Inclusively Educated Students with SEN in the National Educational Panel Study (IntFös)

Summary
This project is a feasibility study on the analytical potential of comparing students with special educational needs (SEN) attending regular schools with those attending special schools as part of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS).

Background
In Germany, elementary and secondary school students with SEN mostly attend special schools that are not part of the regular school system. Only a small fraction of SEN-students are inclusively educated in regular schools (See KMK, Dokumentationen 190). In German they are also called “Integrationsschüler”. In recent years, however, a trend towards more inclusion in the regular school system has emerged. This trend coincides with the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in which Germany has committed itself to establishing an “inclusive education system”.

Students with SEN in the National Educational Panel Study
For the first time in Germany, the NEPS provides researchers with the opportunity to study the educational processes, competence acquisition, educational decisions, and school-to-work transitions of special needs students as part of a longitudinal representative study. To this end, supplementary samples of students with SEN from a variety of grade levels at special schools with an emphasis on “learning disabilities” are currently being surveyed. In addition, “Integrationsschüler” have been surveyed in the initial NEPS samples as well. Because of the small number of cases, however, these students are not represented to a sufficient degree, which is why oversampling has become necessary.

Aims of the project
The aim of the IntFös project is to examine whether, and if so how, an oversampling of “Integrationsschüler” may be realized within NEPS. In addition, we plan to develop indicators that will enable researchers to later study “Integrationsschüler” in statistical terms, and to compare them both with students attending regular schools and with students attending special schools. This is a complex project, because the practical implementation of integration/inclusion policies is handled very differently in each of the 16 federal states. This makes it even more difficult to identify “Integrationsschüler” in their respective classroom context. During the project, we will review the extent to which “Integrationsschüler” may be identified to a sufficient degree using the instruments currently available in NEPS. Moreover, we will seek to determine the number of cases and the sampling mode that will be required for making a robust comparison of students at regular and special schools. Finally, we will observe the legal and practical implementation of the integration/inclusion policies, as well as their future development in each of the 16 federal states, in order to ensure successful sampling and to create evidence based research instruments.