Leaving No one Behind-Special Education Promotion Practice of Xiaoshan District, Zhejiang Province, China

1. Establishing the supportive guarantee system for disabled students to attend regular classes. Firstly, we scaled up policy support. In April 2011, we led in the province to issue the document on special education promotion, Instructions on Implementation of Measures to Further Accelerate the Development of Special Needs Education in Xiaoshan District. In June 2018, we issued Phase II Special Needs Education Promotion Plan of Xiaoshan District, which effectively made up the past shortcomings in terms of funds and personnel, and proposed a series of professional and thematic innovations in advancing integrated education, giving strong policy support to disabled children attending regular schools. Secondly, we improved the funds ensuring system. The average public funds for special education students in various schooling periods are allocated over ten times more than regular schools at the same level, plus an annual separate special fund of 4 million yuan. Thirdly, we implemented guarantee measures for teachers. We started files and decided on the establishment of the school staffs for all the special education teachers in the district, achieving a teacher-student ratio of 1:3 in special schools and 1:4 in regular schools and realizing an addition of 1 resource teacher for regular schools enrolling more than 8 disabled students. Moreover, we managed to ensure professionalism of special education teachers through recruitment of professional teachers, expert guidance, group discussions etc. 2. Actively building a system for the arrangement of children with disabilities. We established a special education system in which regular schools are regarded as the mainstay, special schools as the backbone and other educational forms, such as bringing education to students’ doorstep, as supplements, giving full play to the coordination between institutions of all levels, including special education schools run by district authorities, satellite classes at designated schools, auxiliary classes run by areas, resource rooms set up by town authorities, classes enrolling disabled students in regular schools and the service of bringing education to students’ doorstep, striving to promote the expansion of special education towards preschool and high school. A total of 72 schools (kindergartens included) set up resource rooms (accounting for approximately 1/4 and 1/20 of the total number in Hangzhou City and Zhejiang Province respectively), of which 17 being municipal-level demonstrative resource rooms and 48 being qualified resource rooms, benefiting 780 students with special needs annually. The school-based popularization rate of integrated education reached 100%. 79 schools (including kindergartens) in the district undertook diversified district-level special education research and training activities and the concept of integrated education has been disseminated into schools and classrooms. 3. Intensifying the multi-department linkage mechanism. In order to make overall plans for special education, the district government established a special education expert committee from such different sector as education, disabled persons’ association, health commission, and civil affairs bureau with joint efforts to study and address issues concerning special funds, bringing education to students’ doorstep, combination of medical care and teaching, disability screening and evaluation, rehabilitation support, etc. , effectively guaranteeing the sound and rapid development of special education of the district. Simultaneously, the district education department set up a multi-office linkage leading group on special education management, giving full play to the collaborated management and respective functions across eight offices: administration by the Compulsory Education Office, teachers allocation by the Personnel Office, funds guarantee by the Finance and Planning office, supervision and evaluation by the Supervision and Guidance Office, business guidance by the Teaching and Research Office, special topic investigation by the Special Education Guidance Center, practical training by the special education schools, and teacher training by schools of further education. 4. Improve the effect of integrated education. According to age and practical capabilities, on the principle of “enrollment based on classification and proximity”, we ensured that every student with special needs were properly enrolled. Under the various modes of integrated education, such as division and amalgamation of classes, teaching periods and disciplines, we gained fruitful and distinctive experience in integrated education, such as “the combination of separate classes for disabled children and regular class learning”, “putting off classes instead of staying down”, “regular class learning plus resource room” , thus meeting the learning needs of students with different difficulties. The collaboration between medical care and teaching promoted rehabilitation of individual preschool children and the targeted efforts of vocational classes expanded the educational services at high school level. At the same time, we regularly brought education to the doorstep of those severely disabled or special students who had to suspend their schooling due to physical problems, thus fully realizing inclusion and zero exclusion for all schooling periods and making integration a normal state. With an aim to further develop special education against the backdrop of SDGs, centering around the objectives of deepening integrated education, we strove to enhance the quality construction and operation of resource rooms and promote the balanced development of special education in all regions and schooling periods in an all-round way. Additionally, we actively adopted the paradigm of regular class learning in rural areas, under which “appropriate arrangement is the basis, collaborative operation is the backing force, support from multi platforms are the vital element and individualized cultivation is the core”. By this means, we improved the quality of integrated education in an all-round way and realized connotative development and brand image establishment of special education. Meanwhile, with disabled students attending regular schools, their schoolmates gained opportunities to show concern for them, cultivate compassion, increase a sense of attainment, understand the importance of respect and equality towards disabled students in the course of caring for them. 5. Strengthening teaching staff for special education. In 2010, we established posts of dedicated researchers of special education at the county and district level, which were responsible for research with regard to regional special education administration, classroom teaching, curriculum construction, teacher training, student activities, resource rooms and special education association and so on. By means of discipline cooperation, we set up Xiaoshan special education research group, which played a leading role in the rapid professional development of the district’s special education via thematic research and project demonstration. Every primary and secondary school and kindergarten was required to carry out integrated education and set up integrated education teams with research term leaders or chief resource teachers as the core. The team members included school administrators, head teachers, skill subject teachers, mental health teachers, students' parents, special education experts, doctors of town-level health centers, folk artists, community personnel as well as volunteers. Their mission was to make use of resource rooms to carry out targeted subject remedy, defect compensation and potential development for students with special needs. 6. Scaling up support for rehabilitation and employment of students with special education need. With an aim to achieve the full coverage of various guarantee measures, we established an allowance system for persons with certified disabilities，a student subsidy system, a subsidy system to provide for the living expenses of disabled persons in need and to pay the nursing costs of persons with severe disabilities and the old-age insurance schemes. We comprehensively promoted the precise rehabilitation of disabled persons and establish a multi-level service system. By giving full play to regional advantages, we accurately aided the disabled in employment and entrepreneurship, and helped the disabled persons to realize their career dreams who were at working age, wished to work and were capable of working. Besides, we increased the funds, and issued in small discount loans and supportive subsidies, helping disabled persons with their new businesses and careers. In addition, seizing the opportunities of the “Internet plus” era, we took initiative to set up science and technology parks (STPs) aimed to help the disabled to fight poverty, and offer training in e-commerce employment and entrepreneurship and in combination of the regional features of Xiaoshan, we organized special training classes in seedling planting, aquaculture, Western pastry, etc for persons with disabilities, seeking to enhance their employment skills and competitiveness. 7. Enhancing individualized education for disabled children. Centered around resource rooms and regarding training equipment as the media, we enhanced the development of functional courses to meet the specific needs of special students in movement, language and sentiments etc. Firstly, in accordance with their special characteristics, we devised customized course units centered around a certain defect or function deficiency. Secondly, in accordance with the characteristics of the apparatuses or teaching tools in resource rooms, we designed customized course units based on some apparatus or item. Thirdly, according to their age characteristics and special emotional needs, we planned customized course units on the basis of a certain space or situation. Centered around the core objective of “carrying forward individualized teaching with integrated class as the focus”, we underscored the importance of “appropriate difficulty, amount, timing, opportunity, material selection and teaching designs” and conducted thematic and targeted classroom teaching with local features, aiming to make teaching objectives effective, teaching content appropriate, teaching activities differentiated, teaching strategies supportive, after-class assignments graded, and assessments diversified. Our educational themes were on a monthly basis, our activities on a weekly basis, student observations on a daily basis and every student had a separate file. The school-based popularization rate of integrated education reached 100%.