Autism and the right to education in the EU: Policy mapping and scoping review of the United Kingdom, France, Poland and Spain

Abstract

IntroductionAutistic people may have different educational needs that need to be met to allow them to develop their full potential. Education and disability policies remain within the competence of EU Member States, with current educational standards and provisions for autistic people implemented locally. This scoping review aims to map EU and national special education policies with the goal of scoping the level of fulfilment of the right to education of autistic people.MethodsFour EU countries (United Kingdom, France, Poland and Spain) were included in this scoping review study. Governmental policies in the field of education, special education needs and disability law were included. Path dependency framework was used for data analysis; a net of inter-dependencies between international, EU and national policies was created.Results and discussionEach country created policies where the right to free education without discrimination is provided. Poland does not have an autism specific strategy, whereas the United Kingdom, France and Spain have policies specifically designed for autistic individuals. Within the United Kingdom, all countries created different autism plans, nevertheless all aim to reach the same goal—inclusive education for autistic children that leads to the development of their full potential.ConclusionPolicy-making across Europe in the field of education has been changing through the years in favour of autistic people. Today their rights are noticed and considered, but there is still room for improvement. Results showed that approaches and policies vastly differ between countries, more Member States should be analysed in a similar manner to gain a broader and clearer view with a special focus on disability rights in Central and Eastern Europe.

Inclusive Education in the European Union: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Education Policy for Autism

“…The place where the support services are delivered remains ambiguous because policies rarely explicitly state the place of delivery [12][13][14][15][16][17]. Parental involvement, however, was previously found to be key in letting children with SEN experience effective and welcoming educational settings in which their needs are met [5].…”

“…This study synthesizes the ndings of the policy analyses by EDUCAUS, which comprises descriptive data on individual policies of the 20 investigated EU Member States [12][13][14][15][16][17]. Information in each case was collected by means of a scoping review [28,29] of the respective national policy repository and analyzed through a path dependence analysis [30].…”

“…Recently, autism, SEN, and education policies in 20 EU Member States-covering 76,87% of the EU population [11]-have been mapped by the European Consortium for Autism Researchers in Education (EDUCAUS) using a path dependency framework. The aim of EDUCAUS was to systematically compare policy across all EU Member States against the vision of an education system which supports autistic children to ful l their potential [12][13][14][15][16][17] [in press]. Each policy analysis focused on a speci c theme, including parental involvement [13], teacher education [14,16], and teacher responsibilities [16].…”

The rise in the numbers of pupils identified by schools with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): a comparison of the four countries in the United Kingdom

“…The census is conducted in each of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom, and data is now available over a nine‐year period for the school years 2010/11 to 2018/19. Moreover, the four countries have enacted legislation specific to autism and have issued policy guidance on special educational needs provision (Roleska et al ., 2018).…”

Quotas, and Anti‐discrimination Policies Relating to Autism in the EU: Scoping Review and Policy Mapping in Germany, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Slovakia, Poland, and Romania

“…The widely accepted Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed in 1948 that everyone has the right to work and the right for protection against unemployment [United Nations, 1948], making it a human rights problem on top of a public health challenge if people with autism are denied or obstructed (access to) employment. Analyses of special education policy for children with autism by the European Consortium for Autism Researchers in Education [EDUCAUS, 2019] found that the right to education that was incorporated in the UDHR was further elaborated on by other international documents and subsequently implemented in national policy [Roleska et al, 2018;van Kessel, Roman-Urrestarazu, et al, 2019;van Kessel, Walsh, et al, 2019]. As such, it can be expected that this is also the case for rights surrounding employment-even though this has not yet been comprehensively investigated yet.…”