During the Covid-19 pandemic, distanced learning has become a new form of education, obligatory to everyone. Adjustment to this new reality was accompanied by serious difficulties experienced by children and their parents. Even though online learning created a challenging environment for almost everyone, children with severe disabilities (due to physical or mental impairments) and children with learning difficulties (due to attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder ADHD; sensory integration disorder – Dyspraxia; and other similar disorders) and their families suffered most.
Due to the consolidation of efforts, experience and best practices of teachers in specialised schools for children with special education needs, the learning process has been duly organised and children were provided with the necessary knowledge. However, children with special education needs in mainstream education particularly felt the inconvenience caused by distanced learning, since specially trained teacher assistants were not able to provide them with the necessary help remotely. Moreover, many studies show that teachers themselves had to quickly adapt to the online environment, often without adequate resources, technical equipment and technical knowledge. As a result, they could not provide additional help to children with special education needs. To be inclusive, distanced learning needs to be carefully planned and adequate partnerships developed in order to find solutions to the complex learning processes for children with disabilities and learning difficulties.
Therefore, the Parliamentary Assembly should call on the Council of Europe to assist member States to elaborate common methods of inclusive distanced learning adapted to the special education needs of children with disabilities and learning difficulties and to review nationally the impacts distanced learning had on children with special education needs and how such negative impacts could be reduced or eliminated.