Children with ASD can be successfully educated within an inclusive mainstream classroom. A study suggests that there are many benefits to the inclusive classroom they are:

Include Autistic Children in the Mainstream

• Inclusion helps in the social development of the child because improvements are noted in the area of social competence
• In a restricted setting the autistic child will be interacting only with the teachers rather than their peers, but in a general education setting the student with disabilities is given the opportunity to interact with their peers and thus it is crucial for proper social development.

Why should we include Autistic Children?

It has been seen that children with ASD are generally placed in a segregated school (special school). The problem they face is that they enroll students with disabilities and therefore the child learns from a disabled peer rather than from a non-disabled peer. The child starts learning inappropriate behaviors by observing the extreme behaviors of the disabled peer in the school setting.

If there is a need for placing a student with ASD in a special school, this school should really be a center of excellence that provide new ways for working with ASD and dealing with the most extreme cases. Students with ASD should only be placed in segregated schools when the case is quite severe. Studies have shown that autistic students who are fully included in an inclusive setting gain a lot i.e., most of the daily living activities are noted to be developed independently in normal school whereas in special school children are dependent on/ seek support from their daily activities. They exhibit a higher level of engagement and social interaction compared with children in a segregated setup. They will be having advanced personal education goals compared to the autistic students in a segregated setup.

Reference: Effective inclusion of students with an autism spectrum disorder.

Author: Nicole Reagan