3rd Workshop on Training of Teachers of the Visually Impaired in Europe,
Warsaw, Poland, 3 - 6 April 2002
by mrs Daniela Dimitrova
First we would like to start our presentation with short report about the history of education and rehabilitation of visual impairment people in Republic Macedonia.
It started in 1954 with opening the School for blind in Skopje, the capital city of Macedonia. Since than till now the education and rehabilitation of visually handicapped people is organized in this institution, which provides services for children from 6-18 years of age. The education process is consisted by: Pre-school grade, Primary and Secondary School, Primary Music School, Boarding House and work-shop for vocational practice. The majority of visually impaired people follow the "normal" curricula with some adaptations, as others. The school provides special equipment, special assessment conditions and flexibility of management of the curriculum. Most of the teachers who are involved in education and rehabilitation of visually impairment pupils are tiphlopedagogist (this terming is used in our country for special educators). In the moment we have a problem with number of pupils, for example this school year we have only 40 pupils, which is not the real number. This problem is actually last ten years. The reasons of this situation are in later detection, diagnostic and registratation of children with visual impairment. The other reason is that some of them are integrated in mainstream school. So, we have the integrated pupils but unfortunately we don't know the number of them and the special needs that they have.
The low established the education of these pupils also in regularly schools. The main problem of this kind of education is that the educational system does not provide any equipment and trained teachers as itinerant teachers. To ease this situation, in 1998, the Bureau for Development of Education of Republic Macedonia, together with UNESCO, started with project "Special needs in classroom". The main task of this project is to provide systematical and organized inclusive education for children with special education needs. That is realized by organized of courses for teachers, flexibility and adaptation of national curriculum and new role of special schools as resource center. Right now we don't have the final information about the results of this project because the evaluation will be in 2004. In the end, we like to say that the Republic Macedonia is taking the part of integration and inclusion but we are in the beginning of this process and a lot of work still has to be done.
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