Parental Influence on Providing Education to Children with Special Need

It has been noted that there are less participations of special needy peoples in any sector of Sri Lanka. There may be more appropriate reasons for this less participation. One of the most important factors is insufficient qualifications to fulfil the recruitment process to get into the job or the profession. One factor of the insufficient qualifications is not having education in their childhood and not channelling for secondary and high education. The problem is why the parents of children with special needs are that much disconnected from the education opportunities available for Children with Special Needs in Sri Lanka. People of the society try to escape or hide from obstacles they can never win over the obstacles. Since most differently able children grow up among their family from a very young age, parent’s choices directly influence a child’s physical, mental and personality development.

While the government spending tremendous amount of money for the education of special need children, why most of parents do not use those opportunities for the wellbeing of their children and make them up to the level of having equal opportunity to be selected for professions specially have created for them? Purpose of this research is to find out influencing factors the parents to the education of Children with Special Needs and to make recommendation to improve level of life condition. Specifically, to identify education availabilities and level of using of education facilities for children with special needs in Sri Lanka and to identify the influencing factors of the parents.

Education availabilities for children with special needs can categorize in three main streams such as primary education, secondary education, and vocational education. 10.6% of school-aged children in Sri Lanka who have disabilities, 10.2% do not attend school because of their disability, meaning only 0.4% of these children attend school. That mean the level of using education facilities is only 3.85% by the children with special needs.

End of the research it was identified the parental factors which are effected to the influence to the education of special need y children under three main themes of ‘Parent and family factors’, ‘Child factors’ and ‘Societal factors and sub themes of them such as, Parents’ beliefs, Parents’ perceptions, Parents’ current life contexts, Age of children, Learning difficulties and disabilities, Behavioural problems, Parental attitude on community and Economic factors