Since 2014, the Education Development Guidelines (Education Development Guidelines, 2014) have been issued in Latvia, inclusive education is promoted politically. The educational system has progresses towards inclusive education, there are gradually increasing the number of students with special needs in the mainstream schools in Latvia. Those are the children who are given a special statement about their special needs from the Pedagogical medical commission or separate specialist (psychologist, speech therapist, doctor) and who can have based on the statement receive an additional support services in education. The judgment on the special needs of a child is based on his/her psycho-medical assessment. Although in other countries there is a common concern about an over-identification of pupils with special needs (Squires, Humphrey, Barlow, Wigelsworth, 2012), that is not the case of Latvia. For example, in England there are 14,4% of all pupils have been identified as having special educational needs (Department of education, 2017). According to statistical data of the National Centre for Education of Republic of Latvia for all types of school’s  about 5.8% of the total number of pupils were enrolled in special education programs in 2016/2017. In the OECD countries, the proportion of children with special education needs varies from 1% in Korea to above 10% in the United States, in average 5-6% (OECD, 2012). There are many children in some other countries and in Latvia who have not been identified yet due to different reasons, for example, if they formally do not have a statement about special need, so they are not receiving additional support services during education process. It means that those children who need most help are not receiving it. As we know from the international research that the children with special educational needs without proper support have higher probability to leave school early (Pijl, Frostad, Mjaavatn, 2014). It can be applied to Latvia as well, because Latvia for a long time have quite a number of students who repeat second and even third school year and finally drop out of school early.

This paper presents some results of the research “Study on the financial model for support services for children with special needs in the context of the implementation of inclusive education in Latvia“ which was conducted by the team of researchers of University of Latvia from May till December, 2017. The main objective of the research was to develop a financial model of support for children with special needs in Latvia for promoting the inclusive education, but additional task was to study current state of identification of children with special needs, especially in mainstream school in Latvia. There were several reserch questions: How does the identification and recognition process of special needs occur in mainstream school in Latvia? What are the main risks and obstacles? How teachers from mainstream schools and parents who have children with special needs perceive it?

Two different sample was used for data gathering: teachers and parents. The total number of teacher were 280, of which 69 was schools’ management representatives (N=69). Teachers were representing all types of educational institutions from pre-school to high school/gymnasium. Most teachers noted that they work in high school/ gymnasium (21%) and elementary school (30%), other teacher work in preschools, professional schools, etc. The distribution of teachers by age shows that the most active respondents' group was between the ages of 46-60 (55%) and the least number of teachers participated in the study aged over 61 (5%). All teachers completed the survey “Inclusive Education in Mainstream School – Teacher Form” what consisted of 111 questions with different format of items. Forty-four parents whose children were mostly with special needs completed the survey “Inclusive and Special Education – Parents’ Form” with 50 items. All participants participated voluntarily. The survey was distributed through several parent nongovernmental organizations electronically and using social media – Facebook, etc.. All questionnaires were completed only by the mother's, although both parents were contacted. 73% of mothers were under 40 years of age, 23% at the age of 41-50 and 5% over the age of 51. These mothers’ children studied at grades 1-6 (66%), at grades 7-12 (13%), and another case – 18%, including the pre-school. Respondents - parents - mostly live in large cities - 57%, the rest (43%) split between urban or rural areas. For analysing the answers on the surveys items the descriptive statistical methods were used.

The results of the study showed that there are many solvable problems in inclusive education system in Latvia curently. Major weaknesses in Latvia are in defining the responsibility of the involved specialists and institutions in the school, quality of complex assessment procedures of children with special needs, inadequate monitoring of the developmental progress of children with special needs and insufficient monitoring of the appropriate support measures for children with special needs. The identification of children with special needs can be very time consuming. From the time when the problems are recognized until the statement on special education is available, it can take from a month to a year, a similar period will take for parents to agree carry out a child's assessment by specialists, which is major condition for a child to receive a statement about special education needs and extra support in education after. Therefore, it was concluded that support for children with any kind of difficulties should be provided at an early stage; it should not be dependent solely on the consent of the parents to permit the child to undergo in-depth psycho-medical examination or statement. There should be developed flexible way to support a child in education from the first moment when problems are detected. A key for the provision of qualitative support for children with special needs is an early as possible identification of the special needs of children. Despite of that the results of an empirical study indicates that there is some weaknesses in the existing system for identifying procedure of children with special needs at both school, local governments and at the national level in Latvia, which leads to the risk of not providing all the necessary support for children with special needs on time.

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