Ibero-American cooperation in special education and educational inclusion
Top story
Ibero-American cooperation in special education and educational inclusion
Since 2004, the Regional Bureau of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago) has been working in cooperation with the Spanish Ministry of Education and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID) to organize Symposia for Education Cooperation with Ibero-America on Special Education and Educational Inclusion. The latest was held in Montevideo, Uruguay, in October 2011 and focussed on accessibility and educational inclusion.
Representatives of the Education Ministries of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay took part in presentations and workshops to discuss physical accessibility in education centres, the accessibility of information and communications, the curriculum, and assessment, in favour of universal learning designs – issues that form part of a true quality education.
At the first of these cooperation symposia, in 2004, the Education Ministries of the Ibero-American states decided to form the Intergovernmental Ibero-American Cooperation Network for the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs (RIINEE) in order to share teaching resources, materials, and experiences; to promote research; to promote the interchange of specialized professionals; and to conduct activities in each country and in international cooperation.
“These meetings arose to allow the countries of Ibero-America to contribute jointly to the full access, participation, learning, and educational and social inclusion of persons with special educational needs”, explains Daniela Eroles, technical assistant in the Inclusive Education and Educational Innovation Area at OREALC/UNESCO Santiago.
From rights to actions
At the 7th symposium, in Montevideo, the importance of education quality was highlighted by lawyer and political scientist María Soledad Cisternas Reyes, who is a member of the UN expert committee on the rights of persons with disabilities: “It is not possible to talk about inclusive education without also discussing the necessary link with quality. To remove this element of understanding would be to render the right to education as a nominal expression with precious little content. We would be talking about pseudo-inclusion”. Cisternas added that the 2006 report by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education stated that non-discriminatory participation by a wide range of other bodies (apart from the state) is fundamental in making inclusive education a reality. “In effect, inclusion addresses not only the rights of the marginalized student, but also, in a broader sense, the speeding up of changes in the cultures and values of the education system and of the community in general,” she said.
Shortfalls in technology that ought to reduce divides are issues that are of concern to Rafael Sánchez Montoya, a lecturer at the Universidad de Cádiz and expert in information technology accessibility. At his presentation at the 8th Symposium, Sánchez stated that although ITC can help persons with difficulties to communicate “we are aware that this major advance is not equitable, and leads to a certain disenchantment when it is stated that they are not accessible to all students, either through design issues in the human-machine interface or through the poor broadband connection speeds that generate a new digital divide”.
Andrés Balcázar, architect of the National Council for the Development and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (CONADIS) in Mexico, who also took part in the symposium, believes that physical accessibility for people with disabilities in schools and other public spaces requires less investment than is believed, but rather a cultural shift “at all levels, not only for the school principal or the administrative side, but also among senior government officials in adequate budget allocation. Society must understand that it shall reap the benefits of incorporating persons with disabilities”.
Education without barriers
The Montevideo Declaration, supported by all of the education ministry representatives present at the 8th symposium, highlights the need to minimize the barriers against ensuring the right to quality education for all. In practice this requires universal and accessible design of the curriculum, learning spaces, and information and communications technologies.
The governmental experts expressed the need for greater efforts to guarantee the right to a quality, inclusive education for persons with disabilities and the adoption of measures to ensure equality of conditions in the physical surroundings, transport, curriculum, information, and communications.
The Montevideo Declaration includes support for the development of cross-sector policies within and outside governments, and prioritization of teacher training for attending an ever more diverse student body. In these terms, the RIINEE representatives value cooperation between countries through events of this type, permitting the exchange of experiences between specialized professionals, teaching resources and materials, as well as the initiation of studies and research projects, among other actions.
***
Worldwide, 75 million children are excluded from education. For this reason UNESCO promotes integrative, quality education, by monitoring policies, providing training to education officials in order to improve and apply integrative policies and the analysis and dissemination of best practices.
The Regional Bureau of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago) conducts activities alongside other stakeholders that include technical advisory services, promotion of inclusive policies and practices, development and dissemination of documents and assessments, teacher training, and the design of instruments to the acquisition of qualitative and quantitative data on inclusive education in the region.
These actions promote changes in conceptions, attitudes, and practices among those who are linked to education, contributing to the elimination of learning barriers, the participation of students, and the development of an education agenda for all.
More information
• Montevideo Declaration (in Spanish)
• Audio version (in Spanish)
• Intergovernmental Ibero-American Cooperation Network for the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs (RIINEE). Includes material from the Symposia for Education Cooperation with Ibero-America on Special Education and Educational Inclusion (in Spanish)
• Document: Consultation with Latin American countries on special educational needs (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago, in Spanish)
• Inclusive education, OREALC/UNESCO Santiago
• Inclusive education, UNESCO
21-12-2011