Special Education

School for Children with Special Needs to Rise in Leicestershire

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Another school set to provide special education to children with special needs will rise in Leicestershire, BBC News reported on 4 November 2012. The turf cutting ceremony for the new school was held on 5 November 2012.

Construction work on the school is set to commence this month. The construction cost of the school is pegged at £9.3 million, but the benefits it could bring to children with special needs are priceless. The school will rise on the Charnwood College campus in Loughborough, replacing Ashmount School. It will share a campus with Garendon High School and Burleigh Community College.

According to the Leicestershire County Council, the school will feature improved facilities like a hydrotherapy pool, physio room and conference and training room – aimed at providing special education to children with special needs. The school will also feature a sensory suite and a therapy suite. Set to commence operations in late 2014, the school will offer places for 125 children and young people aged four to 19.

Official remarked that the location of the new school is advantageous. Sharing a campus with Burleigh Community College opened up opportunities for the two schools to collaborate and share sporting and other facilities.

Ashmount head teacher Dave Thomas disclosed that the new school has been on hold for a long time, but the commencement of its construction now “all seems real.” Thomas remarked that the new school will provide outstanding provision and accommodation to more children with special needs in the area.

"We are determined to make this school a dream come true for children with special needs and their families," Thomas told BBC News.

Hopefully, more schools intended for children with special needs would be built around the country. This way, special education could become more accessible to more children with special needs.

Special Children’s Right to Education

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Special education refers to the formal learning process designed for children with special educational needs. The educational sector has long realised the rights of children with special educational needs to education. Just because these children have learning difficulties or disabilities, it does mean that they should be deprived of their right to education. The right to education is considered as a universal right, which means all, including children with special educational needs should be afforded with access to free education, wherever they are.

In England, it is said that around 21 percent of children, around 1.7 million young individuals, have special educational needs. This means, these young people should be afforded with free education, albeit special education. Students with learning difficulties or disabilities typically require different or more instructional methods and learning programs. Even though teaching these children could prove to be quite a challenge, it should not be considered as a big burden. These children, while having learning difficulties or disabilities due to physical, sensory, communications, emotional and behavioural elements, still have the right to be afforded with free education.

Several governments have already made significant steps in meeting special education needs of children with learning difficulties and disabilities. In England, for instance, all state schools are compelled by law to make that special help is provided for children with special educational needs. School are required to draft an assessment of the need and an action plan, which will be then be implemented. In severe cases, a statement of special educational needs is made.

While many governments already have placed systems to pursue the right of children with special educational needs to education, there are still some who miserably fail to do so. They should always remember that every person on earth has rights to be respected and pursued.

How Schools Provide Special Education

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When a child is having a harder time dealing with school activities, communicating with other children and people or behaving like he is expected to, he is most likely in need of special attention from professionals and experts. These children with special needs, like any other young individuals, have the right to undertake modern education. However, because of their special difference, these children with special needs have to immersed into formal learning through a special way – special education. But how can schools provide such education to children with special needs?

Special education usually involves systematic planning and monitoring of teaching procedures, equipment and facilities. This process usually diverts from standard teaching methods, so as to help children with special needs gain knowledge and skills that would allow them to become achieve success personally and academically.

Schools providing education for children with special needs usually use one of the four teaching approaches.

1. The inclusion approach entails having children with special needs spend at least half of their academic time with other students who do not have special needs. Students with special needs may attend more intensive instructional sessions.

2. The mainstreaming approach entail having children with special needs attend classes with student without special needs during specific time periods based on their skills. On other period, students with special needs are placed in separate classes.

3. The segregation approach involves having students with special needs attend classes designed exclusively for them. They do not spend time with children without special needs.

4. The exclusion approach involves having children with special needs excluded from school. They may receive one-on-one instruction or group instruction.
With these approaches, schools providing special education could give children with special needs a good opportunity to gain knowledge and skills that fit their mental and physical capacities.

Special Education: Structures & Elements

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General education was designed to be accessible to everyone; well, almost. While subjects beg to be differed in priority and favourites, students too differ in needs. While the typical general education student is fully equipped with all the learning faculties necessary, some have a few lacking in their learning armours. Where do these learners go? Yep, you got it; to the rescue of special education.

This type of education has at least two utilized structures. The first structure is the inclusive education institution. As the structure name suggests, students in these institution are only limited to learners having special needs. The approach of such structure is entirely focused to these types of learners.

The second structure is the support structure of which learners with special needs are enrolled in a general education-institution. The support structure becomes an integrated part in the general education’s system. This approach encourages special learners to associate with other learners and vice versa.

Aside from structure, special education has two main elements:

Special needs are needs that distinguish special learners from other learners. These needs are met in the aforementioned structures and may come in the form of learning-challenges, physically disabled, and behavioural, emotional, or developmental disorders.
Additional supports are the answer to the learners’ special needs. It usually consists of student monitoring, learning intervention, and correcting erroneous belief. In specific, supports and teaching approach depend on a learner’s special needs and is deemed challenging in a general education environment.

Special education obviously offers a safer haven for learners having special needs. However, this institution cannot forever cater to their needs as reality is uncertain and life, in general, is unfathomable. Thus, apart from providing the best of education, these supporting institutions also works on preparing the students to sustainably yearn learning and living.

Giving education to children with special needs

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All around the world, there are children and young individuals who cannot seem to interact well with other people. These children with special needs usually have learning and communication challenges. They may also have physical disabilities and developmental disorders. Because of these challenges, many of these children and youths with special needs are not able to experience formal education. Their mental, emotional and physical handicaps are interfering with their abilities to learning on the same pace as average individuals. However, these children still have the right and the need to access quality education. Because of that need, special education was developed.

Special education is a distinct type of learning process through which students with special needs receive skills and knowledge considering their needs and differences. This type of education does not adhere to a single approach of teaching, but rather uses different approaches that would greatly address the educational needs of special children. This learning process usually entails individual-based teaching procedures, tools and materials as well as educational equipment. This type of school provides a learning set-up that has been proven to be more effective in teaching special students than in typical classroom set-up.

Identifying children with special needs could be tricky at first, since parents are usually the first to deny the fact that their children require special attention. Most children are detected as candidates for special needs based from their medical history. Some children are detected to need special education after a brief academic period in which they were observed as having learning difficulties.

Despite the fact that students with special needs are receiving a type of education that suits them, it is still the society’s main duty to accept them and learn how to work with them. Their special circumstance is not a reason to discriminate them.

The Difference between General and Special Education

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There are students who need more special attention than the typical ones. Some people call them as less-intelligent or even abnormal students. That may be how some people rudely call them, but it is better to describe them as special students. These special students might not be like the normal ones – mainly because they have special needs. They might be having difficulties or challenges with learning or they might be having a hard time with communication. Some special students might have behavioral or emotional disorders while others might have physical disabilities that prevent them from learning the same way and pace like typical understudies. Because of these special needs, it is necessary to create a certain category of education that would cater to these types of individuals – special education. So, how does special education from differ from the more common and widely used general education?

Special education uses quite a different approach from the general education, although some areas overlap. General education involves presenting the standard curriculum set by education authorities using standard teaching methods. General education involves the typical classroom setting, wherein teachers address the needs of the class as whole. Teachers in general education implements procedures and teaching methods regardless of the differences between the students.

Special education, meanwhile, is the opposite of general education. Special education uses a certain special curriculum which caters to a certain special student type. For example, the procedures and teaching methods used to attend to one special student are different from methodology implemented on another student. The focus of special education is to address the students’ individual needs and differences. To do that, it may require various teaching methods, learning materials and support equipment. Thus, instead of using the typical classroom set up, special education teachers use the resource room set up.

Identifying children needing special education

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Providing education to children with special needs is a challenging matter. Special children usually have learning, communication or physical challenges, as well developmental and behavioural disorders. Their condition may be congenital or due to events after birth. In a typical classroom setting, there may not be enough methods, procedures and materials to cater to the educational needs of a special child.

To further the educational necessity of special children, governments have outlined their own special education program. Enrolled special children are identified based from their medical history. Doctors have devised medical methods to determine a child's capacity early in their lives. Doctor may be able to detect special cases through genetics and observation.

However, there are children whose special needs are detected only when they subjected to academic exposure. Psychologists have also devised methods to detect whether a child needs special attention. Two of the methods used to identify a special child are the discrepancy and response to intervention models. Under the discrepancy model, a child may require special education if his

academic performance is below his expected intelligence. Under the response to intervention model, meanwhile, a child detected with a learning difficulty on the first two years of his academic life is not treated as special right away. He undergoes an intervention program designed to get rid of the learning difficulty. If a child fails to response accordingly to the program, he then has special educational needs.

Children with special needs are sent to educational institutions called special schools. They are designed to provide special education to special children using various teaching approaches and related technologies. Its teachers are specifically trained to handle special children, either individually or by small groups. For the rest of their academic years, special students will be given academic attention depending on the progress they will exhibit.

Special Education

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