More than 120 children with special educational needs who attend general schools in the districts of Ialoveni and Floresti adapted themselves and managed to achieve results in the learning process. The children are supported by 13 backup teachers who help them learn based on an adapted curriculum.

Contacted by IPN, Galina Bulat, manager of the project “Development and promotion of inclusive education”, which is implemented by the public association “Lumos Foundation Moldova”, said now that backup teachers started to wok in 12 pilot-schools of Ialoveni and Floresti districts, the children with learning disabilities benefit from support during classes and within activities held at inclusive education resource centers.

“This fact enables the children with special educational needs to easier integrate into the class and the school, to have access to psycho-pedagogical and educational assistance according to the individual needs. The children helped by a backup teacher become more sociable, more confident and more determined to learn,” said Galina Bulat.

She also said that there are many children with special educational needs in Moldova, but only those who cannot cope by themselves are assisted by backup teachers. “The psychological assessment service that determines if a child with special educational needs requires backup started to work at district level, in Ialoveni and Floresti, two years ago. Meanwhile, the number of such children included in general education increased,” stated Galina Bulat.

According to her, a problem related to the education system appeared after the inclusive education program started to be implemented as the educational support service wasn’t sufficiently developed. Not all the schools have psychologists and logopedists and this is an older problem. “About 70% of the children of preschool age in Ialoveni and Floresti, where the inclusive education program was implemented, need logopedical assistance. Also, no formula for financing the children with special educational needs was worked out as the coefficient for every child with learning disabilities is different,” said the project manager.

In Moldova there are over 179,000 persons with disabilities, more than 14,000 of whom are children.