All pupils have their needs, so children with 'special' needs should not be seen as fundamentally different, according to primary school educators who put autistic children in mainstream classes as much as possible.
'Education is about giving every child the help they need to develop, whether that need is 'special' or not,' John Brewster, principal of Beacon Hill School, said in an interview in the lead-up to the fifth annual World Autism Awareness Day, yesterday.
For the past seven years, Beacon Hill, a primary school in the English Schools Foundation (ESF) system, has been using an 'inclusive model' - putting children with special needs into mainstream classrooms.
The school currently has 21 special-needs children, all of whom take most of their classes with mainstream classmates. The are separated only for relatively short periods for special classes such as training in speech and social skills.
Beacon Hill's head of special-education needs, Belinda McLaughlin, said: 'It does mean extra effort [for teachers], but the benefits [of the inclusion model] far outweigh the added workload. Once the teachers see the results, they all become committed to the project.'
Francis Yu Sau-ying, of Autism Hong Kong, said that while the inclusion concept was 'very popular', it depended on a pupil's level of autism.