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AGENCY eBULLETIN November 2015
The Agency has now started an in-depth co-operation with Iceland, which aims to audit the country’s system for inclusive education and provide recommendations to support long-term developments in the field.
On 16 October, the Agency’s fourth Hearing in Luxembourg invited young delegates from all Agency member countries to express their views on the developments and the challenges they are facing in their education. Their recommendations have been collected and will be presented to the European Council of Ministers.
The ICT4IAL projects partners have finalised the Guidelines for Accessible Information, an open educational resource, which contains useful information on how to create accessible materials for learning. This is now available in 23 languages.
The Agency is looking for two qualified and experienced researchers to work part-time within a small Agency staff team that co-ordinates Agency projects and activities, as well as completing international contracts and assignments examining policy and practice for special needs and inclusive education. More details about this opportunity are available here.
This issue of the eBulletin also includes news from member countries, an update on the Agency’s new project on inclusive early childhood education, and various web developments.
Read more about these topics below and follow Agency news on our website.
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Agency Director Mr Cor J.W. Meijer, Agency Chair Mr Per Ch Gunnvall and Icelandic Minister of Education, Science and Culture, Illugi Gunnarsson
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External Audit in Iceland
On 3 November Agency Chair Per Gunnvall and Agency Director Cor Meijer signed a contract with the Icelandic Minister of Education, Science and Culture Illugi Gunnarsson for an external audit of the system for inclusive education in Iceland.
Throughout the one year of the external audit, Agency staff and consultants will be conducting agreed activities in co‐operation with, but independently from any stakeholders in Iceland.
The goals of the external audit are to provide recommendations that will:
- Support evidence‐based practice and decision-making,
- Promote self-review across all levels of the system,
- Support longer-term development work in Iceland.
The essential stakeholders – the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Ministry of Welfare, the National Association of the Municipalities, the Teachers Union, the National Home and School Association and the Head Teachers Union of the Upper Secondary Schools – have also signed a memorandum to declare a common will to co-operate in implementing the results of the audit. More details are available in Icelandic on the Ministry website.
Education Minister, Mr Gunnarsson considered this step fundamental in the country’s educational policy and expressed high hopes for the outcomes of this co-operation between Iceland and the Agency. Iceland is the second Agency member country after Malta to commission the Agency to carry out an external audit.
For more information on this co-operation, contact the Agency’s Representative Board member in Iceland.
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Participants at the Inclusive Education: Take Action! Hearing in Luxembourg
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Call for Action at the Luxembourg Hearing
On 16 October 2015 the Luxembourg Presidency of the European Union hosted the Agency’s fourth Hearing entitled ‘Inclusive education: Take action!’. Seventy-two young people with and without disabilities had the opportunity to discuss how their schools and communities ensure an inclusive education for them and what potential obstacles they are still facing in their education and their day-to-day lives. Their call for action will be collected in the form of recommendations for policy makers and they will be presented to the Council of Ministers during the Education, Youth, Culture and Sport meeting on 23 November 2015.
The event gathered 250 participants and stakeholders from all the Agency member countries, as well as policy makers and representatives from European and international institutions. The Luxembourg Minister for Education, Children and Youth, Claude Meisch addressed the young people, stating that ‘we need your contributions. Let’s take action!’. He encouraged participants to take the opportunity to express themselves freely, and assured them that their recommendations would be forwarded to the highest level.
Martine Reicherts, Director of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture, emphasised that within the Commission’s strategic framework Education and Training 2020, inclusion of all students into mainstream education is a stated priority, and that young people ‘deserve concrete actions’.
Gil Steinbach, the Agency’s representative board member in Luxembourg referred to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) signed by 160 countries, which calls for signatory states to ensure an inclusive education system at all levels.
In preparation for the event, the secondary education students representing 27 Agency member countries had the opportunity to discuss key issues with their peers and teachers in their schools. The questions for discussion referred to ways in which their schools supports them in their education, examples of how teachers and classmates take into account their needs, accessibility, class organisation and suggestions for ways to overcome remaining barriers to inclusion. At the event in Luxembourg, young delegates shared their own personal experiences and transmitted their peers’ messages as well.
A number of dignitaries such as László Gábor Lovászy, member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Catherine Naughton, Director of the European Disability Forum, Marianne Vouel, Director of the Service for Special Education at the Luxembourg Ministry of Education, Children and Youth and Jan Filip Libicki, Member of the Polish Senate were present to listen to and provide feedback on the young people’s presentations.
Agency Chair Per Gunvall concluded by saying that the main outcomes of this event will have a positive impact on the debate in Europe on how to implement inclusive education into practice. The young people’s discussions and recommendations constitute a body of knowledge from the perspective of learners with disabilities and they will be taken into account in the Agency’s future work.
The aim of the event was to empower and ensure the involvement of learners in shaping educational policies. The young people’s recommendations and detailed results will be published soon on the Take action web area of the event and on the news section of the Agency website.
For further information on this event, visit the website of the Luxembourg Presidency.
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Guidelines for Accessible Information Available in 23 Languages
The Guidelines for Accessible Information is a tool to support practitioners and organisations that provide information for learning in creating accessible materials. This tool contains instructions and a list of resources on how to create accessible materials in text, audio and video, which can be applied to all types of information produced, but will be especially beneficial to learners with disabilities and/or special needs.
The resource is the outcome of the co-operation between the European Agency and European Schoolnet (EUN), the International Association of Universities (IAU), UNESCO, the DAISY Consortium and the Global Initiative of Inclusive ICTs (G3ICT).
The Guidelines are available now in 23 languages, and soon there will be an Arabic, Chinese and Russian version online as well. The www.ict4ial.eu project website hosts this open source educational resource, where users can register and comment in English. Project partners encourage registration and commenting in order to further develop the resource.
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Increasing Inclusive Capability
A unique resource for developing collaborative policy and practice has been developed and is now available on the Agency website. This final output of the Organisation of Provision to Support Inclusive Education project has been designed to provide materials to help countries move towards a rights-based approach to education.
The Organisation of Provision to Support Inclusive Education project (2011–2014) set out to address the question: How are systems of provision organised to meet the needs of learners identified as having disabilities (under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) in inclusive settings within the compulsory school sector?
The project recommendations stressed the importance of collaboration in bringing about change. This resource aims to support shared reflection and discussion to help achieve greater clarity about inclusive education. The main audience is decision makers at both national and local level.
The resource is structured around 5 key questions:
- How can the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) be embedded in national/local policy to ensure that all learners receive a quality education?
- What does inclusive education mean to stakeholders in our national/local context?
- How can provision be organised to meet the needs of all the school community?
- What restricts the participation and learning of all children and young people and what action can be taken?
- How can collaboration between key stakeholders support change and improvement?
Visit the project web area to find materials, such as extracts from the project literature review, reports and practical examples. The resource is aimed to be used by stakeholders in order to help bridge the gap between theory and practice.
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Inclusive Early Childhood Education Project
The main goal of the Agency’s Inclusive Early Childhood Education (IECE) project is to identify, analyse and subsequently promote the main characteristics of quality inclusive early childhood education for all children.
This means identifying both system and provision facilitators as well as barriers that deny any child or group of children the right to participation in the learning and social activities of the ECE provision.
Within this project’s framework, this goal will be addressed by a series of activities, such as:
- Collecting and studying examples of practice in Inclusive Early Childhood Education. We are aware that there are very good examples in every Agency member country and we have invited the country experts in co-operation with the country representatives to propose such examples from their countries.
- Identifying and visiting institutions which provide IECE in order to understand the quality features of IECE provision.
- Collecting data via a country questionnaire on legislation, policy and practice at national/federal level in the area of IECE.
The replies to the country questionnaire will be collected in country reports, altogether forming the basis for a summary report on the state of the art in Europe regarding policy and practice on inclusive early childhood education.
More information on this project will be available on the Agency website.
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Website and Media Developments
The Agency’s official YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/European-agencyOrg now features a new video from the European Hearing in Luxembourg.
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Sharing information from the Agency website has never been easier, thanks to the sharing icons available on every page. This new feature allows visitors to share pages via email and a number of other social media platforms.
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The Agency provides national overviews on how special needs and inclusive education is organised in each Agency member country. This can be found in the National Organisation of Provision section under the Organisation of Provision project web area.
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