On Monday, August 19, 2024, Gifu University's Faculty of Education held an online public lecture titled "Special Support Education Management Training for School Principals Supporting Regular Classes." This training was developed in collaboration with the National Institute for School Teachers and Staff Development (NITS) and the Gifu Prefecture Elementary and Junior High School Principals' Association in 2023. It aims to enhance the management skills of principals in special support education, focusing on regular classes. On the day of the event, 17 principals from elementary and junior high schools within Gifu Prefecture participated, with 4 members from the Prefecture Principals' Association attending as observers.

In recent years, it has become essential for principals to promote special needs education to realize the "Reiwa¹-style Japanese School Education" that brings out the potential of all children. Particularly in regular classes, 8.8% of students, who do not have intellectual developmental delays but face significant difficulties in learning and behavior, are enrolled. Supporting these students has become an urgent issue. However, due to a lack of personnel and relevant systems for special needs education, principals are currently tackling this challenge through trial and error.

In the first part of the lecture, participants learned about key points of special needs education today. In the second part, during group work, principals shared their school's initiatives and challenges on themes such as 'educational support and reasonable considerations' and 'organizational management and human resource development in special needs education,' and discussed ways to enhance their efforts.

In the group work, participants identified issues from their current efforts, such as "continuous support from pre-school to the first year," "the concept of reasonable considerations," and "how to incorporate the perspective of special needs education into lesson improvement and student guidance." They later analyzed the underlying management issues and shared enhancement measures such as "addressing both the needs of children eligible for special needs education and diversity," "informing the school about the basic knowledge of reasonable considerations," "promoting the creation of lessons tailored to children's learning styles and transitioning to classroom management where each student feels secure," and "utilizing various opportunities to develop faculty and staff." Through this training, it became clear that even with insufficient personnel and systems, principals can find ways to enhance the internal support system for regular classes by presenting a clear vision. Each school will implement the enhancement measures discussed during the training, and in the follow-up training in December, they will present and evaluate the results of their implementation, identifying the factors contributing to their success.

1) the current era of Japan, which began on May 1, 2019