Bishop's Conservatory School, Gozo in "One School for All" project

The Bishop's Conservatory School of Victoria Gozo is in its second year of a Comenius 1 school project, "One School for All". This project is focusing on inclusive education policies in the countries of the partner schools and how each school is making provisions to achieve this goal. Partner schools hail from Germany, Poland, Iceland, Spain and Greece.

Recently the Second Lyceum of Alimos in Athens hosted a project meeting to discuss the educational strategies adopted by each school during this scholastic year and compare experiences. Meetings were held at this school, the Fifth Gymnasium of Alimos and the Hermes School.

The first two schools are state secondary schools catering for students in Forms 1, 2, and 3. The Hermes School is for mentally and physically disabled students partly funded by the Ministry of Health and the regional administration, the parents themselves and fund-raising activities. Hermes, a non-governmental organisation, is responsible for the school's administration.

During these school visits presentations were made about the educational system in each country and how the partner schools, including the Greek schools visited, were introducing and developing inclusive education. Each school brought up several problems they were facing during the implementation of inclusive education.

These included lack of funds to employ professional staff to consistently support students with special needs; lack of trained staff; and no incentives to encourage staff to train in the field of special educational needs.

Schools that accept special needs students especially those with behaviour and emotional problems are stigmatised. Mainstream teachers are not always willing to adapt their teaching styles to accommodate the special needs students in their class.

There were problems with accessing the curriculum, educational structures to implement inclusive education are still very poor, while statementing may be denied to special needs students as their families will then pay less tax and receive special allowances.

On the last day of the project meeting, the co-ordinators of each school made presentations about their schools and explained how inclusive education is being practised. Fr Carmel Gauci, head of the Bishop's Conservatory School, made a power point presentation where he showed students in the inclusion classes at work. He also talked about the arrangements the school had to make to support the students with special needs who are on the increase each scholastic year.

Carmen Grech, the project co-ordinator, who visits the school as a peripatetic teacher of the hearing-impaired, talked about the milestones of inclusive education in the Maltese Islands.

This final meeting ended by discussing the schedule of activities for next year. One of the highlights is going to be a Website on the project with information about each partner country, inclusive education and the schools participating in the project. Next year being the 390th anniversary of the death of Cervantes (1616), it was agreed that each partner school will concentrate on activities to make its students aware of this famous author and his literature.

Filitsa Frousaki, the Greek school co-ordinator and other teachers were remarkable hosts. They organised a cultural trip to the historical and picturesque island of Aegina and to the temple at Sounion to watch the most impressive sunset through the majestic colonnades of the ancient remains.