Official Policy Regarding Special Needs Education in Quebec

It would be useful to have more immediate and ready access to, and wider distribution of, the policies concerning special needs in Quebec schools. These policies were adopted about six or seven years ago, as required by the Ministry of Education. Each school board adopted its own policy based on a model provided by MELS, which was then modified in a consultative process with the various stakeholders.

In the future, these policies will be linked here on the sidebar.

This information is being put here as a reference, rather than to provoke questions or concerns. It must be said though, when one see how nearly identical the different school boards' policies are, it is curious how differently special needs education is handled in practice, from one board to another. For example, just the fact that REACH School, in St. Lambert on the south shore is the only public English language special needs school in the Montreal area is quite surprising. The other English special needs schools in the Montreal area are either private or run by charitable organizations. In fairness, most of these differences date back to the randomly differing ways that special needs education was originally handled in different communities.  

This is a link to the policy identified as "Special Education Services" on the Riverside School Board website.

The complete title of the document is: Policy Concerning the Organization of Educational Services
for Students with Handicaps and Students with Social
Maladjustments or Learning Disabilities


On the English Montreal School Board site, there are two similar policies.

This is a link to the Special Needs Policy of the English Montreal School Board. This is only a one-page document.

The complete title of the document is: A Policy Adopting Standards and Procedures for the Organization of Educational Services for Handicapped Students and Students with Social Maladjustments or Learning Disabilities

The other policy on the EMSB site is identified as the Special Education Policy.on the EMSB website and the full title of it is: POLICY GOVERNING THE ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES FOR STUDENTS WITH HANDICAPS, SOCIAL MALADJUSTMENTS OR LEARNING DISABILITIES

This latter is the one that resembles the Riverside School Board policy. It would be most interesting to go through and identify any consequential differences between the two policies.

UPDATE: Oct. 7 - A copy of the document has now been circulated - posting it up on this site will be looked into. It is 50 or 60 pages.