The school is not sufficiently adapted to children with disabilities, says a report by the Defender of Rights

In a report to be published on Monday, the Defender of Rights calls for schools to be better adapted to the needs of students with disabilities. The management of accompanying persons is particularly in question.

Disabled children who have dropped out of school due to a lack of appropriate reception, support for precarious pupils, poorly trained, sometimes absent. The new report of the Defender of Rights, which will be definitively unveiled on Monday, alerts the public to the situation of disabled students.

With the impetus given in recent years to inclusive schools, 400,000 children with a disability are educated in ordinary schools in 2021, a figure up 19% over five years.

To help them, those accompanying students with disabilities disability (AESH) recruited by National Education, 125,000 in 2021, have seen their number increase by 35% over 5 years.

a lack of guides due to a lack of budget

Despite these efforts, important problems have not been resolved. “What struck us in the complaints received in recent months and which are on the increase, are the responsibilities of AESH which are not applied for lack of financial and human resources”, notes the Defender of Rights, Claire Hédon, in a interview with AFP.

“However, the consequences are dramatic for the child: non-schooling, dropping out, or very few hours of lessons”, notes Claire Hédon, who calls for “finer statistics on the time of effective schooling” of these pupils with needs. specific.

The Defender also recommends “including in the budgets of each school year a provisional envelope for AESH requests during the year”, many of which are refused by schools for lack of budget.

lack of training

The report also recommends that the departmental houses of the disabled (MDPH), which notify the need for an AESH, are based exclusively on the needs of the child, and not on the lack of means of the academy. Indeed, situations reported to the Defender of Rights show that certain inclusive localized support centers (Pial), which coordinate human aid, “give priority to the management of human resources over the response to the needs of the child”.

The AESH, in their vast majority of women, are not sufficiently trained, sometimes little integrated into the educational teams, have insufficiently defined missions, and sometimes little relationship with the parents. In particular, “they need to be trained in the different forms of disability because we do not take care of an autistic child and a dys pupil in the same way”, notes Claire Hédon.

The status of AESH, paid by National Education, has been improved in recent years, but they still work part-time (24 hours a week), with salaries around 800 euros.

the forgotten extracurricular time

The report also points to difficulties during extracurricular time, such as the canteen, where the workers are paid by local authorities.

“AESH would be willing to cover extracurricular time but we assign someone else, because it does not depend on the same budget and the same actors”, to the detriment of “the best interests of the child” who needs stability, notes Claire Hédon.

More generally, the Defender of Rights stresses that the education system must adapt to students with disabilities and to do this better train teachers to take care of them, instead of relying solely on AESH. “It’s up to the school to adapt … And what we see is that the child is asked to adapt to school”, added the Defender, who recalls that the awarding of an AESH is “neither a prerequisite nor a condition for the pupil’s schooling”.