The integration of disabled students in primary and lower secondary schools

ISTAT has released the first results of the survey on students with disabilities in primary and lower secondary schools (public and private) for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years.

Conducted as part of a project financed by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy and in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (Miur), the goal of the survey was to examine the resources and tools that have been adopted by single school centers to facilitate the integration of students with disabilities. The survey response rate for SY 2008-2009 was 77%, 20,426 schools have filled the questionnaire. The response rate for the subsequent year was 89%, for a total of 23,451 schools participating in the study.

During SY 2009-2010, fewer than 130 thousand disabled students were enrolled in mandatory schooling. Of this population, about 73 thousand were in primary school and 59 thousand in lower secondary school. About 5% of the disabled students in primary school had vision-related disabilities, about 5% had hearing difficulties and about 14.3% had problems related to mobility. Regional differences are clearly evident with respect to learning and attention-deficit problems, which affect 24.4% and 26% of disabled students. National values range from 18.3% with learning difficulties and 19.8% with attention-deficit issues in the North to 34.7% and 34.6% in the South, respectively.