Not all students in boarding or auxiliary schools for people with disabilities have real health issues. The result of an inspection led to the conclusions that 30% of them where enrolled at these institutions using fake documents, while absolutely healthy. The statement was made by Lumos Foundation Moldova representative Galina Bulat, at a press club, Info-Prim Neo reports. Galina Bulat specified that two auxiliary type institutions were closed last summer, following inspections conducted by the Ministry of Education and specialists from the Lumos Foundation Moldova. The children from these institutions were integrated into families and into general education. “Unfortunately, Moldova inherited a Soviet mentality, when children with disabilities were excluded from society and hidden in auxiliary institutions in the woods. The idea was to make these kids invisible. But these kids have the same rights to education as healthy children have, whereas, in auxiliary institutions, they were not reaching even the middle level of knowledge typical to their age”, said Galina Bulat. Valentin Crudu, head of the Ministry of Education's general pre-school, elementary, and middle general education department, revealed that there has been developed a 10-year project of inclusive education. “This program obligates us to follow a different approach, and accept them as they are. To offer them conditions for studying and becoming useful to society. We are implementing this program in about 20 parts of the country, and have already managed to enrol 1,604 children with disabilities into 91 mainstream education institutions. It is very important to change the attitude towards these children, to offer them chances to integrate. Unfortunately, the parents of healthy children put up resistance, and even the teaching staff does”, stated Valentin Crudu. He said that individualized educational programs have been developed to fit the mental and physical capacities of each child. Support teaching staff is needed for the implementation of the programs, staff that would be present at each lesson, and take care of the disabled child. Until now over 100 units of support staff were hired to education institutions. In 2012, 39 children with disabilities graduated mainstream education institutions. Overall, there are over 15,000 children with disabilities in Moldova.