Education Of Handicapped In Austria (by Monika Fischer)
Throughout the last few years the educational system for handicapped has changed in many ways. A development from seperation towards integration has taken place:
Education of - physically or mentally - handicapped children and teenagers used to happen in special schools or institutions in which only persons with the s a m e handicap were taught. More and more this treatment has been considered as a social exclusion. Respondig the need for new ways in eduation was the idea of an integrative school system.
Since 1993 every handicapped child has the r i g h t to attend an integrative class in a regular primary school. A richgt of integrative education in secondary schools has not been settled yet, although such classes are existing in this field.
The enormous increase of integrative classes in schools all over Austria illustrate the tendency from isolation to integration. Aim of the integrative education system is a training for social intercourse between physically and mentally handicapped and not handicapped, an inclusion of handicapped in all areas of everyday life from the very start - to let every human being take part in society.
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