Priority to educating of handicapped

Press, 5 September 1983, Page 24

Priority to educating of handicapped

PA Hastings The education of handicapped children and those with learning difficulties would have priority over the reduction of teacherpupil ratios in the future, the Minister of Education, Mr Wellington, has said in Hastings. In an address to the New Zealand Intermediate Schools Principals’ Association conference, Mr Wellington said that as resources became available he would not look at reducing the teacher-pupil ratio.

Neither would he increase the number of teachers in schools with spare accommodation. Instead, the first preference would be to “improve the education of those children who, whether because of handicaps or learning difficulties, are at risk of failure.”

These improvements would be selective rather than broad-based. Mr Wellington quoted from the recently completed O.E.C.D. report to back up this policy.

“Some increase in resources in primary schools may be warranted but these should be directed selectively rather than spread thinly in the form of across-the-board improvements in class sizes or reduced teaching hours.”

A world-wide trend to integrate children with special needs into regular schools, he said, was reflected in New Zealand policies, especially in the last five years.

“The availability of free, appropriate State education for all handicapped children is becoming an ever-widen-ing reality as the number of handicapped children being served continues to grow,” he said.

He listed several factors contributing to the mainstreaming trend. Research showed that mildly retarded children did not gain more academically if placed in a special class than if placed in a regular school, he said.

The consequences on children of placing them in segregated classes were often “detrimental to their general well-being.”

In Britain and the United States the policy was to place children in the “least restrictive environment"

He said this was a regular class or one as near normal as possible that catered for the child’s special needs while the education of children already in the environment remained satisfactory.

Practice in New Zealand was developing along the same lines, he said.