Special Education Policy

HUSEYIN AVNI SOZEN ANATOLIAN HIGH SCHOOL

SPECIAL EDUCATION POLICY

Purpose

This Policy represents HASAL Special Education which is a key for our movement:

• To resume an open access to our IB DP program.
• To provide various educational requirements among all students.
• To clearly identify the roles and split duty of every aspect of educational goals in providing appropriate education for the students with special educational requirements.
• To identify the regulations and organizations needed to promote all students.
• To run our resources both efficaciously and efficiently whenever it is needed.
• To educate our teachers and students accordingly the IBDP program that is the key point of SEN policy towards the program itself.
• To motivate the handicapped students.
• To prepare them lifelong education and making awareness among students.
• To monitor the students during the process of learning and giving them supports when they are needed.
• To provide students the best possible individual support.

Introduction

Huseyin Avni Sozen Anatolian High school has adopted the IB DP program regarding the needs of the philosophy. IB DP philosophy emphasizes that learning should be as accessible as possible for all  students. Under this circumstance, HASAL has adopted the IB philosophy of making the IB programmer accessible to the widest possible range of students. Our aim is to diminish challenges for participating IB Diploma Programme while trying to make sure that all students at HASAL will thrive in the programmer. Although all students are not able to learn by applying the same way, we identify that all students are able to learn and have the talent to become lifelong learners. In our school, different teaching and learning strategies are used by our teachers to achieve the IBDP educational acquirements of students with variety of educational backgrounds. To do this, as HASAL we concern about our students' needs disabilities and learning difficulties. 

IB Special Educational Needs Policy

The International Baccalaureate Organization has defined a special need as "any permanent or temporary diagnosed need that could put a candidate at a disadvantage and prevent him or her from being able to demonstrate skills and knowledge adequately''( General Regulations Section 4 Article 17 Page:10). In addition to this, some of other great foundations have defined special education need as '' any of human being who have difficulties while learning is accepted as special education need. There are a number of handicapped people regarding special needs. Some of these are:

• Cognitive impairments
• Attention defect hyperactivity impairment
•  Deafness impairment
• Emotional impairments
• Learning disabilities
• Physical disabilities and or other health impairments
• Speech impairments and or communication disorders
• Multiple disabilities
• Giftedness

The list may be prolonged by adding other impairments. As the matter of fact, as it is stated above that special need is defined who needs support while learning and making the one being prepared lifelong learning and include the one whole learning areas any of educational aspects such as, sport, music mathematics etc.

Identification Procedures                                  

Monitoring and identifying a student with learning support may occur at any stage of period. When a class teacher realizes any circumstance where a student may need a special support, the procedure should be as follows:

• Class teacher is responsible for monitoring the students while he is doing his tasks. Strategies that have been tried need to be documented. A student referral form is to be filled by the classroom teacher.
• The form is to be sent to the counseling service and a copy to the Head of School and IBDP Coordinator.
• Then the classroom teacher can do the assessments or observation in cooperation with counseling service.
• The counseling service will then make recommendations to the Head of School and IBDP Coordinator.
• The counseling service can communicate with other teachers if necessary.
• A parent meeting will be held to share the information that has been collected and appropriate advice can be given for the areas of concern.

Recognition:

Our students are encouraged with special educational needs to apply for the IB program. Also, we ensure that they will be able to be accepted based on our admission policy. It is fundamental that careful consideration should be given to the students with learning support requirements. HASAL is committed to ensure to work within the guidance of Candidates with special assessment need document and the Handbook of Procedures (A9.1/2017).

Instead of marginalization, when a student with special education needs applies and registers to the program, firstly, IB DP Coordinator provides guidance him/her to school consultant for identifying what he or she needs. After defining his or her impairment, the consultant defines the need providing that possible. In the contrary case, he/she guides the student to CSN (Consultancy of Special Needs) which is an organization under the administration of Turkish Ministry of Education. Therefore, it is essential by IB DPC to inform all IB teachers and work with them to ensure that the student has full access to the curriculum. IB faculty makes sure that the student with his/her fellow students is able to demonstrate mastery of the course content. In order to be sure who needs special education IBDP programme, professional and well-educated teachers deal with those who need specific students in our school.

 A number of teaching techniques methods, approaches and plans for different learning and teaching environments can be applied at HASAL to meet all students' requirements, which will allow them to obtain the high quality of standards of the IBDP. These sorts of works contain special educational needs. Additionally, Adopting the Constructive and Differentiated Teaching Strategies will enhance students' learning capacity within learning objectives in our school.

Students who are enrolling the IBDP need to manage described assessment objectives of all courses they had chosen. As it is not possible to make changes in these objectives; HASAL ensures that the objectives defined in subject's guidebook will be achieved by all students, including SEN students. Special arrangements can be made if the criteria defined in the IBO document "Candidates with Special Needs" is met by the student.

HASAL obeys Section 9: Special circumstances and arrangements of the HoP( 2014), Candidates with special assessment needs(2011). A formal request for special arrangements must be submitted to the IBO at least 12 months prior to the student writing the exam.  Supporting documentation, such as a medical certificate, must accompany the request. 

The outlined the characteristics of students who may require special assessment arrangements are shown below as follows:

• Specific learning issues, language and communication disorders;

Contains: ADHD Attention Defect Hyperactivity Disorder: The key issue in reading, writing, spelling or conceptualizing language items. Such as, misspelled words while writing, poor reading (lack of fluency, missing some items etc.) the origins of the problems might be because of hereditary factors. As a matter of fact, there is a combination of biological and environmental factors in written language acquisition, including motor integrity, sensory perceptual integrity and social and emotional integrity. For that reason, to cope with these impairments, assesments are arranged by the staff according to special need. 

• Physical and sensory conditions:

 Physical disabilities include diversified amount of conditions, which cannot always be immediately   realized, but affect mobility negatively.

Sensory issues:  They cause a wide range of commutation issues while learning. These are; hearing loss – an extensive range of hearing loss which can lead to communication challenges, affecting vision as well. Students with sensory processing disorder might have behavioral difficulties and tend to make progress if they are supported. To cope with these disorders, a wide range of techniques have been applied by our special need program. Those who have these impairments are cared by careful chosen staff.

• Medical condition:

Congenital heart disease, epilepsy, asthma, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, sickle cell anemia, diabetes, renal failure, eczema, rheumatoid disorders, allergies, leukemia and other cancers can be seen as the most common ones. Achieving goals over those, special cures are accepted as must.

• Mental health issues:

Mental health problems are seen as part of our everyday life as serious long-term conditions. The majority of students who experience mental health problems can get rid of them or learn to live with them, especially if they get help early on. A variety of health problems affecting a person's state of mind might be psychotic conditions, such as schizophrenia and manic depression, eating disorders that can lead to anxieties and emotional difficulties caused by circumstances in a candidate's life.

• Giftedness:

The gifted children are defined as whose ability is significantly above the norm for their ages. The Giftedness may manifest in one or more domains such as; intellectual, creative, artistic, leadership, or in a specific academic field such as language arts, mathematics or science.

After the documentation is examined by IBO, our school will make following arrangements.

• Additional time (exact time) - 15 minutes of exam time per hour may be given as an additional time to those who need additional support. A candidate may be given additional time to complete assignments during 2-year Programme without authorization from IB (Candidates with Special Assessment Needs 2011, page17). 

• Rest periods –Candidates who receive additional time may also be supported by rest periods. If a candidate's examination timetable is more than 6.5 hours then rescheduling may be requested. (Candidates with Special Assessment Needs 2011, page18). 

• Assistive technology; a computer can be used to assist typing the answers when a student has a difficulty into writing the answers. This will assist the learner's having the exam without having difficulty.  We ensure that there will be no software connection during the exam period exam. If necessary, voice-activated technology or augmentative speech reality can be considered as equipment. 

• Scribes – an assistant can help the student to write down dictated answers if it is necessary. 

• Readers –  to provide a facilitation as IB DP mentions and advice a person who reads aloud the questions to the candidate and can also read back answers from the candidate. This will make the candidate secure and feel better when it is required. The aim of the way that application this is to make candidates fully involved in the process of IB DP diploma Programme. 

• Alternative venues for examinations- If a candidate has an accident or required treatment in hospital or at home, the examination can be applied the venue where the candidate is according to his or her condition by the way of guidance with an alternative venue for examinations. 

• Assistance with practical work – when a student has a physical disability problem, the school will provide assistance with practical work.  This arrangement is normally provided for the requirements of internal assessment (for example, practical work in experimental science or geography fieldwork). 
• Deadlines-When a student cannot complete the work in time due to health conditions or accident, the deadlines can be extended by the coordinator.
• Prompters- They can assist the student in paying attention to the exam if he has a severe attention problem due to neurological or cognitive disabilities.

We acknowledge that HASAL is responsible for all the candidates who have special educational needs and has committed to provide all necessary accommodations for individual candidates. We also ensure that  all such accommodations comply with IB policy. At HASAL School, we believe that all students have equal rights for balanced and relevant education that will give them opportunity to learn and make progress. We have surely understood that applications for special arrangements have specific requirements and appropriate supporting documentation is required. We will ensure that all special arrangements comply with Section 9 Special circumstances and arrangements of the HoP( 2017) and Candidates with Special Assessment Needs (2011).

Reference

1. IBO Candidates with Special Assessment Needs, 2011
2. Diploma Programme Assessment Procedures, 2019
3. Meeting Student Learning Diversity in the Classroom, 2013
4. Diploma Programme General Regulations: Diploma Programme, 2016
5. http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2018/07/20180707-8.htm
6. Handbook of Procedures for the Diploma Programme 2017