In Sweden we have besides the ordinary upper secondary school a school for mentally retard children. We have two of those schools here in Örnsköldsvik, Tvillingsta and Eriksro.
They use to belong to the county council, but 1995 our municipality took over and these days they belong to Parkskolan.

Handicapped children goes ten years in special-comprehensive school, but the tenth year they can also choose to go on either Tvillingsta or Eriksro.
This kind of upper secondary schools have four years program and the students are between sixteen and twenty-one years old. It’s about twenty-two teachers working.
The students have a big number hour of practice, when they have the ability to be out on a place of work and see how things work.
They don’t graduate with the students on Parkskolan, but they get a certificate.

Eriksro is placed about fifty meters from Parkskolan, There are seventeen handicapped students at this school. Since some of them are disabled they also have some assistants who helps in various situations and make it easier for the teachers, and simply just are available. The assistants are either municipality employed, or else they are employed by their parents.
On Eriksro they have a program called the "individually-program". On this program should the teaching suit each student’s need and requirement. Each student gets an own study plan.

All students go through three so called Character subjects. They work with each subject in six weeks, and when they have done all three of them they start over again.
The subjects are:

Diet and housing:
In this subject the students should experience things about what you need to know about things in your home. They get fundamental knowledge’s about questions involved for example fare/diet, laundry, housing and hygiene. They also learn to prepare simple meals.
All that they learn to make it better in their home, school and society.

Wood and property:
In this subject the students learn how to handle machines, tools and materials which they can find useful in their future job or in their spare time.

Aesthetic:
Here they want to develop the student’s creativity and joy to use aesthetics means of expression, to express thoughts and feelings. They also want to express the capacity to exercise different recreational activities within the aesthetic area.

Tvillingsta

Tvillingsta is situated about ten kilometres from Parkskolan. It is a little bit outside town, in a beautiful nature area.
On Tvillingsta they have 36 students. Since none of them are disabled they only have a small number of assistants.
There are two national programs to choose between..
They are called "hotel and restaurant" and "wood work."
Then there is also a special designed program called wood and property, just like on Eriksro.

Next spring term (2001) Tvillingsta will be moved to Parkskolan. The program that moves first is the hotel and restaurant program. Right now there are workers on Parkskolan who rebuild some class rooms for the students.


© 2000 Freeway
Writers: Maria Sjöberg (sp02-52@park.se) and Elin Johansson (sp01-44@park.se).
HTML by: Jonas Jonsson (nv03-10@park.se).