Lebanon

Education for Persons with Special Needs

The mandate is the most fundamental issue for special education in the country. The Ministry of Education has to date left the question of disability issues in its entirety to the Ministry of Social Affairs. The Ministry of Social Affairs is oriented toward care. This is an important function, but it is not education. It is essential that the education of all children become the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, and that steps be taken to differentiate the mandates of the two Ministries while ensuring that their efforts are co-ordinated in providing services to children with special needs and their families. This must happen without delay if the restructuring of the education system is to have benefit for all children of school age in Lebanon.

During the period of civil war, Non-governmental organizations (NGO's) developed services to fill a void in the public sector. With some support from the Ministry of Social Affairs, these services have continued to deliver and expand educational and other services. Lebanon is at a cross-roads in terms of bringing these educational services together so that a unified system of education can evolve rather than parallel systems in which segregation of children with disabilities becomes institutionalized.

The current National Plan for Education opens the door to a more flexible education system. This bodes well for the accommodation of students with minor learning difficulties who are currently in the system but not being successful within it.

There is a need to design a modified curriculum for those few children with intellectual disabilities who are not currently able to master the learning objectives of the current curriculum, and to obtain the authorization of the Ministry of Education, to use this modified curriculum under certain conditions with appropriate populations of children with special needs. The development of appropriate assessment tools is also necessary to ensure that these students have been identified using valid and reliable methods.