Special Education

As introduced by the Taiwan Yearbook 2006:

Special education includes programs and facilities for gifted children, as well as those with special needs due to handicaps or learning disabilities.

Special schools for blind, deaf, physically handicapped, and mentally challenged students are generally operated by the government and run parallel to the mainstream educational system, extending from preschool through senior vocational school. In SY2005, there were 6,361 students in 24 such schools. Since the formulation of the Special Education Act in 1984, increased flexibility and support has been given to handicapped children or those with health problems with regards to schooling, including visits from itinerant special education workers at school, home, or in hospital.

Mainstream schools offer classes for special students (disabled, gifted, or talented), providing facilities to meet their special needs from elementary to senior high and senior vocational school. These classes come in two forms: resource room and self-contained special class. Special students placed in resource rooms attend regular courses with other students at ordinary classes but return to resource rooms for specialized counseling and training. For students placed in self-contained special classes, however, all schooling activities are conducted in the same class.

Gifted students are classified as those who have superior abilities in either mathematics or the sciences, whereas talented students are those who excel in music, art, dance, or sports. Given the worldwide trend toward inclusive education, most classes offered for disabled and gifted students come in the form of resource rooms, while those for talented students mostly still take the form of self-contained special classes so as to provide specialized support for artistic cultivation and achievement through centralized management.