Inclusive Education in the Post-Socialist Space: Comparative Study of an Assessment of Parental Satisfaction

Abstract

After the breakup of the USSR, the education systems of the former Soviet republics began to develop independently and adopt new legal and professional norms. Many of these norms are universal in nature — for example, inclusion and equal access to education for all categories of the population, including access to secondary and higher education for children with various disabilities. The present study makes use of the results of a survey of parents of schoolchildren in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the Ukraine to assess the satisfaction of parents of children with or without special educational needs studying at inclusive schools. It is shown that parents of children with or without disabilities have a fairly positive attitude towards inclusive education, albeit the main demand for inclusive education stems from parents of children with disabilities. However, respondents in most countries assessed the situation in inclusive schools as not being ideal — in particular, they were not satisfied with the qualifications of teachers. The present study shows that the countries of the post-Soviet space are extremely inhomogeneous in the indicators of parental satisfaction with inclusive education and stand at different stages of the development of the latter.