Special education in Thailand

The treatment and education of special needs students in Thailand is something that has startled me from day one, and it's a concept that I'm still having a hard time understanding. In my school of 1,000 students we have somewhere around 10 kids who should be diagnosed on the autism spectrum, and far more beyond that who have some sort of mild learning disability or behavioral issues, and all of these children go relatively unnoticed with little attention or care from the school. From what I can tell, Thai people as a whole appear to be grossly uneducated on the subject of special education. We have students who are clearly autistic or have some sort of behavioral issues, but in the eyes of Thai people these children are all labeled as "abnormal". There is no category beyond that, you're either normal or abnormal. Out of the 500 students I teach each week I have a few with obvious cognitive impairments and even more with mild to severe learning disabilities. I have a kindergartener who continuously hits himself and myself over the head, and another that sits in the corner for the entire hour I'm there. I have a second grader who is clearly autistic but he has no extra supervision or help, instead while I'm teaching he's either holding my hand, hitting kids, or laying in the middle of the floor. I teach numerous kids who still can't read or write in Thai or English, but are otherwise brilliant. Emiliya teaches one boy who stands out among our 1,000 students as one of the best English speakers, so she was startled to find he can't properly recognize a single English letter. After watching my mom dedicate the later half of my life to teaching and helping special needs and learning impaired children it was so heartbreaking for me to land at this school where countless children need so much more help and attention than they're getting.

Making fortune tellers with my first graders

The school year is wrapping up and the kids are going through vigorous testing to determine if they are qualified to move on to the next grade, and I've been watching the children with developmental delays with special interest. I recently learned that some of the more severe children have parents who take them to the doctor to get a signed note, which gives them leeway in school. I'm not sure what exactly the notes say, as all of these kids are still labeled as abnormal, with or without a note. The children with doctor's notes, such as my autistic second grader, are essentially given a free pass throughout school. They don't have to sit their exams and will automatically move on to the next grade. This explains the majority of the illiterate kids, I'm assuming they have a diagnosable issue that prevents them from reading, but they are still allowed to move up in school. However, kids without notes are held to the same standards as their peers; they're expected to sit their exams and will not move on to the next grade if they don't pass. One teacher is holding back three students this year because none of them wrote a single word on their exam. Out of these three kids I can clearly see that one boy has such strong behavioral issues he just simply has never sat down to learn. He has never participated in a single activity while I'm teaching and anytime I ask him to write something he just scribbles instead. I can't determine if he mentally can't write in English, or if he just doesn't have the patience to sit down and learn. Either way, with the lack of attention he's getting now I doubt he will progress very far.
Our school is very basic for a public school and many of our children come from low-income families. It's come to my attention that there are other public schools throughout the country that somehow have stricter regulations for students, and therefore they have no special needs children. Talking with other English teachers, Emiliya and I have learned that our school has a much higher population of "abnormal" children, and I assume that's because there are very minimal fees to join our school. I'm not sure how public schools set their standards for enrollment, but ours seems very loose.
While researching this subject, I found that since 1975 the Thai government has provided free education for disabled children, whether mentally or physically. There are specific schools throughout the country offering free enrollment for anyone that fits the criteria. So the question has to be asked; if these schools truly exist and run the way they're claiming, why are there so many neglected children at this school? I can only assume the biggest factors are the stigma of sending your kid to a school for special needs, and the location of the schools, perhaps there isn't one nearby. However, I pulled up a few of these schools and quickly realized that schools for the disabled and special needs focus much more on physical ailments as opposed to mental ones. There are countless programs for blind and deaf students but very few focusing on learning disabilities. So perhaps that's another issue at hand. It seems that the ministry of education has a general understanding of special education and are making an attempt to properly acknowledge the difference between students, but in my opinion they have a long way to go before all students in the public schools are getting proper education.