Special needs students: more support needed in Hong Kong schools

In recent years, as an outcome of the inclusive education policy, students with special educational needs who were formerly served by special schools have been allocated to mainstream schools.

The purpose is to help students with various sorts and degrees of learning, behavioural or emotional problems or handicaps integrate with normal students from early life.

For these students to receive proper care and education in mainstream schools, there are requirements for schools to have their teachers trained so that there are sufficient teachers in each and every school qualified for taking care of these children in classroom teaching, curriculum design or tailoring, exam arrangements and pastoral care.

Whether a school will admit these students depends on parental choice and their academic achievements. It is fair to say lower-band schools have received most of them, although trends show the better schools have also started admitting them.

The special educational needs concept embraces a broad range of students with learning difficulties, such as autism, hyperactivity, attention deficit, dyslexia, emotional or behavioural problems, physical handicaps or impairment and so on. No school nowadays can have the luxury of having no admission or single-type special educational needs students. Schools that receive these students receive extra funding based on the number of such students admitted, so they can deploy more manpower to run supportive programmes.

An educational psychologist service is also available, but a single psychologist has to take care of six to eight schools, resulting in only one visit per school every two to three weeks. Although the policy is noble, the kind of support and resources for the schools does not seem to match the difficulties on the ground.