Special Educational Needs concern a significant number of children in our country. It’s not bad, it’s different. It requires different approach by teachers and parents. This approach is widely known as Special Care in our educational system.
Special educational needs
Special educational needs refer to all those services provided by teachers to students to support and overcome the learning disabilities. Ιt is compulsory and an integral part of public education and of course it is free. Only specialized teachers do provide these services.
Learning disabilities are not related to the intelligence of a child. They come from brain diversity affecting the reception and processing of information.
Parents
When parents discover, or get informed by teachers, that there is a difficulty in their child’s learning ability, they feel embarrassed or uncomfortable. Some even deny it and ignore it. This is the result of not realizing that learning disabilities are not bad, it is something that may occur. It is necessary for parents to remember that their behavior has the greatest effect on the development of their children.
Special Care
The existence of Special Care in schools is essential. Unfortunately, Greek schools are lagging. However, it seems that this is going to change. The government’s direct plans are 4.500 recruitments in Special Education Needs. These job places are going to be covered by specialized teachers, MSc or PhD titles owners in special educational needs. They will be integrated into the potential of Greek schools in order to normalize the function of classes which involve children with learning disabilities.
Teachers, with appropriate knowledge to support children with special educational needs, are essential.
What is missing?
But in which way (not specialized) teachers can face up symptoms of learning disabilities? In a conversation we had with primary and secondary teachers in our area, a clear need for their training in symptoms as well as techniques for tracing symptoms was expressed. Typical control and official testing will of course remain to the experts and the relevant committees. But what would improve the homogenization and effective function of a class, would be the knowledge or tracing symptoms.
MagicSens and Learning disabilities
That need is trying to be covered by MagicSens. MagicSens is a European project, funded by Erasmus+, which is aiming to enhance teacher’s skills on the specific field. To upskill or reskill them in order to identify, support and help children with learning disabilities. Teacher’s training will take place trough an educational platform, which will present techniques, good practices with interactive tools to extend their knowledge on learning disabilities. This platform will be created by p-consulting.
