Specialised Education

The Western Cape Education Department’s (WCED) Directorate: Inclusive and Specialised Education Support offers a range of services for learners who experience barriers to learning or have special educational needs that require additional support and are vulnerable. The directorate also provides capacity building for educators who provides for these learners. These services include:

• psychological, social work, education therapy and learning support
• education programmes in ordinary schools (including full-service/inclusive schools) and special schools.

The directorate manages 74 special schools. Specialised Support Services are also based at district offices in all 8 education districts of the Western Cape. Four of the district offices are in the metro region of Cape Town and 4 are in the rural areas. Each circuit in a district has a team comprising a social worker, psychologist and learning support advisor. Other services at the district level include a manager for specialised support services, senior therapist, senior psychologist, senior social worker, learning support coordinator and an HIV Care and Support Coordinator. 

The WCED policy is to provide support to the learners in ordinary schools as far as possible. We take the support to the learners rather than the learner to the support. Itinerant learning support teachers provide support in ordinary schools. Selected ordinary schools, have been developed into full-service/inclusive schools to provide moderate level support.

We place learners with high support needs at special schools for as long as this level of support is needed. Designated special school resource centres have multi-disciplinary outreach teams that support ordinary schools, focusing on full-service/inclusive schools.

Learners access services according to their level of need via the WCED support pathway, which incorporates the national Screening, Identification, Assessment and Support protocol. Applications for high-level support are via school-based support teams to the district-based support team.  

We collaborate with the departments of health and social development to access supplementary services and implement the integrated school health programme.

The directorate, with other role-players, strives to develop an inclusive education system with support available in a range of settings for all those learners who require this.