On May 6, as part of Global Action week, a meeting was held between representatives of
Professional and Inclusive Education Development agency of MES and
Georgian Coalition for Education For All at the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia. The coalition member disabled people's organization
Accessible Environment for Everyone presented the monitoring results on physical accessibility environment conducted in 22 public schools engaged in state inclusive education program throughout Georgia. Monitoring instrument was developed based on
technical regulations of architectural, planning and environment arrangement elements for people with disabilities. Beside the indicators considered by a technical regulation, the monitors added a questionnaire at the end of monitoring forms for school representatives and although it went beyond the monitoring goal, were collecting information on how many children with disabilities study in school and at what extent inclusive education program reaches disabled students of different needs, cases of admission refusal of children with disabilities and reasons for it, if learning materials and inventory suit disabled students needs and if individual programs are developed for these children.
Generally, non of the schools where inclusive education has been implemented, even for a long period of time could not entirely satisfy a regulation.
Each of these school are only partially accessible for students with disabilities even by the regulation which is not full, as it's been mentioned
above.
As it was revealed, in Georgia doesn't exist necessary standard not only for inclusive education, but education environment standard in general, as well.
Meeting participants came to a conclusion, that it would be appropriate to revise the
Norwegian standard (Universal Design) and define ways of its adaptation to Georgian reality. Sides agreed to form a working group to develop the final version of
educational environment standard.
