Specialized services for students with special educational needs in the Spanish education system

Abstract

Educational guidance in Spain is organized as an institutionalized network of internal and external services at the education system in order to guarantee attention to the diversity of students. The aim of this study is to assess the offer of guidance services in Spain, focusing on services in charge of students with special educational needs. In this study, regulations on educational guidance (n = 51 documents) at Primary Education of the seventeen Autonomous Communities and the Autonomous Cities (Ceuta and Melilla) are analyzed and compared by means of content analyses. Results of this research indicate that the most frequent educational guidance services are, on the one hand, general services known as Educational and Psychopedagogical Guidance Services comprised of counsellors that visit schools on part-time basis and offer their services to the general population of students and, on the other hand, specialized services for students with special educational needs due to specific disabilities or disorders. As a new tendency, full-time internal educational guidance units have emerged at schools in 6 Autonomous Communities that substitute or coexist with Educational and Psychopedagogical Guidance Services. The main conclusion of this study is that, although there is a fairly common structure at national level regarding educational guidance services for mainstream students, there is certain heterogeneity of services for students with special educational needs in terms of types of disabilities, organization, functions and characteristics.