ISBN: 9789689166054
Publication: 19/2/2008

Students with Disabilities, Difficulties And Disadvantages: Statistics and Indicators of OAS Countries

Education for all children, including those with special educational needs is now part of the global agenda of developing education for all. Countries have endorsed international agreements that emerged from such conferences as The World Forum on Education for All, held in Dakar, Senegal in 2000, in which the need for inclusive education for all children is underlined. This has been recently endorsed in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

All education systems face common challenges, even though their magnitude may vary. The challenges presented by students with special educational needs are perhaps the greatest and they affect large numbers of children. These children could contribute more fully to the economic growth, if they were better served by the education and other, e.g. health, systems.

Knowing the size, characteristics and conditions of the population that uses or requires special needs education services, is an initial step to assessing the dimension of the task before us and to planning comprehensive educational services.

One of the key elements to achieving education for all is to develop effective monitoring systems that can provide accountability for the education being offered to all children and can communicate progress in the context of national and international comparisons.