Additional Education for Children with Special Needs and Disabilities in the Russian Federation: National Monitoring Concept

The development of inclusive education progresses at different speeds across the world. In the Russian Federation inclusive education is developing primarily at the school level but one of the most crucial aspects of socialization is additional education, and in this regard the needs of children with special needs and disabilities remain an outstanding issue. A concept of the national monitoring of additional education for children with special needs and disabilities is proposed. The article presents the project of the toolkit for the national monitoring of entities engaged in additional educational activities for children with special needs and disabilities, which includes eight blocks: organizational structure of entities engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children in each constituent territory of the Russian Federation; implementation of additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities in entities with various subordination and organizational structures; material and technical support; staffing and professional training for specialists engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities; information on ongoing additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities; typical obstacles which arise in the course of activities organized by entities engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities; information resources and the system of inter-agency interaction in the course of the implementation of additional educational programs for children, including those with special needs and disabilities; financing of entities engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children. The presence/absence of a regional centre of additional education for children is going to be identified, as well as its official name, and the number of subordinate entities which implement additional educational programs in the corresponding Russian region in various areas: arts, sports, science, sociology and pedagogy, technical sciences, tourism and local history, intellectual games. The article could be of assistance for experts who study inclusion problems.


Introduction
In terms of its importance, additional education is becoming tantamount to classical basic education. It is especially crucial for low-mobility groups of population including disabled people who prove to be socially and economically deprived in the Russian society. The consumption of additional educational services contributes to comprehensive development of the disabled people's personality, allows them to develop their skills or master a new profession, and encourages further employment and start of an independent life [1]. Moreover, preparation for higher education begins at school. All the skills that the student acquires while studying at school help him/her enter a higher educational institution and study there successfully. In this sense, additional education becomes an important advantage that increases the competitiveness of a particular person.
Education of people with limited abilities is one of the high-priority vectors of the social and economic development in the Russian Federation. Within the framework of the topic under consideration, two backgrounded but significant in their meaning thematic blocks related to the problems of higher education can be distinguished.
The first is the pre-university training of children with disabilities through the experience of additional education. In order to successfully solve the problem of obtaining an education by students with disabilities in a higher educational institution, the total availability of education should be ensured, a system of social, psychological, and pedagogic support should be implemented, and the students' desire to reveal the potential. At the present stage of social development, the educational process is also a process of self-development, self-realization, and selfdetermination of each person.
For successful adaptation of the students with disabilities within the system of higher education, the inclusion must start much earlier, during the school years. It is also necessary for the conditionally healthy students. It can help to reduce the communicative barriers of both parties, as well as get the disabled students more prepared for the stage of university education [2]. The combination of these two aspectspre-university training and the desire for selfdevelopment and self-realization -for children
with disabilities, who later become students, is possible by additional education. The second is the training of personnel who will work in institutions of additional tuition for children with intermediate education. It depends on the additional education teachers to reveal the potential of students who come in order to satisfy their curiosity, in practice to get acquainted with different types of creative activity.
Therefore, teachers obliged to take into account the needs of the modern generation of children or adolescents with normal and abnormal development. After all, time requires mastering new skills, new forms and methods of work, the search for effective ways of teaching and upbringing. It means that the question of the professional competence of teachers of additional education, including working with children with disabilities, is sharply raised [3].
The necessity of sociological assessment of the disabled people's social status is associated with the relevance of elaborating efficient measures for providing them with favorable conditions for social adaptation and introducing such measures to the social practice [4]. Education is closely related to the realization of human rights but when it comes to children with special needs and disabilities, the reality sometimes does not allow exercising such rights in full due to numerous reasons -from public opinion which presents a significant barrier towards socialization of disabled people and their becoming full members of society, to infrastructural issues [5].
Over the past decade a legal framework for ensuring equal rights of disabled people, including children, has been elaborated in Russia and has been included in such initiatives as the National strategy of actions in favor of children 2012-2017, the Concept of state family policy in the Russian Federation till 2025, and the «Accessible environment 2011-2020» state program. The main program document in this regard is the Federal standards of primary education for children with special needs and mental retardation. Large-scale work for the organization of educational process for children with special needs and disabilities is being performed.
For instance, the opportunity of introducing psychological, medical, and pedagogical commissions has already been assessed, which will provide comprehensive assistance to children with limited abilities and will serve as an initial phase of the process which shapes further personal educational path of each child [6]. Besides, the model of the inclusive education management has been elaborated taking into consideration the specific context of psychological, medical, and pedagogical commissions [7] (Fig. 1).
Along with the issue of the disabled people's social status and the ambivalence of the word «disabled» itself to which contemporary Russian society prefers the term «people with limited abilities» (in contrast to the Western society where such patients are most frequently called «people with special needs»), another issue rises related to the method of the socialization of disabled children. Among other children, who belong themselves to a separate social group, disabled children are distinguished by the presence of special needs, which, along with the ambiguous attitude of the society towards such individuals, hinder considerably the process of socialization of such children [8]. That is why inclusion experts shall focus not only on school education as primary stage of general education in Russia but also on additional education which precedes this stage and at the same time goes hand in hand with it, affecting directly the socialization of a child with special needs. As a matter of fact, such needs relate not only to education but also to existential issues. S. Bengtsson notes that, «however, a large part of the effect of education on the ability to cope with a disability among individuals with disabilities was suggestive of a causal relationship» [9].
Educational activities aimed at implementing additional educational programs are of high relevance and attract researchers by insufficient coverage of the issue of pre-professional training and gaining new professional knowledge and skills by adults with special needs and disabilities, as well as ways, approaches, conditions, methodology, and techniques of the adult education. The orientation of additional educa-

AreAs of HigHer educAtion ModernizAtion
Vysshee obrazovanie v Rossii = Higher Education in Russia. 2021, vol. 30, no. 6. tional programs is outlined in the Order dated 29.08.2013, No.1008, which contains the following requirements [10]: • shaping and development of creative abilities; • meeting of the students' individual needs in terms of their mental, artistic, aesthetic, moral, and physical development; • shaping of a healthy and safe lifestyle, and health improvement; • provision of moral, patriotic, and labor education; • provision of career guidance; • creation and ensuring of the necessary conditions for personal development, health improvement, professional self-identification, and creative labor; • ensuring socialization and adaptation for the life in society; • shaping of general culture; • meeting of other educational needs and interests which do not contradict the legislation of the Russian Federation and which are not included in the federal educational standards and state requirements.
The assessment of the necessity of additional educational programs and entities engaged in organizing educational activities for children with special needs and disabilities in the constituent territories of the Russian Federation is complicated by the lack of a consolidated database of such entities and by the specific context of such regions. The proposed monitoring system aims at solving these issues.

Materials and methods.
Monitoring is a longitudinal observation of the state/development of the object over a sufficiently long period of time with the use of same methodology and system of indicators. The following requirements are imposed for the monitoring: the system of indicators shall adequately reflect substantive characteristics of the object and its performance; a multi-purpose block of indicators shall be used in order to enable performing comparative analysis and creating time series; it is necessary to preserve methodological sustainability of the information in order to reduce the possibility of subjective interpretation of the data obtained. Monitoring is an optimal way of tracking and predicting social changes in the presence of transformational processes [11, p. 11]. That is why this method is proposed for the organization of studying additional educational activities in Russia, since it will help both detect the existing bottlenecks and register their dynamics in the course of future measurements. Results. The toolkit for the conduct of the national monitoring contains the following blocks: 1. Organizational structure of entities engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children in each constituent territory of the Russian Federation. The presence/ absence of a regional center of additional education for children is going to be identified, as well as its official name, and the number of subordinate entities which implement additional educational programs in the corresponding Russian region in various areas: arts, sports, science, sociology and pedagogy, technical sciences, tourism and local history, intellectual games.
2. Implementation of additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities in entities with various subordination and organizational structures. Within this block the following information is going to be provided for the entities in each educational area: number of students with special needs, the year these entities started working with such children, availability of data on the official website of the entities including links to papers dedicated to the work with disabled children. Apart from the above-mentioned statistical review, the name and the description of the best program implemented by additional educational entities that work with disabled children in each area in each Russian region are going to be identified, which will enable future exchange of experience between different constituent territories of the Russian Federation.
3. Material and technical support. This block implies obtaining information on the number of entities engaged in implementing additional educational programs in each constituent territory of the Russian Federation, and their equipment status according to the «Accessible environment» program: architectural accessibility (wheelchair ramps, light boards, tactile or Braille indicators, etc.); adaptive and rehabilitation equipment in classrooms; specialized tactile equipment in each educational entity in each Russian region for various areas (education, culture, sports, social security, pri-vate non-commercial organizations). Besides, the regions are going to provide information on the equipment they use for improving the quality of additional education of children with special needs and disabilities. 4. Staffing and professional training for specialists engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities. This block implies obtaining information on specialists engaged in delivering additional education to children with special needs and disabilities in entities with various subordination and organizational structures, as well as whether they have undertaken advanced training on working with children with limited abilities in the past three years.
5. Information on ongoing additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities. This block focuses on obtaining data on current additional educational programs in each area, namely the number of entities which implement additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities, number of educational programs for such children comparing to the total number of programs, number of disabled students comparing to the total number of students. 6. Typical obstacles which arise in the course of activities organized by entities engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities. Within this block, the regions are going to describe main problems they face in the course of the implementation of additional educational programs for disabled children, and elaborate proposals aimed at improving the efficiency of their work with such children. 7. Information resources and the system of inter-agency interaction in the course of the implementation of additional educational programs for children, including those with special needs and disabilities. The regions are going to list information resources they use and to describe their experience of inter-agency interaction in the context of providing additional education. 8. Financing of entities engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children. This block implies obtaining information on the financing scheme of entities engaged in providing additional education for children in each Russian region in 2019 for each area (education, culture, sports, social security, private non-commercial organizations). Besides, the data on their financial sources is going to be obtained: own budgetary funds of the entity (subsidies for the fulfillment of the state task with the use of the federal budget, subsidies for the fulfillment of the regional task with the use of the regional budget, subsidies for other purposes); income-generating activity (income from delivering commercial services (execution of works) in favor of consumers); non-repayable monetary proceeds (sponsorship, voluntary donations of individuals and legal entities); grants, miscellaneous. Information on the financing scheme of entities engaged in implementing additional educational programs for children with special needs and disabilities in each Russian region in 2019 is going to be provided in the same format.
Monitoring blocks reflect main requirements of the Order of the Ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation dated 29.08.2013, No. 1008 "Approval of the procedure for the organization and implementation of the activities related to additional educational programs".

Conclusions
The above-described concept of the national monitoring of additional education for children with special needs and disabilities presents the first stage of a large-scale national project dedicated to the issues related to additional education of children with special needs. The efficiency of this concept remains to be seen but the project itself is an illustrative case study to be discussed by education, inclusion, and comparative analysis experts at the international level.