SPECIAL EDUCATION IN GREECE AND EUROPE - THE NECESSITY OF INCLUSION

Special Education is a dynamic educational field, which has shown considerable development and progress, and its activities today span a number of areas. Special education includes a variety of special education schools (called S.M.E.A. in Greek), which provide services of different types to a large number of pupils with various special educational needs. It also includes entirely new institutions, such as the Differential Diagnosis and Support Centres (KE.D.D.Y.). The staff of these institutions consists of teachers and scientific personnel from diverse disciplines, such as psychologists, social workers, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, and nurses. In Europe, the current trend in special needs education involves the development of an inclusion policy for educating pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools (European Commission/Eurydice/Eurostat, 1999/2000; European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education, 2003). Inclusion (or what certain researchers referred to as integration) concerns all those efforts aiming at educating students with special educational needs and students without special needs in a common school setting (Zigmond, 2003). The significant role of inclusion and the concept of the least restrictive environment which promotes the integration and socialization of pupils with special educational needs have been highlighted for decades in various European countries.