Inclusive education: innovative approaches and challenges

A visiting joint meeting of the Educational and Methodological Association in the areas of "Special Pedagogy" and "Health Care" on the topic: "Inclusive education: innovative approaches and challenges" was held at the Higher School of Economics named after S. Amanzholov. It was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, as well as representatives from 35 universities in the country. In the first part of the meeting, entitled "Model and Concept of inclusive education", Rector of Sarsen Amanzholov East Kazakhstan University Mukhtar Tolegen made a welcoming speech.

The topic that is being discussed today is very important for Kazakhstan, as statistics are increasing and show a huge increase in children with OOP. There are 10,896 children with special educational needs in East Kazakhstan alone. At EKU S. Amanzholov since this academic year began training students in the educational program "Pedagogy of Early Support" and "Ergopedagogy", where 25 people study. The university has already changed approaches in academic activities in the training of such specialists: the number of practical classes has been increased, dual training is actively developing from the second year on the basis of the established Center for Continuing and Inclusive Education "DANA BALA", - said Mukhtar Tolegen, rector of Sarsen Amanzholov East Kazakhstan University.

To date, 14 universities are training specialists in the field of inclusion, but experts have proposed a complete upgrade of educational programs in this area. For example, there was a proposal that university graduates should already graduate from a higher educational institution with knowledge in the field of medicine and psychology.

Amanzholov University was the first to implement the Ergopedagogue educational program at the university; it is gratifying that the educational program "Pedagogy of Early Development" is also available to students. "Today`s meeting is a great opportunity to identify new tasks and put them into practice," said Gulzhan Jarasova, Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Higher and Postgraduate Education of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

At the end of the meeting, it was decided to work out the issue of opening a faculty of rehabilitation in higher educational institutions and allocating additional grants for the training of doctors in the specialties "rehabilitologist", "kinesitherapist", "occupational therapist". Also, to develop a joint educational program in the field of "Training specialists in special pedagogy" with the inclusion of programs in the field of child rehabilitation. An equally important proposal was the training and retraining of specialists for teaching children with hearing, vision, speech, musculoskeletal disorders, mental retardation, autism within the framework of the direction "6B019 Special Pedagogy".