1. Education and Training Statistics Working Group, May 2011
Item 5.5 – Statistics on Special Needs Education, progress report
Working Group - Education and Training Statistics, May 2011, Luxembourg

2. SNE statistics - progress so far – and further actions
Policy demand originally from Council conclusions May 2007, - and reiterated in ET2020 programme from May > inclusive education.
Eurostat project originally started some years ago but no advancement because of shortage of resources internally at Eurostat.
Eurostat is now running a one year project with external consultants with the purpose of:
- assess current state of affairs and national demands for SNE data via enquiry;
- to propose and test some methodological improvements for measuring SNE;
- to suggest a SNE UOE table to make the population ‘visible’ in the UOE;
- to test the proposed methodology and table in 4 countries.
Results and recommendations of project will be available in the beginning of 2012 for discussion at the ETS WG spring 2012.

3. Methodological advancements
Starting point the ISCED 2011 definition of SNE education:
'Education designed to facilitate the learning of individuals who, for a wide variety of reasons, require additional support and adaptive pedagogical methods in order to participate and meet learning objectives in an educational programme. Reasons may include (but are not limited to) disadvantages in physical, behavioural, intellectual, emotional and social capacities. Educational programmes in special needs education may follow a similar curriculum as that offered in the parallel regular education system, however they take individuals’ particular needs into account by providing specific resources (e.g. specially trained personnel, equipment, or space) and, if appropriate, modified educational content or learning objectives. These programmes can be offered for individual students within already existing educational programmes, or be offered as a separate class in the same or separate educational institutions. (Glossary ISCED 2011)

4. Methodological advancements
The SNE methodology would state that the definition of SEN pupils relate to the additional resources given to such students. The way this definition is operationalised could be via a bottom-up approach for achieving comparability. By this is meant that SEN pupils are defined by the additional resources allocated to them as recognised by the national educational authorities (or equivalent). The recognition may be stated in a legal text or by administrative procedures.
It is suggested to use the OECD typology for SNE e.g. disabilities, learning difficulties and disadvantages (the DDDs) at first level (SNE type 1). Within each of these three headings a second classification would label the nature of the DDDs with an ‘other’ category as rest category.
Good documentation of SNE 1 and 2 typologies would be needed for judging comparability.

5. Methodological advancements
The dimensions of the suggested table:
Variable Breakdown
Column headings
Sector Public, private
Setting Segregated, special class, inclusive setting
Educational level ISCED 1, 2 (ISCED 0 and 3?) as in the UOE
Row headings
Gender boys, girls
SNE, type 1 disabilities, learning difficulties, disadvantages
SNE type 2 (10-12 dimensions)

6. The timing of the enquiry and further actions
The enquiry is planned to be send to countries by end of May with a deadline for completing the questionnaire of 15th of July.
The ETS delegates are invited to:
Comment on the methodological improvements suggested for SNE statistics.
Comment on the draft SNE reference document and the draft questionnaire.
Approve the timing of the enquiry: end May to mid July.