The government proposed replacing the term “mental retardation” – Kommersant

The Cabinet submitted to the State Duma a bill to replace the term “mental retardation” with “intellectual disability” in the education law. This is stated in the explanatory note notewhich is published in the parliament’s electronic database.

The documents accompanying the bill say that the term “mentally retarded” is incorrect and deliberately limits the opportunities for children with such a diagnosis. In addition, the cabinet proposed establishing a unified procedure for providing psychological, pedagogical, medical and social assistance in order to provide students who “have difficulty mastering the program” with equal rights.

As stated in the explanatory note, the government proposes to oblige the creation of special conditions for people with disabilities. The Cabinet also proposed to clarify the conditions that teachers must observe when working with children with disabilities.

In October, VTsIOM published the results of a survey according to which three-quarters of Russian families consider it useful to educate children together, regardless of their health status. About half of the parents could not answer whether there were children with disabilities at their child’s school.

Read more in the Kommersant article. “Inclusive assessment”.

Petr Buzlaev