On January 3, 2018, Public Defender Nino Lomjaria addressed the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia with a proposal concerning the education rights of children with disabilities who are left beyond the educational system.

The Public Defender called on the Ministry of Education and Science to collect and maintain statistics and create database on children with disabilities who are involved in or left beyond the educational system, develop a strategy to prevent school children from dropping out of school and a mechanism for detecting provoking factors, eliminate the risks of leaving children with disabilities beyond the school education and improve the referral mechanism. In addition, it is necessary the Ministry to raise awareness of resource officers, administration and personnel of educational institutions about the procedures of responding to cases of alleged violence and monitoring the process.

As a result of studying the issue, it has been made clear that the existing policy in the country cannot ensure proper involvement of children with disabilities left beyond formal education in the educational system, which has various reasons, including unregulated legislative framework, lack of differentiated statistical data on children with disabilities, lack of effective mechanism for identifying children who were left beyond school education and are at risk of isolation as well as their needs, lack of abandonment prevention strategy, poor coordination between agencies, ineffective process of transition, low level of awareness among school administration and staff, non-adapted educational space, difficulties related to geographical access and other impediments.

The inconsistence approach to different needs of children with disabilities left beyond school education, as well as the improper legislative base regulating inclusive education, serves as hindrance in satisfying the interests of these children and properly protecting their rights.