Education for children with special needs in the Flemish community of Belgium: side effects of the current educational integration system

While the Flemish education sector has begun to evolve alongside international developments towards more inclusive types of education for children with special needs, the segregated special school remains the dominant model and a valued type of education in Flanders. An advantage of the Flemish system is that parents of children with special needs are currently able to choose the educational setting that is most suitable for their children: integrated education or special education. This choice is however complex as our research results show that the patterns of choice are determined systematically by the social position of the family of the child; besides the influence of other characteristics like type and severity of the disability and age of the child. The initiatives for integrated education implemented to date in the Flemish community of Belgium appear to rely heavily on the capacities of the families with the result that families in stronger socio-cultural and socioeconomic positions are best able to cope in integrated education. At the same time, there remains an overrepresentation of vulnerable families in segregated specialist education. We concluded that policies aimed at increasing equality serve to exacerbate the embedded structural social inequalities.