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Education
According to
Article 19 of the Law on Education, disabled children
have equal rights (compared with other children) to
go to school. The state must provide equal conditions
for their studying.
According to the data of the Ministry of Social Security,
about 118000 of the disabled are currently registered,
more than 9000 of them are children under 18.
At present, the principles of integrated/inclusive teaching
are being practiced in several schools of Yerevan. There
are 5 schools where inclusive teaching is practiced.
This process of teaching gets complicated because of
numerous architectural and psychological barriers, lack
of proper teaching and educational materials and inexperience
of teachers of the majority of high schools.
Besides, there are special schools for the blind, weak-sighted
and deaf children and ones with limited hearing, and
also the schools for people with mobility impairments.
The situation in terms of higher education is rather
ambiguous. The legislation of Armenia grants disabled
people of the 1st and 2nd type the right to obtain scholarships
when entering public universities. Yet, only a few disabled
people can take advantage of this, because the universities
are absolutely inaccessible for people with different
physical malfunctions. Moreover, there are many disabled
who have not got even secondary education as a result
of the above-mentioned reasons. And naturally they cannot
enter universities. Thus, the vast majority of disabled
people don’t have higher education.
Recently, a new method of defining special needs at
entering universities was introduced. ? university entrant
(or his/her parent) can apply for creating special conditions
during entrance examinations. These applications can
be submitted to the Agency Of Medical Social Expertise
after Mr. Vanian. Based on the decision/conclusion of
the Agency, the juridical department of the Ministry
of Education makes its conclusion which goes to the
special committee within the Central Entrance Examination
Committee. This committee considers all the problems
connected with that university entrant, and makes a
decision either on creation of special conditions during
entrance examination or on admission of a disabled person
on the basis of interviewing.
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