Auxiliary School

in the USSR a special educational institution for mentally retarded children.

Students in auxiliary schools are basically those children suffering from oligophrenia to the level of feeblemindedness. Also assigned to these schools are children with a slight degree of mental insufficiency caused by traumatic or organic damage to the brain, children suffering from epilepsy (only during rare, nocturnal fits), and children of the “simple” type of schizophrenia (without expressed psychotic symptoms). The question of assigning children to auxiliary schools is decided by a medical-pedagogical commission, the staff of which includes employees of the divisions of public education, public health, and learning problems, as well as a logopedic (speech defect) specialist and a children’s psychoneurologist. Children are usually sent before this medical-pedagogical commission after one year of instruction at a public school and a careful check of the feasibility of leaving them there.

Auxiliary schools have eight grades. General educational instruction is carried on by means of special programs and corresponds approximately to the content of general educational instruction at elementary public schools. More than one-third of the learning time is devoted to labor instruction, which, beginning in the fourth grade, is occupational in character. The specific tasks of the auxiliary schools are the psychic and physical healing of the children, correction of insufficient cognitive capacity and of defects in speech development, and preparation for simple kinds of work. This educational work is carried out by specialists in the field of teaching mentally retarded children. The staffs of auxiliary schools are provided with a physician-psychoneurologist and a nurse. Each class can have no more than 16 pupils.

Auxiliary schools are within the system of general educational institutions under the jurisdiction of the ministries of education, and they constitute a part of the system of schools for abnormal children. Most of the auxiliary schools have boarding school facilities. Some of the city schools, where there are no boarding facilities, organize extended-day groups.