosing (intellectual development, psychometrics, functions of analysers, personality), educational diagnosing (advancement in learning, the scope of deficiencies) and social diagnosing (situation and living conditions in the family);
3. delivering opinions concerning the form of educational and remedial or correctional and compensatory assistance for children with various deviations and disorders as well as directing disabled children to special schools and establishments or other special education institutions;
4. carrying out medical examinations for children and young people who attend special schools and nursery schools in order to reconsider, if necessary, the possibility of sending some of them back to their original mainstream schools (correcting first diagnoses);
5. undertaking preventive treatment activities, these including guidance for teachers and parents, measures designed to influence the environment;
6. organisation of therapeutic centres.

All persons receive assistance from Guidance and Counselling Centres free of charge and on a voluntary basis.

Results of psychological, pedagogical and medical examination, carried out by specialists attached to a given centre or external experts, serve as the basis for an opinion qualifying children and young people for suitable forms of special education (including individual teaching arrangements). Such opinions are delivered by a special commission composed of the director or deputy director of a centre as its chairman, a psychologist, a teacher, a specialised medical adviser as well as other persons if required. These commissions also qualify socially maladjusted children and young people or those with drug addiction for correctional education establishments, and those who are entirely or partially deprived of parental care for care-and-education establishments.

The principles and procedures for qualifying disabled children and young people for special education and on the rules for directing children to suitable schools and establishments are defined in the Regulation of the Minister of Education of 12 February 2001.

The other relevant regulations are as follows:
1. Regulation of the Minister of National Education and Sport of 7 January 2003 on principles of providing and organising psychological and educational assistance to pupils in public pre-schools, schools and units;
2. Regulation of the Minister of National Education and Sport of 11 December 2002 on the detailed organisation and operational rules for public psychological and educational guidance centres and other public specialist services and on the framework statutes for these centres;
3. Regulation of the Minister of National Education and Sport of 11 December 2002 on the framework statutes for public psychological and educational guidance centres and other public specialist centres;
4. Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 12 February 2001 on the recognition of needs to follow special education or individual teaching of children and youths and on detailed rules on directing pupils to special education or individual teaching (amended on the 29 January 2003).

In 2003/04 there were 573 public psychological and educational guidance centres (including 30 specialist guidance centres).

In 2005 the Ministry of Education started a new pilot project “Early, multi-expert, complex, co-ordinated and continuous help for the child with disability and its family. For more information see www.mein.gov.pl/menis_en/education/pilot-project.pdf