Assessment of inclusion advising in mainstream schools: Fundació EIS - El Niu

Abstract

This article frames the project carried out by Fundació EIR - El Niu, supporting the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs in ordinary schools in Barcelona. To begin with, the article starts with a brief review of its history and trajectory, and goes on to explain how the support for inclusion is put into practice. Later on, it is showcased how the Fundació EIR - El Niu’s team realized about the need to assess results and bring scientific evidence to the work that was being carried out; with the goal to develop best practices based on evidence. It is explained how, in order to carry out this assessment, questionnaires were developed to track evolution of 23 students with disabilities, which were answered by professionals from different regular schools in Barcelona that Fundació EIR - El Niu works in partnership with. The obtained results, represented by graphs, positively value the evolution of the students in all the blocks of questions, corroborating that support to inclusion optimizes the resources of ordinary schools, improving the schools’ practices to focus on diversity.