Period: June – October, 2016
Funding Organization: Open Society Foundations
Project’s context:
Under the new Law on preschool and school education, which will enter into force on August 1, 2016, the inclusive education is immutable to the right of education (LPSE, art. 7, par. 2). It is expected that the State Educational Standard on Inclusive Education will develop this idea, so Bulgaria will respond the requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.
Although under the new Law, the municipalities will bear more than the current and direct responsibility to ensure additional support to children and pupils with special educational needs, according to preliminary data at the moment, the awareness of municipal administrations on inclusive education and their role in its implementation is rather low.
Objectives:
To create comprehensive analysis of the organization to support on municipal level and the planned changes in the system in order to improve the access to education of children with disabilities and the creation of inclusive school environment.
To track the unexplored segment of the structure of education management – the role of municipal administration.
Two major sub objectives:
- To contribute with additional information to the Report for the execution of national obligations to the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities while analyzing the role and impact of municipalities in Bulgaria to support the process of inclusive education.
- To support the local authorities to better understand their commitments under the new LPSE, assigned to ensure inclusive education of children with disabilities.
Expected results:
Project’s main result will be the Report on the analysis of the role of local authority to ensure the right of education in inclusive environment. It will serve as starting point to follow up the development in this field, which the municipalities will achieve when the new Law will enter into force.
In addition the project will help all stakeholders to create a common vision and understanding of principles and practices of inclusive education and to effectively execute their roles in a key transition period to LPSE and SES on Inclusive Education.
The Report will improve the understanding of the situation related to the respect of the rights of children with disabilities in Bulgaria and will complement a missing part in the researches, namely the role of local authorities in this field at policy, practices and funding opportunities level. Among Report’s expectations are also to stimulate municipalities to organize and support the inclusive education in municipal schools as well as to help municipal strategies, annual action plans and budgets to be made in order to adequately address the right of education of children with SEN as it is enshrined in the new Law.
