HFHR asks MNE about new core curriculum for preschools and rights of children with disabilities

The HFHR has sent a statement to the Minister of National Education, referring to the new core curriculum for preschools that fails to contain direct information on the course of study adopted to the needs of children with disabilities.

Worrying change

The current core curriculum, which applies until the end of this school year, refers directly to the need for individualised support for children with disabilities and the right of such children to benefit from the reasonable accommodation.

“The removal of information about the need for an individualised approach to children with disabilities from the core curriculum for preschools may be particularly important for those children who have not yet obtained an official certificate of the need for special education or a relevant evaluation report from a counselling centre but who nevertheless require an individualised response to observed issues resulting from a disability”, reads the HFHR’s statement.

There is the risk that after the new core curriculum becomes effective preschools may refuse to introduce reasonable accommodation for some of their students, relying on the absence of an explicit recommendation. This may lead to the situation where some children with disabilities are deprived of appropriate support that would otherwise aim to mitigate consequences of their disability.

Violation of standards and constitutional guarantees

“The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an instrument executed by Poland, prohibits anyone’s exclusion from the general education system on the basis of a disability. Polish Constitution contains such a guarantee, either. Students with disabilities are entitled to use individually adjusted, reasonable accommodation at every stage of education, also in preschools. The state’s failure to enforce these rights equals to a systemic discrimination”, says Jarosław Jagura, a lawyer of the HFHR.