Challenges and Demands for Inclusive Education for Students with Disabilities in National Education

Since the 2005 law, the number of students with disabilities enrolled in National Education has tripled. For SUD education, the education of students with disabilities in ordinary schools is an essential issue to guarantee real education and a future for these students. Too often the social segregation from which people with disabilities suffer begins in childhood with exclusion from school.

However, National Education is not capable of implementing the means necessary for inclusive schools. AESH staff are underpaid, precarious by part-time contracts and insufficiently trained by the institution. The employer’s lack of consideration for these staff highlights the contempt towards precarious staff and the world of disability.

Likewise, the increase in the number of students per class, the lack of staff training, the shortage of medico-social staff and the lack of public health services are the cause of mistreatment of students with disabilities and of the staff who welcome them. Abandoned by the institution, many staff come to reject the very idea of ​​an inclusive school.

The announcements of the 6th National Disability Conference particularly worry us because they persist in the logic of excessive pooling of support resources which has nevertheless shown that it does not work. Once again the government and the Ministry of National Education decide without hearing the staff who nevertheless raise daily alarms about the lack of resources and support. The government and the Ministry of National Education are building a “showcase inclusion” with disregard for staff and especially students.

Within SUD education, the tripartition between ordinary classes, specialized classes and specialized institutions is a matter of debate: will it be possible to give the school the means to educate all the students as long as there are specialized establishments? How can we welcome students who need medical support to school? Are students more mistreated in a school that does not implement the means for their success or in establishments with unequal resources and which separate them from the rest of society? How can we think about the specialized systems that already exist in schools and medical-educational structures such as Sessads which can intervene in schools?

To answer these questions, on the one hand, SUD education dialogues with groups and associations of disabled people in order to start from their point of view and their experiences and, on the other hand, SUD education believes that it is necessary to win over ways to accommodate students with disabilities who are educated in ordinary settings in good conditions.

Let’s reverse the balance of power, let’s not place the deficiencies of the institution on students with disabilities.

SUD education calls on all staff to defend inclusive schools and to mobilize to gain the necessary means to guarantee a real right to schooling and a real right to medico-social support for all students regardless disability or academic or social difficulties!

SUD education claims:

• respect for the right to education for all students;
• a real status for AESH;
• the drop in the number of students per class and even more so in classes where students with disabilities are educated;
• the recruitment of medico-social staff in schools and educational establishments;
• training of all staff on service time.