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.
