Special needs school: advantages and disadvantages of this type of school

What is a special needs school?

At the special school, children are taught who have special needs due to mental or physical disabilities. The students receive individual support and care depending on the type and extent of their impairment or illness. Teachers for special needs education and specialist teachers with special education training are available to them. Depending on the needs, social workers, occupational therapists, speech therapists or physiotherapists can also be employed to take care of the children’s needs.

The special school not only meets the special needs of the children with its pedagogical concept, but also offers the necessary equipment for its implementation. This includes special work materials and structural measures on the school building, such as a wheelchair ramp.

Special needs school instead of special school

The Förderschule is often also referred to as a special school. However, many federal states have renamed these to “special needs school”, “special needs center” or “school with a special educational focus” in order to counter the discrimination of special needs students as “singled out” people.

Who is the special school for?

Children who have mental and/or physical disabilities such as visual, speech or hearing impairments or who are restricted in their ability to act due to physical impairments are taught at such a school according to their abilities. But children who show difficulties in their social and emotional development or who have learning disabilities are also entitled to attend a special needs school. In addition to special educational support for the children, the parents should also be supported in the care and upbringing of the children.

Admission to the special school

For admission, the child must be identified as having special educational needs in order to justify the specially trained staff and handicap-accessible facilities. The procedure for this is regulated differently by the federal states. It can be requested by the child’s parents or school and includes an assessment of the child’s educational needs.

Focus of the special school

The support needs of special needs students vary depending on the type and extent of their impairment. In order to be able to respond better to the individual needs and abilities of the children, there are special schools with the following different focuses:

• emotional and social development
• blindness
• visual impairment
• Spiritual development
• hearing impairment
• physical disability
• learning disability
• speech impediment
• deaf-blindness
• illness or prolonged hospital treatment

Special school under criticism

The special needs school is a controversial type of school. Its supporters see a great advantage in the fact that students who would have special status at a mainstream school because of a disability are among their peers at the special school. As a result, there is less risk of these students being excluded or even bullied because of their disabilities. In addition, special needs schools specialize in certain disabilities, so that the children receive targeted support from trained special education teachers. You can read more about this here.

Opponents of the school form see it more as a sorting out of disabled children, as they lack contact with children of the same age without disabilities. Critics therefore call for the inclusion of disabled children in regular schools.

Alternative to special schools

An alternative to special schools and the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream schools are integrative schools . Here, students with and without disabilities learn together in class, with students with disabilities being given the opportunity to compensate for their disadvantages, for example by employing an additional special education teacher.