Teachers warn inclusion is weakening academic standards

Teachers across Denmark say efforts to include all pupils are harming the quality of teaching, DR reports, as schools face the consequences of historically poor PISA results.

Several local teacher association leaders told DR News that inclusion is a key reason pupils in Denmark’s public schools have become academically weaker.

In Odense, the responsibility for accommodating all pupils and their individual needs is seriously affecting teaching quality, said Charlotte Holm, chair of the Odense Teachers’ Association.

“If you want inclusion, you cannot do it with one teacher, because then you cannot reach everyone. We know there are pupils who feel that they have to wait again. That is not fair,” she said.

Teachers in Himmerland face the same pressure, said Morten Kamstrup Mikkelsen, chair of the Himmerland Teachers’ Association. He said some pupils do not receive the support teachers believe they need.

“Inclusion challenges are the single factor that takes up the most space when our members contact us and ask what we should do about it,” he said.

According to Kamstrup Mikkelsen, the problem arises when a few pupils take up too much of a teacher’s time, disrupting the entire plan for what the class is meant to learn.

“Quite bluntly, that learning will not take place, which means that the academic outcome is not as high as it could and should be under normal circumstances,” he said.

Minister to face consultation

Education Minister Magnus Heunicke of the Social Democrats was due to attend a parliamentary consultation later in the day about the challenges facing Denmark’s public schools.

Gordon Ørskov Madsen, chair of the Danish Union of Teachers, also identified inclusion as one of teachers’ biggest everyday challenges.

“Schools are facing a huge inclusion task that is underfunded and has not succeeded. This affects the classroom because there are pupils who actually need special support but do not receive it,” he said.

“When you stand alone as a teacher with 25 pupils, some with diagnoses, some with particular social problems, and others with learning difficulties and problems concentrating, it is far too big a task to handle alone.”

Asked whether having pupils with different needs was simply a condition of being a teacher, Madsen said it was not realistic for one teacher to manage a class of 25 pupils alone given the complexity and diversity of today’s classrooms.

His view is supported by a Danish Union of Teachers survey conducted in March, in which 1,168 teachers took part. Fifty-three percent said they experienced every day that the inclusion task negatively affected the quality of teaching.

A few pupils take up half a teacher’s time

Dan Støttrup Nielsen, a teacher at Suldrup School between Hobro and Aalborg, said he felt the impact of inclusion problems in his classroom.

He said he always entered the classroom with full energy, but that a few pupils could consume 40 to 50 percent of his resources because they required additional support.

When so much energy goes to a few pupils, he said, time is taken away from the rest of the class.

“It is frustrating for me as a teacher that I have not been able to give all of them what they need to challenge them academically,” Nielsen said.

School researcher Andreas Rasch said the idea of inclusion in Denmark’s public schools was not itself flawed. The problem was how it was being implemented.

“It was not a wrong decision when it was taken years ago, nor is the ambition to include more pupils wrong today. The problem is that you cannot simply announce it or decide on it as a strategy. You have to invest in it, and that is what is missing,” he said.

Calls for more money for public schools

Anders Winnerskjold of the Social Democrats, chair of the Local Government Denmark committee on children and education, said municipalities had spent more money in recent years on placing children in special classes and special schools.

An analysis by the Economic Council of the Labour Movement found that about 28 percent of the public school system’s total funding was spent on the approximately 7 percent of pupils attending special schools.

Winnerskjold said more money needed to be invested in mainstream public schools.

“We have spent much more money on special education than on mainstream education. My clear recommendation is that if we are to succeed in both areas, we need to invest in mainstream education so that we can help some of the children and families who are struggling today,” he said.

He said he hoped the government would invest more in public schools in the coming years.