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Riksgymnasiet in Kristianstad
SÖDERPORTGYMNASIET The National Upper Secondary School specially
The right to education for everyone. "The objective of Swedish disability policy must be a society that enables people with disabilities to participate fully in the life of the community." This is the essence of the Government´s proposal from 1999. The state and the municipalities are responsible for schools in Sweden. The state sets overall national goals and monitors how they are fullfilled.
Kristianstad. Kristianstad is situated in the south of Sweden and was founded in 1614 by a Danish king, as this part of Sweden at that time belonged to Denmark. Christian IV gave his name to the town and there are a lot of ancient memories belonging to the Danish period. Today the city is an attractive shopping area with 74 000 inhabitants. The surroundings of Kristianstad are known worldwide. Kristianstad was built in the wetlands to be easy to protect from enemies. Today the wetlands are considered to be an area of such value that Sweden has taken special international steps to preserve it within the Ramsar Site Convention on Wetlands. The whole area is a unique echological museum along the shores of the river Helge.The river Helge ends in the Baltic Sea, where the famous white sandy shores are popular in the summer. Here you can find Åhus, a charming and idyllic mediaeval village with half-timbered houses and narrow winding streets and a holiday resort during the summer.
Education in Sweden Education and studies influence the whole way of life of everyone and play an important role in reducing social disparities. Furthermore, an education nearly always leads to increased social and cultural activities. Education provides pleasure and a feeling of solidarity. A good education as well as recurrent studies can be decisive factors in one´s life. Students with disabilities are entitled to the same opportunities as everyone else. For a small group of young persons in Sweden, with physically disabilities, there are specially adapted upper secondary school courses placed in ordinary upper secondary schools. Their disabilities are so severe that they require individually adapted teaching supported by coordinated arrangements for personal care to enable them to participate fully at school.
All municipalities in Sweden are required by law to offer upper secondary schooling to all students who have completed their compulsory basic schooling. Upper secondary schooling is free of charge and voluntary. Upper secondary school in Sweden provides basic skills both for working life and life in community. There are 17 national programmes, all of which are three years in length. They provide a broad-based general education and provide qualifications for further study at university or college. By combining special subjects from various programmes, a municipality can create specially designed programmes. A specially designed programme can also be individually tailored for a student in order to cater for individual learning needs. The new curriculum provides students with a significant influence on teaching contents and method and also on the school situation in general. Most young persons with functional impairment of different kinds attend ordinary upper secondary school classes, but there are also four special national upper secondary schools for students with physical disabilities in different parts of Sweden. Here the students are guaranteed personal care, boarding houses, treatment and training. SISUS, the National Agency for Special Educational Support, supplies the government subsidies to the students, follows and evaluates these activities. The decision whether to admit the pupil to the upper secondary school for disabled or not is taken by the Disability Board. As far as possible the pupil will be accepted in the region he or she chooses.
Söderportskolan - national upper secondary school. Students with severe disabilities can have their specially adapted upper secondary education with able-bodied students in the ordinary upper secondary schools situated in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Umeå and Kristianstad. At these schools you can either study together with other students with disabilities in small classes or ordinary classes. You can also make your own mixture, i.e studying some subjects in a small class and some subjects in an ordinary class. Söderportskolan is located in the middle of Kristianstad close to the city. Among the 850 students at Söderportskolan there are about 50 physically disabled students. The students at our school come from all over Sweden but mostly from the southern parts. The education for physically disabled students started in Kristianstad in 1993. The school was built in 1874 and has been renovated and adjusted to the needs of the physically disabled students. All together it has become a great mixture of an old building construction and new technology. Söderportskolan has been equipped with special rooms for rehabilitation, specially designed classrooms, big toilet rooms och elevators. The RG-students have access to all local upper secondary schools in Kristianstad, but most of them pursue some part of or all their studies at RG - Söderportskolan. The student may choose any educational programme offered in Kristianstad and each student follows an individual course of study, adapted to the student´s interests, capacity and needs. Many of our students plan their studies over a period of 4 or 5 years instead of 3 years. In this way they can have their rehabilitation integrated into the school schedule. Each student studies on his/her own level and at his/her own speed. Treatment and training is an essential part of our policy. They can also use the school library, which is equipped with computers, when they study on their own. A pupil who, for one reason or other, has difficulty in following instructions in class can receive various kinds of support. A remedial teacher, for example, can assist and support the pupil in the classroom or teach the pupil in a special group. A pupil who is ill for a considerable time or is frequently absent from school on account of illness is entitled to be taught in hospital or at home. Six remedial teachers, two vocational advisers and a headmaster give support and advice to students as well as to all other teachers involved at RG-Söderportskolan. RG -Söderportskolan also has its own computer technician. He works in school to help the students and the teachers to get along with technical problems, installing and adapting new hard- and software.technician. More than 30% of the students at RG are studying together with able-bodied students, the rest of the students study in special units where both teaching materials and rate of study are adapted to each student´s capacity and needs. All classrooms are equipped with computers adjusted to the pupils´ needs. An interesting subject at our school is Media, a subject where the students learn how to make commercial films, working in a TV-studio and also how to work with graphics and layouts on the computer. This programme also produces prints, T-shirt prints, homepages, visiting cards and animations.
Assistants. In school there is a team of assistants who help the students. The assistants take care of all the students' needs during the school day. The assistants help the students with their schoolwork during lessons, breaks and with homework after school. They also assist in transporting the students to their accommodation and to the other upper secondary schools in Kristianstad. The assistants´ goal is to make the students independent and give them as much responsibility as possible. At the accomodation there is another team of assistants supporting the students during nights and weekends. Each student has a special contact-assistant both in school and at the accomodation.
Rehabilitation. As a part of RG´s policy on treatment and training the students also have access to a rehabilitation team at Söderportskolan and in another building close to the school. This team consists of occupational therapists, a speech therapist, physiotherapists, school welfare officers, a nurse, a physician and psychologists. They work with the students both at school and at home. The main goal is to teach the students to get along with their lives and live in a flat of their own. The students pay scheduled visits to the rehabilitation team according to each student´s needs. You can also make separate appointments with teachers, assistants and the staff in the rehabilitation team.
Accomodation Each student is offered a well adapted accomodation with support service 24 hours a day. They stay in flats in five different places in Kristianstad. Four of them are located in the city centre and from here you can find your way to school. The fifth accomodation is located about one kilometre from the city centre and the school. Thanks to the central location of each flat there are many possibilities for the students to take part in Kristianstad´s cultural and recreational activities, such as the library, the concert hall, the new cinema, the sports centre, the swimming-baths and of course they can go shopping and take part in special shopping offers and activities in the city every last Saturday of the month. You can also join the activities arranged by the rehabilitation team and the accomodation staff. For example wheelchair dancing, swimming, boccia, horse riding, shooting and different groups of conversation about urgent subjects. The school also has access to a holiday cottage in Åhus, on the Baltic Sea.
Co-operators. Offering disabled children and young people a quality education requires special competence and specially adapted educational material, but any municipality can´t be expected to provide the special competence that is required. That is why the state, through SIH, Swedish National Agency for Special Needs Education, provides instructional support to municipal schools for their disabled children and young people. RG - Söderportskolan works together with a number of local and regional partners. One is the local office of SIH in Kristianstad with a consultant for physically disabled students. He informs the students after leaving the nine-year compulsory school that there is a possibility to continue their studies at one of the four national upper secondary schools. They also arrange courses for teachers and assistants in order to improve their professional knowledge of disabilities. The Computer Resource Centre, DAHJM in Lund, is a regional centre which offers advice and supporting services regarding the adaptation of computer- based aids for use both at school and at home. It provides the users, their families, assistants and teachers with instruction in how to use the aids. The centre also participates in equipping and adapting the working environment to make it suitable for physically disabled people.
After leaving upper secondary school. Possibilities. Before the students leave school contact is made with a regional Labour Market Resource Centre for Disabled People, AF Resurs, whose main goal is to make it easier for disabled people to find, get and keep a job or to go on with their studies at a higher level. The centre has the special resources and expertise needed for the rehabilitation of people with a restricted ability to move about. After leaving upper secondary school you can either go to an adult education college or to the university and colleges of higher education. The adult education college offers a wide and varied range of courses. Most of the schools are boarding schools. In order to make it easier for disabled persons to have access to adult education, the schools often offer adapted tuition, social support and the possibilitity of an accessible environment.
Mission. The National Upper Secondary School for Physically Disabled Students, RG - Gymnasiet, and the different resource centres work together to obtain the main goal for their mission as stated by the Swedish Parliament and Government: " Children and teenagers with disabilities have the same right to personal development and education as others in society ".
If you like to read more about Kristianstad, Söderportskolan, The Wetlands, The National Upper Secondary Schools for Physically Disabled in Sweden you can find information on the internet at the following websites: www.edu.kristianstad.se/soderport/ www.vattenriket.kristianstad.se/ www.skolverket.se/english/system/upper.html
Kristianstad 2001-05-09 First edition Gunnar Niklasson
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