Special Education

The Directorate of Special Education is responsible for identifying the handicapped students and the supervision of students with special needs in public schools as well as special institutions abroad.

Some government schools have remedial classes for slow learners and low achievers according to the school's needs for these classes. The Ministry also adopts in a group of schools the project of integrating students with special needs into ordinary classes together with their normal peers with the aim of avoiding their separation from the environmental life, i.e., the ordinary schools and classes.

The Directorate of Special Education takes also the responsibility of discovering other cases such as mentally retardation, deaf, speech defect, and blind in government schools and transferring them to the specialized institutions and centers supported by the Ministry.

A number of specialized institutions are available in Bahrain such as:

The Saudi-Bahraini Institute for the Blind: It is a regional institute located in Bahrain. It provides educational training and cultural programs in addition to full health, social and psychological care for sight-impaired boys and girls. The institute uses the same grade structure and curriculum as the regular public schools for primary and intermediate levels. Students who complete their intermediate level are transferred to regular secondary schools, which provide them with special care. The institute uses Braille as a method of instruction.

For more information, please visit our site
http://www.blindinstitute.org

Al-Amal Institute: It is established by Child and Motherhood Care Society with the aim of fulfilling the need of the society in finding such specialized educational services in special education. Admission requirements for the Al-Amal Institute specify that students be less severe retarded and do not have any other disabilities in addition to mental retardation. The student's age must be 6-12 years old for the educational program and 12-15 years old for the vocational training program. The students are classified according to their learning abilities, not the academic levels.
The Institute offers individualized educational services for the mentally retarded through designing an individual educational-instructional plan for each student using special curricula adapted to the abilities and needs of students which include various skills such as arithmetic, language, social and motor skills.

Social Rehabilitation Center: It is run by the Ministry of Social Development, where a variety of vocational and academic rehabilitation programs for handicapped children and youth are provided. It consists of four units as follows

1. Hearing Defect Unit: The students' age in this unit must be between 3-15 years old. The unit uses the same grade structure and curriculum as the regular public schools for primary level; and adopts the following methods of instruction: speech training; reading; writing; lip-reading; sign language; and finger alphabet.
   
   
2. Special Education Unit: The students' age in this unit must be between 12-15 years old. The duration of study in this unit is two years can be renewable according to the students' abilities. It is mainly for mentally retarded children with less severe retardation. The unit's program includes academic, social and pre-vocational skills, which help the students to integrate into the society, and is considered as a traditional period to the vocational unit.
   
   
3. Vocational Rehabilitation Unit: The students in this unit must be in the age of sixteen. The unit's programs are provided for the students aiming at achieving the economic efficiency by making the students work in a certain occupations and be adapted to it.
   
   
4. Craft Workshop Unit: The students in this unit must be in the age of sixteen. It is provided for handicapped youth who are unable to work in an ordinary labour market conditions by offering them with an opportunity to be trained on various occupational areas adapted to their physical abilities and intellectual levels. The occupational training programs focus on the following: carpentry; farming; tailoring and handiwork; home economics; special skills; machine repair and handicrafts.