The New Zealand primary schools accept almost all children who come to them, and teachers, parents, and the community are reluctant to set any groups of children further apart from their fellows than is necessary for their welfare. This attitude has guided the approach to the education of the handicapped, and many children with marked disabilities are encouraged to attend ordinary schools. It is recognised, however, that these pupils often need special attention, perhaps by having the work of the class teacher supported by that of a specialist. If in a particular case this imposes too much strain, the child may be placed in a special class attached to an ordinary school. Only where it is beyond the school's capacity to care effectively for the child, is a separate school provided. But even where the handicap is very severe, the service remains within the education system. Thus children classified as “intellectually handicapped” attend occupation centres and “go to school” like other boys and girls.
Specialists giving support to the work for handicapped children include psychologists, area organisers of special classes, visiting teachers, speech therapists, and advisers in reading. The central purpose of the psychological service is to examine children on request, report on their condition and needs, and advise on measures to help them. A psychological examination precedes admission to various special classes and schools, and psychologists are members of advisory committees giving guidance to teachers. Equally, the 45 psychologists and 12 area organisers are concerned with the healthy growth of all primary and post-primary children. The visiting-teacher service began in the disturbed wartime conditions of 1944 to cope with problems which had their origin outside the school itself and were affecting the progress of children. This remains its essential purpose. The 31 visiting teachers each serve a group of primary schools and, in addition, provide a limited request service for post-primary schools. The main responsibility for speech training and correction rests with the class teacher but severe cases are referred to speech therapists who work in some 75 clinics, each attached to a central school and serving a group of neighbouring schools. In addition, cerebral palsy schools have full-time speech therapists. The clinics are administered by local education boards and admissions follow reports by headmasters, school medical officers and psychologists, with the consent of parents. For several years a clinical service in reading has been maintained in the six main centres. These clinics are concerned with a small number of children who, though not mentally backward, have unusual difficulty in learning to read. Pupils are admitted when psychological examination has shown that a reading problem is too complex to be solved within the school. The main work in reading, however, must be tackled by schools themselves. They are assisted by advisers on reading who have district responsibilities for planning reading programmes and conducting courses for teachers.
The 153 special classes for backward children are the most numerous and best known of the special classes attached to ordinary schools under the control of education boards. They are concerned with helping some 2,015 children to become literate and live independently in the community. Children whose vision is so defective that their education is impeded can be enrolled in one of the partially sighted classes in the main centres. The Christchurch class is now part of a visual resource centre which is providing both for partially sighted and for blind pupils. With the recognition of the therapeutic value of school work for sick children in hospital, special classes are now provided in almost all public hospitals. Other special classes in the larger cities cater for partially or severely deaf who are very delicate or who are emotionally disturbed to a degree preventing their effective education in an ordinary classroom.
In the provision made for mentally backward children, a distinction is drawn between those who are capable of “education” (as are special class children) and the “intellectually handicapped” for whom training in the simpler, physical, personal, and social skills and habits is all, or nearly all, that is possible. Children of special class level who cannot be helped satisfactorily while living at home can be enrolled in two special residential schools at Otekaieke (for boys) and Richmond (for girls). For the intellectually handicapped, occupation centres may be established by education boards where there is an assured minimum roll of 12 children between the ages of five to 18 years. There are at present 23 such centres in New Zealand. In smaller towns where there are five to 11 suitable children, education boards will provide teachers for an occupation group if the local community will provide and maintain a suitable building. At the request of the Department of Health's Division of Mental Health, schools have also been established within the Kingseat, Levin, and Templeton Hospitals for their less severely handicapped children, and within Cherry Farm Hospital for selected young mentally ill patients. The two residential schools for the deaf (Sumner and Kelston) are under the direct control of the Department of Education. Eight specialist visiting teachers attached to these schools work throughout the country with pre-school deaf children and their parents, and give guidance to teachers in ordinary schools who have hard-of-hearing children in their classes. The New Zealand Foundation for the Blind administers New Zealand's one residential and day school for blind and partially sighted children — Homai College in Auckland — but the Department of Education meets the full costs of educating its pupils. Pre-school and primary children are taught at Homai College itself but some of its secondary boarders attend Auckland post-primary schools, whose staffs are assisted by an itinerant teacher from Homai College. Dr Earl Carlson's visit to New Zealand in 1948 focused public attention quite dramatically on the needs of cerebral palsied children and led to the development of a national policy for their education. There are now six cerebral palsy schools. Children mildly cerebral palsied attend ordinary schools while those who are severely handicapped intellectually are admitted to occupation centres. A school is attached to each of the seven health camps, and there are also two special schools for delicate children. The Mount Wellington Residential School, Auckland, admits severely disturbed children from all over the country. The Child Welfare Division controls a number of “open” institutions for the rehabilitation of wayward boys and girls. Educational programmes form a part of their work, and schools and classes are established at Burwood Girls' Training Centre (for older girls), Fareham House (for younger girls), the Levin Boys' Training Centre (for older boys), and Hokio Beach School (for younger boys). There is also a post-primary class at Owairaka Boys' Home (Auckland) and at the Lower Hutt Boys' Home. The Department of Education has also an official relationship with the Department of Justice in the appointment of part- and full-time teachers to prisons and borstal institutions, and it also pays the salaries of the tutors in lip reading employed by the New Zealand League for the Hard of Hearing to assist deafened adults.
by Stephen Selwyn Powell Hamilton, M.A., DIP.ED., Officer for Special Education, Department of Education, Wellington.