Inclusion and education

TEACHERS NEED SUPPORT TO ENSURE 
INCLUSIVE TEACHING
To adapt teaching to students’ needs and backgrounds, 
it is not sufficient for teachers to have knowledge and 
skills. They also need appropriate working conditions 
and support personnel (Hehir et al., 2016). Education 
support personnel cover a wide range of professional, 
administrative and technical functions (Education 
International, 2017). In the context of inclusive education, 
specialists (e.g. psychologists, pedagogues, special 
educators, therapists) and teaching assistants are the most 
relevant professionals to help teachers fulfil their duties.
Teachers often lack support from professional staff
Psychologists and pedagogues play an important role in 
improving teaching, cooperating with parents and, in some 
countries, supporting teachers’ professional development. 
In Serbia, they are the most important source of support 
for teachers in developing individualized education 
plans and differentiating their teaching (Kovacs Cerović 
et al., 2016).
Support personnel may be employed by mainstream 
schools, special schools or resource centres serving 
the community or region. Among the 12 education 
systems that provided detailed data on availability of 
professionals in education, there was 1 professional for 
every 30 or so teachers, on average. Latvia and Lithuania 
had more professionals (1 per about 12 teachers) while the 
Czech Republic (1 in 57), Slovakia (1 in 75) and Kosovo
2
(1 in 155) had fewer (
Figure 6.4
).
Availability of professionals is not equitable. In Armenia, 
psychologists can be employed only as members of 
multi-professional teams, and only in schools attended 
by students with disabilities. Moreover, they are generally 
seen as solely responsible for formulating the support 
that children with disabilities need. Teachers see inclusive 
education as just a modality for providing education 
services to students with disabilities, in which specialists 
support and guide student learning.
In Azerbaijan, qualified professionals whose role is to 
support children with disabilities work only in special 
schools. As the country tries to include children with 
special education needs into mainstream schools, teacher 
workload and responsibility increase without adequate 
qualified support. In Croatia, 43% of schools employ 
psychologists and 51% employ speech therapists and other 
Very few in-service teacher education 
programmes focus on teaching ethnic 
minority or immigrant students whose 
home language is not the language of 
instruction
2 
References to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council resolution 1244 (1999).
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GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 2021

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specialists focused on rehabilitation. Romania reported 
a particular lack of qualified and competent support 
personnel in rural areas. In Ukraine, special educators can 
be invited to a mainstream school if students’ individualized 
education plans identify a need for such support.
The transformation of special schools into support or 
resource centres is seen as an opportunity to make more 
equitable the availability of professionals to support 
mainstream schools. In Belarus, newly created resource 
centres within the regional Centres of Correctional and 
Developmental Education and Rehabilitation offer training 
and mentoring to schools and teachers upon request and 
could become inclusive education knowledge hubs with the 
support of international organizations. In Slovakia, centres 
for special pedagogical counselling are being established 
within special schools (Slovakia Ministry of Education, Science, 
Research and Sports, 2017
). It is envisaged that special 
education teachers will share their expertise with other 
teachers in inclusive schools. Over two phases of the More 
Successful in Primary School project, Slovakia has also 
attempted to set up inclusive teams in mainstream schools, 
composed of a school psychologist, a school special 
pedagogue, a social pedagogue and a teacher assistant.
Overall, while specialists should support mainstream 
schools’ teachers, in practice their support is often not as 
planned. In some cases, they are assigned other tasks. In 
North Macedonia, support personnel are overburdened 
with administrative tasks, and little of their work time is 
dedicated to teacher and student support. In other cases, 
their work with students does not take place as intended. 
In particular, students with disabilities are often pulled 
out of their mainstream classroom to receive individual or 
small group support provided by a specialist, as in Armenia 
(UNICEF, 2016). In other words, the education, training and 
employment policies targeting support personnel are not 
aligned with the inclusive approach to education.
The role of teaching assistants remains to be defined
Teaching assistants are available at similar rates to 
professionals. Among the 10 education systems 
providing detailed data, there was 1 teaching assistant per 
30 teachers. In some countries, teaching assistants have 
long been part of the education system. The Czech Republic 
has the highest number: one for every nine teachers. In 
Slovakia, where pedagogical assistants were introduced in 
the early 2000s, their number in mainstream primary and 
secondary education increased from 664 in 2005 to 3,195 in 
2018. By contrast, teaching assistants are virtually absent 
in Bulgaria, while in Kosovo
3
and Poland, the post of teacher 
assistant is just being piloted (Figure 6.4).
The introduction of teaching assistants in the region is 
being presented as an opportunity to increase education 
systems’ inclusiveness. In Albania and North Macedonia, 
the employment and countrywide roll-out of personal and 
teaching assistants for children with special education 
needs are expected to take some of the burden off 
mainstream teachers, who have felt anxious about