Norway
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General Information:
All pupils have a right to receive such adapted education within the framework of the ordinary school. This was one of the objectives behind Reform 94, which ensures the rights to upper secondary education for all, and Reform 97, which extends compulsory education to 10 years with start of school at age six, instead of seven as before.
A fundamental objective of the education policy, and a challenge to the whole education system, is to create a better school for all. In this perspective it is important to make sure that children, adolescents and adults with special needs receive an appropriate and meaningful education, including individually adapted teaching, preferably in their home community. The main principle is that pupils with special needs should, whenever possible, be integrated in mainstream schools.
The Core Curriculum states that:
The school shall have room for everybody, and teachers must therefore have an eye for each individual learner. The mode of teaching should not only be adapted to subject and content, but also to age and maturity, the individual learner and the mixed abilities of the entire class. The pedagogical design must be pliable enough to permit the teacher to meet the pupils' differences in ability and rhythm of development with kindness and ease.
If the needs of a child exceed the normal resources of a school, extra resources can be allocated on an individual basis. The municipal educational-psycho logical service is responsible for the diagnostic work of assessing the individual need for special education. The educational-psycho logical service also has to make a recommendation regarding the individual educational programme. The local school authorities will then decide on how the education programme is going to be implemented.
Children, adolescents and adults with special educational needs belong to very different groups. In addition, major differences are found internally within the groups. Thus the need for special arrangements will vary. Kindergartens and schools cannot be expected to possess the necessary competence to cope with all kinds of disabilities. Some of the disorders are rare (low-incidence groups), and only few kindergartens and schools meet children and adolescents with these disorders (visual impairment, hearing impairment, explicit diagnoses associated with a specific syndrome, etc.). At the local level, help and expertise will be needed from outside, that can provide advice and guidance to users, parents and teaching staff. The national resource centres for special education will have an important function in connection with such disabilities.
The problems kindergartens and schools experience most often in their everyday activity are connected with social and emotional disorders, complex learning difficulties and reading and writing difficulties. These high-incidence groups present challenges that are so commonplace as to make it essential to have competence and support functions available in or close to the each kindergarten or school.
The help to these groups should come mainly from local services which can provide continual guidance, help and support.
An important challenge in the future is to realize the principle of suitably adapted education in practice. The education provided must be as varied and flexible as possible as regards content, organization and method. During the everyday work it is important to achieve a balance between general educational approaches and measures of special education.
The provision of suitable education is a fundamental responsibility of each kindergarten, each school and each programme of adult education. It implies developing an inclusive and secure learning and developmental environment in the widest sense of these terms.
On the basis of an overall evaluation of current status and challenges, the Ministry recommends that the system of special education and support be re-organised. The objective is to raise the level of competence to take action in the school, the kindergarten and other forms of education in order to achieve a good and stimulating learning environment. The re-organisation will take place primarily by transferring resources and expertise from the national resource centres for special education to the local Educational-Psycho logical Service, which is the closest source of support for special education in the local community.
Although the official policy has been integration for more than 20 years, Norway had 40 national schools for special education until 1992. In 1989-90, these schools had 1,500 pupils. As from 1991 a reorganisation of special education took place. The government schools were re-organised. 20 of the former national special schools have changed into resource centres. The resource centres also offer their services to children below school-age and to adults.
The national resource centres in special education shall, among other things, help to make sure that the institutions responsible for education, the municipalities and the county municipalities, receive advice and support in order to assure the quality of the education provided. They shall, in addition, develop special educational expertise for groups of students with serious and special needs through investigations, diagnosis, advice and development work.
Revised regulations have recently been introduced regarding compulsory education for the deaf and hard of hearing with the aim of making deaf children functionally bilingual. These regulations state that deaf children using sign language as their first language have a right to be taught sign language as well as to be taught in sign language during their compulsory education. Deaf children under school age needing special educational assistance shall be offered teaching in sign language. They will receive instruction in sign language as first language and Norwegian as second language. Together, these two subjects will give them the language competence corresponding to that achieved by pupils with normal hearing in the course of their compulsory education.