Description of Students

In Taiwan, students in special education include those with disabilities and the gifted. In Statistics of the Ministry of Education, students with disabilities cover four levels: preschool, elementary school, junior and senior high school, as well as college and university, while gifted students were covered from preschool to senior high school level. In School Year 2016, there were 148,587 students receiving special education services in all school levels.

In college and university level, 13,083 students with disability were served. Among them, 8,501 were male students (64.98%) and 4,582 (35.02%) were female students. In terms of disability types, 3,276 students (25.04%) were diagnosed with learning disabilities followed by 1,881 students with Autism (14.28%) and 1,798 students with physical impairments (13.74%).

From preschool to senior high school levels, there were 135,504 students with special education needs, among them, 109,542 students with disabilities. Of which, there were 75,278 male students (68.72%) and 34,264 female students (31.28%). In terms of disability types, 32,771 were learning disabilities (29.92%), followed by 25,392 with intellectual disabilities (23.18%). There were 25,962 gifted students, 12,946 were male (49.68%) and 13,016 were female (50.14%). Of all gifted students, 6,463 (24.98%) were intellectual gifted, 13,636 (52.52%) were academic gifted, 5,709 (21.99%) were artistically gifted, 138 (0.53%) were creatively gifted, 8 (0.03%) were gifted in leadership, and 8 (0.03%) were gifted in other fields.

There were 103,385 students with disabilities (94.38%) placed in regular classrooms, while 6,157 students  with disabilities (5.62%) were placed in special education settings. Among those placed in regular classrooms, 16,614 were in preschools, 40,246 in elementary schools, 25,805 in junior high schools, and 20,720 were in senior high and vocational high schools . Among those in special education schools, 209 were in preschools, 648 in elementary schools, 967 in junior high schools, and 4,333 in senior high and vocational high schools.

For gifted students, 6,526 were in elementary schools, 8,880 in junior high schools, and 10,556 in senior high and vocational high schools. There were 4,982 intellectually gifted students received special education services in resource rooms; 5,293 academically gifted students, the highest number among them, were taught in self-contained classes. Some artistically gifted students received their special education from self-contained classes, among them, 2,557 were in art classes and 2,013 were in music classes. There were 102 artistically gifted students in art resource rooms, 99 were talented in music and 29 in dance resource rooms. There were 1,746 gifted students received services from non-categorical gifted resource rooms, 1,661 were in itinerant programs, and 2,985 received special educational programs.

There are four types of special education services for students with disability from preschool to senior high school levels: (1) self-contained classes, (2) resource rooms, (3) itinerant programs, and (4) special education programs in regular classrooms. Respectively, 58,059 (56.16%) students with disabilities were in resource classrooms, 15,488 (14.98%) received special education programs in regular classrooms, 17,192 (16.63%) were in itinerant programs, and 12,646 (12.23%) in self-contained classes. The self-contained classes were mainly for students with intellectual disabilities, while resource rooms and itinerant programs were non-categorical.

There are two types of programs in special education schools for students with disabilities: self-contained classes and itinerant programs. There were 6,007 students in self-contained classes, among them, 4,937 students had intellectually disabilities, while 145 students were in itinerant programs for homeschooling. National Hemei Experimental School set up its regular classrooms in Senior High School Department and placed 5 students with disabilities in each class.