Pre-school and school integration or co-education consists of allowing hearing-impaired children with the right capacities to receive a part or the whole of their schooling in groups made up of children with no hearing impairment.

It is considered as a means for certain hearing-impaired children to achieve a better social integration than by exclusive attendance at schools for children with their special needs.

This definition involves integrated or co-educated hearing-impaired children being essentially capable of responding to the demands of an education that is not specifically tailored to their needs.  It also requires audiophonological and pedagogical support.

It is complete when the hearing-impaired child receives the whole of his or her schooling in groups of children with no hearing impairment.

It is partial when the hearing-impaired child has to receive a part of his or her schooling in a specialised establishment or group.

Pre-school and school integration or co-education is a process complementary to special needs education, but is not a substitute for it since it is suited only to certain hearing-impaired children and not to all.

Parameters to be taken into account for possible pre-school or school integration or co-education of a hearing-impaired child in a class made up of children with no hearing impairment.

A.  Audiological characteristics of the child with or without hearing-aid, which include :
     1°) the extent of hearing loss
     2°) the type of hearing impairment
     3°) the child’s age at the onset of hearing impairment
     4°) the nature, developing or not, of the hearing impairment
     5°) the efficacy of the hearing-aid

B.  Date when the hearing-impaired child was first taken into the care of a specialised audiophonology team.  The follow-up to this care.

C.  Medico-psycho-pedagogic profile of the hearing-impaired child drawn up by the team
    (as in B) which has been in charge of the child, including :

 1°) intellectual faculties ; development of abstraction capacity, psycho-affective
     equilibrium and sensitive-motor development ;
 2°) absence or presence of related disorders ;
 3°) personal motivation for education and possible integration ;
 4°) particular aptitudes
    · for oral language (comprehension and expression) both in its articulatory aspects and its lexicological, grammatical and syntactic aspects ;
    · for lip-reading, alone or with manual help ;
    · for the use of residual hearing capacity ;
    · for written language (comprehension and expression) ;
    · for any other means of expression or reception of the linguistic message.
 5°) pedagogic acquisition level.

D.  The hearing-impaired child’s environment :

 1°) Family environment :
    · affective situation ;
    · attitude towards the disability ;
    · information level, motivation as to integration :
    · participation in education : aptitude, availability ;
    · socio-economic level.
 2°) Social environment (extended family, friends, neighbours, ...) :
    · information level ;
    · attitude towards the child with a disability.

E.  Conditions for introduction into non-hearing impaired children’s school and extracurricular activities :

 1°) recognised general teacher-training for teachers in receiving groups ;
 2°) specific preliminary information followed by active commitment by the receiving
      team to the experience proposed.
 3°) presence of an educational team composed for each child of representatives of the
      specialised audiophonological team, representatives of the receiving structures and
      the parents of the child concerned.

This team has a number of means of action :
· it ensures constant collaboration and in particular the necessary link-ups by means of meetings, visits to classes, advice given, interventions made ;
· it organises appropriate and continuing support ;
· it assesses periodically the efficacy level of the integration process under way ; it can, if need be, make it more flexible, modify or even propose terminating it, and advise different orientations, while endeavouring to maintain effective guidance.

        Gesves (B), 1st May 1985