In April last year, a seriously visually impaired student from the Netherlands applied for a place at the ROC (Regional Training Center for vocational education and training and adult education) in the city of Hoorn, for a training program on the provision of legal services. She had an intake interview with a health coordinator and an ambulatory educational supervisor from Visio, the expertise center for the blind and visually impaired. They advised the school about the application of the young woman. At the start of May last year, the student was told over the telephone that she would not be admitted to the program because of her visual impairment. On June 11, 2014, the school sent her an e-mail telling her:
"As I told you yesterday during our talk, you will not be admitted to the program for legal service providers. As part of the practical vocational training, the core tasks of customer service and dossier processing are examined. Since you are not capable of rounding off these core tasks because of your visual impairment, you will not be able to finish the program with a diploma. Therefore it has been decided not to admit you to the program."
The student filed a complaint with the ROC because she felt discriminated against on the basis of her handicap/chronic disease. In a letter dated July 1, 2014, the school told the student she would be provisionally admitted to the program and set out a number of preconditions for her definite admission. An external expert had to judge whether or not there were obstacles that would prevent the student from successfully completing the program.
The student did not agree with the provisional admission and declined to go ahead with it. She then registered with another ROC, this time in Amsterdam, where she was accepted to the same program without any preconditions. She started a case with the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights because she felt discriminated against by the school in Hoorn.
Equal treatment on the basis of handicap or chronic disease
In the Netherlands, all pupils and students with limitations are entitled to extra support in order to, if possible, get education at the school of their choice. This is enshrined in the Equal Treatment Act by reason of handicap or chronic disease. In this regard, it doesn’t matter whether the limitation is physical, mental, intellectual or sensory. However, it must concern a long-term limitation.
It’s up to schools to determine whether or not there’s a place for the student by carrying out effective adjustments, for example additional guidance for a student with autism. The right to additional guidance only doesn’t apply in case these adjustments cannot reasonably be expected from a school. It will have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis if the limitation hinders the participation in education, or whether the effective adjustments offer the desired solution.
Judgment by the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights
Initially the student was rejected by the ROC because she would not have been able to complete the core tasks in the program due to her visual handicap. At the time of the intake interview, there were ‘renewed intake procedures for new entrants’ at the ROC. The aim of this pilot was to enable students who require additional support to pursue and successfully complete their desired program.
However, the ROC didn’t look into the additional support to enable her to pursue the program and simply rejected her application. Moreover, it appears from documents that the school had not heeded the advice from the health coordinator and the supervisor from Visio, two experts who deemed the student suitable for the program. By now, the ROC has acknowledged that the application procedure of the student was nothing to write home about:
"The school recognizes that during the handling of her application things didn’t go as they should have. Both in terms of procedures, as the school kept the lady in an uncertain situation for too long, as well as far as the merits of the application are concerned. The school was wrongly guided by the impossibilities, while it should have focused on the possible adjustments instead. It is therefore conceivable that the lady eventually renounced from the application when she finally received the message that she would be accepted on the basis of special conditions."
The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights has judged that the ROC discriminated against the student on the basis of her handicap by rejecting her at first and then accepting her under certain conditions.
Contributor: Nina Kesar
