 create equal opportunities for people with a disability by developing a better standard of special educational support in special schools as well as in mainstream schools.
Within all these changes, it is necessary to take account of:
- the necessary quality and the guarantee of extent of special educationalprovision,
- flexibility of support in a system of combined and adapted aids,
- equal opportunities for SEN pupils independent of the local and form of support
- individual support/development of all pupils in integration settings (disabledand non-disabled), the co-operation of all persons and institutions involved in this process. (KMK, 1994, p.3/4).
In the following years up to 1999, the KMK enacted recommendations for the "emphasis of individual education support" Förderschwerpunkte with respect to learning, speech, emotional and social development, intellectual development, physical development, hearing, vision, autism and long term illness. Each of these Förderschwerpunkte provides information about the educational starting point, the phenomenon of individual special needs and its diagnosis, the provision of SNE and possible placements. The user gets an indication of co-operation and collaboration as well as access to the qualification of the staff.
These recommendations are available (in German) from http://www.KMK.org
These recommendations are the basic for developments and changes in the different Länder and have influence upon the integration policy, the laws, the curricula, the change of paradigm and the definition of SEN.
In 1994, the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) was changed and enlarged for one new article: Art. 3, Abs. 3, Satz 2 "Nobody must have disadvantages due to his/her handicap." (Niemand darf wegen seiner Behinderung benachteiligt werden).
In the last 20 years the development of integration policy has changed towards better educational support of pupils with a disability- towards "integration".
There was an agreement that the installation of a general compulsory school attendance age is not enough to guarantee the appropriate specific support and development for disabled pupils. Within the compulsory school age phase, there is a differentiated system of special schools. On one hand, this has been an advantage for mainstream schools, because pupils with difficulties and learning problems had their own school to ensure their specials educational needs. On the other hand the severely and multiply disabled children had as a result of this process of differentiation the right to education in special schools.
Today there is an agreement on aims of schooling. School and any necessary special educational support have the aim of integration of disabled children and adults in professional life and society. However, there are different positions in the different Länder in terms of if the aim of integration to professional life and society should be reached via a special school or in a general school with disabled and non disabled together.
With these different meanings of the key term of integration - integration as aim, or integration as way and aim - a lot of policy discussions arises. Several Länder have begun a trial period with integration models of experiments in mainstream schools or outside special schools. Some of them give priority to integration with the same curriculum, some of them with an adapted or differentiated curriculum. Within this position a necessary framework of decisions, according to the place of special educational support, the organisation or the use of resources is connected.
Since 1960 the situation of special education has been directed by "Expert Opinion in order (Rules) to the Special Education System" by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, the KMK. Within the process and discussion about SEN, this Conference has drawn up a consequent directive of educational development (1988). The system of special education should be more flexible - it is not any longer necessary to stipulate/commit the place of SEN