The Importance Of Special Education

All students regardless of disability are entitled to a free public education from ages 6-14/15, which is equivalent to grades 1 thru 8. Special education is provided for visually impaired, hearing impaired, physically impaired, mentally impaired and chronically ill children. In 2008, there were 1,158,636 handicapped children that lived in Turkey. Of those children, 21.6% where physically handicapped, 22.2% visually impaired, 36.2% hearing impaired and there was no data available for students with mental disabilities. Students with disabilities are educated in primary, vocational and technical schools, private schools, autistic children education centers and gifted and talented centers. The Special Education Decree-Law (No. 573) of 1997 works to integrate special needs students into general education classes when appropriate. It also makes pre-school mandatory for children identified as special needs. The Ministry of Education provides special needs education from ages 0-18. The Ministry of Education funds some special education expenses. The Administration for Disabled People regulates special needs in Turkey and they work to provide services for disabled people. There is no nationalized screening process for special needs with the exception of hearing screenings. Therefore, parents are responsible to apply to show their child has special needs. Parents must submit the application to the Guidance Study Centre in their locality and provide a hospital disability report. The Guidance Study Centre evaluates the documentation and provides education recommendation. There are four documents needed to apply for special education: residency certificate, written application by the parents to the school administration, persona...

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...ore rights and services to students with disabilities in addition to individuals with disabilities. The current focus in Turkey is working to provide access to special education services to all eligible school age children. Although it has been identified there are over a million children with special needs less than 10% of these students have access to education. This lack of access is due to limited financial resources of parents, lack of national screening process to get these students identified immediately instead of having parent make application, in addition to the lack of public transportation and public infrastructure to support special needs student’s specifically physically handicapped individuals. There was no information available regarding a timeline required for getting special education applications, supporting documents, and services started.