Analysis of enrollment and inclusion policies for students with special needs in Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes Brazilian policies for enrolling and including students with special needs, seeking to understand how the legal framework and the practices of education systems combine to ensure access, retention, and academic success. It begins with the constitutional recognition of the right to inclusive education, furthered by the Law of Guidelines and Bases for National Education (1996) and the Brazilian Law for the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (2015), which mandate priority enrollment in regular classes and criminalize refusal to enroll. The research also reviews complementary guidelines such as Normative Instruction 12/2012 of Paraná and social movement handbooks, in addition to analyzing data from the School Census and recent studies on the subject. The results show that, although the number of students with disabilities enrolled in regular classes has grown significantly, from 13% in 1998 to 95% in 2023, challenges related to retention and quality of learning persist. The age-per-year distortion rate reaches 36.6% among the special education target population, and grade retention is much higher than in the regular education system. Difficulties were identified in resource allocation, ongoing teacher training, and intersectoral coordination. The conclusion is that effective inclusion depends on committed school management, collective pedagogical planning, strengthening Specialized Educational Services, and public policies that maintain the perspective of inclusive education. The study contributes to the debate on how to transform legal frameworks into practices that ensure equal opportunities for all.