Inclusive Education in Russia: a status report
By Denise Roza, Perspektiva (droza@online.ru)
Introduction: Disability in Russia
There are over 10 million disabled people in Russia, nearly 700,000 who are children and young adults (18 years of age or younger). In Russia, disabled people have traditionally been isolated from the mainstream community.
Since the 1990s, with the emergence of disability and parents' non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the passage of disability legislation, significant changes have occurred to improve the quality of life of persons with disabilities. Today, employment programs for disabled people and a handful of integrated educational programs have been launched in several Russian cities. Kremlin officials on many occasions have publicly acknowledged the problem of inaccessibility and the lack of federal support for the disability community.
Despite these positive changes, disabled people in Russia still face daily discrimination, as well as physical barriers to education, employment, recreational activities, family life and participation in community life. Although disability legislation has been passed on the federal and local levels, implementation mechanisms, such as procedures for fining inaccessible public places, have not been codified, rendering legislation largely symbolic and ineffectual. Furthermore, in August, despite protests all over the country, the Russian government signed into law a bill that will replace benefits such as subsidized transportation and medicine with cash payments, dismantling remnants of the Soviet welfare state and affecting the lives of millions of disabled Russian citizens. Parents of a disabled child will receive approximately $15 and limited medical care and free medicine. These funds will supplement the miserly monthly pension of $40-70 / month that parents - in many cases single mothers - across Russia receive.
Education: Rights and Realities
Article 43 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation guarantees the right of every individual to education, and the Federal Law on the Social Protection of Disabled Persons stipulates that the government must provide all disabled people with the necessary conditions to receive a basic primary, secondary, or higher professional education in accordance with needs and abilities of each disabled person. Disabled children and young adults have the right to be educated in a mainstream school setting with their peers.
However, statistics show a different picture. According to Ministry of Education figures, there are approximately 1,500,000 children of school age with special needs in Russia: 500,000 of them are officially considered disabled children. In 2003 approximately 30,000 of these children studied at home, 200,000 in specialized schools or classes, a small percentage studied at mainstream schools and, according to members of the disability and parents' movement, the rest of these children - more than 150,000 - received no education at all. Only 20 of the 89 territorial divisions of Russia have special educational institutions that can serve the needs of children with all kinds of disabilities. As a result, many disabled children are forced to live and go to special schools far away from their families.
Disabled children and young people face enormous barriers to their Constitutional right to education: the "diagnosis" of "uneducable" given to children after a brief examination; the lack of trained specialists; physically inaccessible schools; teachers and school/university directors who are unaware or misinformed about disability issues; lack of accessible public transportation in cities; lack of facilities, equipment and services for students with disabilities; and the prevailing societal misconceptions, stereotypes and discriminatory practices.
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