"Toward the Construction of Japanese-Style School Education in the Reiwa[1] Era"

Special Needs Education Division, Elementary and Secondary Education Bureau,
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)

On January 26, 2021, the Central Council for Education summarized its deliberations in the report titled Toward the Construction of Japanese-style School Education in the Reiwa Era: Realization of Optimal Individualized Learning and Collaborative Learning that Draws Out the Potential of All Children. This report is the result of cross-sectional deliberations by the Council's Special Committee on the Modality of Elementary and Secondary Education in a New Era under the Subdivision of Elementary and Secondary Education in response to the inquiry of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on the same topic in April 2019.

This article introduces Section 4 of the report, Modality of Special Needs Education, of the report, which reflects the discussions at the Expert Meeting on that topic held by MEXT. The report states that the direction of special needs education (SNE) is to realize the philosophy of an inclusive education system and to keep working steadily to achieve this goal by:

• Improving the condition of learning so that children with and without disabilities can receive education together as much as possible,
• Providing the best possible instruction to meet the educational needs of each child with disabilities by continuously developing and enhancing various educational settings with a view to their independence and social participation. Those settings encompass regular classrooms, instruction in Tukyu classrooms[2] , SNE classrooms, and SNE schools.

Based on these basic ideas, the report describes the modality of SNE in the new era from the following three perspectives.

1. Improving Education Settings for Children with Disabilities and Strengthening

ollaboration among Relevant Organizations
In order to improve education settings for children with disabilities and strengthen collaboration, it is important to take the following perspectives into account.

① Enhancement of Consultation and Support from Early Childhood before School

The various education settings and support for preschoolers with disabilities are available, including kindergartens, daycares, centers for early childhood education and care. These settings and supports are certified by the local governments, child development support centers/offices, and private pediatric rehabilitation centers. Given that, it is necessary to develop the system within the school district, composed of assigning SNE coordinators, collaborating with relevant organizations, expediting the assignment of SNE supporters, and improving human resource groups with the collaboration of outside experts. Furthermore, to provide early support and detailed enrollment consultation, it is crucial to understand the situation of children with disabilities. For this purpose, it is necessary to collaborate with the health and welfare departments in charge of health checkups for five-year-old children and with kindergartens and other early childhood education/care/support facilities.

② Support for the Enrollment Consultation and Consideration of Places to Learn for Children with Disabilities

For each municipal board of education to provide detailed support for each child, the national government has prepared Educational Support Materials to serve as reference materials for the enrollment consultation and consideration of places to learn for children with disabilities. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the contents of these materials.

③ Supports for Students with Disabilities in Elementary and Lower Secondary Schools

As the understanding and awareness of SNE has increased, so has the number of pupils who are enrolled in regular classes and receiving instruction in the Tukyu classroom. In addition, the number of those enrolled in SNE classrooms has increased as well. Therefore, under the management's leadership, it is now necessary to enhance the instructional system through collaboration between classroom teachers and SNE teachers and enrich interaction and joint learning between students with and without disabilities. Furthermore, it is also necessary to promote initiatives to ensure students with disabilities who attend regular classrooms receive specialized instruction through the Tukyu scheme while staying at their school with ICT and remote technology and make school facilities barrier-free.

④ Enriching Educational Environments in SNE Schools

In order to improve the educational environment of SNE schools, it is required that the government formulate standards for the establishment of these schools. The standards must set forth the minimum requirements including the facilities that should be provided for SNE schools, combining the contents that are generally common among all these schools and the contents that require consideration on an individual basis. In addition, it is vital to enhance the function of SNE school as a regional support center to promote SNE during early childhood education and upper secondary education levels, and for students enrolled in SNE schools to place secondary enrollment in schools in the areas where they live.

⑤ Enhancement of the Education Settings in Upper Secondary Schools

In upper secondary schools, where the Tukyu scheme has just been introduced in the 2018 academic year, the entire school faculty and staff need to work together to enhance SNE. Under the principal's leadership, with the SNE coordinator and the teachers in charge of teaching in the Tukyu classrooms as the core, the school needs to establish the teaching system and teaching methods. At the same time, collaboration with SNE schools needs to be strengthened so that mainstream schools can take advantage of SNE schools' know-how in teaching independent activities and knowledge about employment for opportunities for students with disabilities.

2. Improving the Expertise of Teachers in Charge of Special Needs Education

From the following perspectives, it is crucial to improve the expertise of teachers being in charge of SNE.

① SNE Expertise Necessary for All Teachers

All teachers need to understand the characteristics of disability derived from the child's impairment and have the competency to devise teaching methods accordingly. Specifically, teachers need the basic knowledge in SNE, such as individualized educational support plans and individualized instructional plans, and an understanding of reasonable accommodations. It is also necessary to understand that difficulties in learning and living caused by disabilities vary depending on the child’s condition. Hence teachers need to devise easy-to-understand contents and methods that meet children's individual educational needs, which will motivate them.

② SNE Expertise Necessary for Teachers being in Charge of SNE Classrooms and Tukyu Classrooms

Teachers who provide instruction in SNE classrooms and Tukyu classrooms must acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for SNE based on the foundation of those in the general curriculum. The essential expertise encompasses organizing special curricula, preparing individualized education support plans and individualized instruction plans, teaching according to the characteristics of disabilities, conducting independent activities, supporting the parents of students with disabilities, and collaborating with other teachers. In addition, especially in SNE classrooms, where the curriculum may vary according to the actual conditions of the students, practical skills are required to teach students with different goals in each subject simultaneously.

③ SNE Expertise Necessary for SNE School Teachers

In order to instruct students with a wide variety of disabilities, including those with multiple disabilities, SNE school teachers need to be able to fully grasp the conditions and characteristics of the disabilities, the stage of physical and mental development, and acquire a wide range of knowledge and skills that can be reflected in the instruction of subjects and independent activities. They also need to instruct in collaboration with experts inside and outside the school utilizing their expertise.

Moreover, in order to guarantee and improve the quality of the curriculum of the SNE teacher training course, it is essential to develop a core curriculum that indicates the attributes and competencies that SNE teacher candidates should commonly acquire, which is similar to the teaching curriculum of the elementary school course and other school teacher training courses. In addition, from the perspective of ensuring the expertise, it is required for MEXT to work to achieve the goal of all SNE school teachers possessing the SNE school teacher certificate.

3.  Enhancement of Continuous Supports by Strengthening Collaboration among the Relevant Organizations

From the perspective of enhancing consistent support for children with special support needs from the early childhood education stage, it is necessary to promote further collaboration between the health, medical, welfare, and education sectors and families, as well as the development of a specific collaboration system for information sharing with and support for parents/guardians. For example, it is crucial to provide school personnel and parents with information about the welfare facilities’ support services, including the visiting program to facilities for young children such as daycares, available support services, and consultation services for children with disabilities.

It is also essential for schools to accumulate and pass on cases of children who have received SNE and reasonable considerations using records of individualized education support plans, which are helpful to each school when providing an appropriate education while taking into account the disability of the child.

In order to ensure that children who require medical care can learn at school with peace of mind, schools need to establish a system for providing medical care at school under the supervision of the principal, with a team of homeroom teachers, school nurses, relevant doctors and nurses working together as one. This needs to be done with the understanding of parents for safety and security.

Although the situation is highly restrictive due to changes in the overall social environment, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it is also a time when the way the support environment should be for children with disabilities and how it should be is being questioned anew. MEXT will continue to improve the learning environment for children with disabilities, based on the reports from the Central Council for Education and the Expert Meeting on the Modality of SNE in the New Era. We would like to ask all related parties to continue your efforts to ensure the learning of all children in your care and further enhance SNE.