too many disabled students remain poorly educated, denounces an association

It’s almost time to go back to school… except for many disabled students. Thousands of children with intellectual or cognitive disabilities will only go to school at the start of the school year “a few hours a week, if at all”was alarmed on Monday August 22 by Unapei, one of the main associations in the sector.

“Once again”students with this type of disability “are the invisible, the forgotten” and “their rights are always flouted”, denounced in a press release Luc Gateau, the president of this federation bringing together associations of people with mental disabilities and their families.

Lack of schooling, or inadequate schooling, has “dramatic consequences” for families, often “tired”, denounces Unapei, which for the first time this year wanted to quantify the shortcomings. To do this, it constituted a sample of 7,949 children or adolescents with disabilities. Of this total, 18% “have no hours of schooling per week”, 33% between 0 and 6 a.m., 22% between 6 and 12 a.m., and only 27% benefit from at least 12 hours of teaching per week.

The government, for its part, highlights the increase in the number of children with disabilities welcomed to school each year: there will be more than 430,000 in this start of the 2022 school year, against nearly 410,000 last year, according to figures. communicated at the beginning of August by the Ministries of National Education and Persons with Disabilities.