For six years, the autistic child of a French girl has been taught in a special facility for students with special needs. His mother saw his human right to education violated because the French authorities did not want to let it go to a regular school.
Now the mother has failed with her complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. The court dismissed the appeal as unfounded (application number 2282/17).
In the special facility, the teaching methods are adapted to the impairment of the child. In addition, the child, when it was still taught at a regular school, had little contact with other students, have neither read nor written.
The French authorities had weighed the special needs of the child against the potential benefits of regular schooling and concluded that a specialized institution was more appropriate. Lack of resources at mainstream schools were not decisive for the decision.
The yardstick for the justification of the judges in Strasbourg is the 1950 Convention on Human Rights and its first additional protocol, which in 1952 declared the right to education.
The 2008 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, on the other hand, is significantly further in its demands. France has also ratified the document. It envisages that students with and without special needs should be taught together.