Pupils with a stated special educational need in the compulsory education (6 to 15 years old) account for the 2,1% of the school population.
All pupils with special educational needs attend mainstream schools with a support teacher assigned to the class where they are integrated. In spite of the repeal of special schools, there still remain some special schools for those children with a profound mental retardation.

Transition
The present government is currently working on the reform of the school cycles, in order to ensure that most of the young people have access to educational opportunities when they leave the compulsory school at 15. One of the new initiatives is the possibility to approach the vocational training-area in which the greater part of young people with special educational needs meet when they are 15.

Regional SEN Projects
From the current year onwards, the Ministry of Education will lose a part of its government functions concerning school. The regional administrations will be given such functions, which will bring much more autonomy to the individual schools.

At the moment there are a lot of SEN projects financed by the regions (Marche, Emilia-Romagna, Toscana, Lombardia etc.) The main problem now is the lack of national co-ordination; the solution that has been proposed is to create Regional Observatories to be co-ordinated with the National Observatory.

Each region is endowed with Social Services - engaged in helping people with special educational needs - and with a Training and Work Service that co-ordinate the regional technical schools.

The Marche Region: an Example of Transition Planning
A research group financed by the Social Services of the Marche Region is working on carrying out a database centre, whose main function is collection of information and returning it back to schools, families and companies. The main aim is to promote inclusion as a value and to make known those practices, which would allow all the children and young people to participate in the school programme and social life of their mainstream local school. That is why the group considers encouraging the debate and raising of awareness to be a priority.

A sub-group of the above-mentioned regional group looks at the process of transition planning in a specific way. It comprises representatives from three services (social services, training and work service, informatics service), from a non-profit-making organisation and from the Physics Department of the Urbino University.
Here are the aims that this group is trying to attain:

- To experiment pre-professional training plans for people with SEN,
- To train the teaching staff working in the vocational training to use computer technology,
- To share the current practice based on the computer technology,
- To extend the transition project to all the region,
- To support new developments.

We are endeavouring to create a regional co-ordination helping the development of educational opportunities projects..