Sports in vocational schools in an occupational training center for handicapped patients--prerequisites, responsibilities and organization

Sports activities in the vocational education centres are viewed as an indispensable rehabilitation measure. Its contents and organizational structure however is to a large extent left to the individual centres. Implementation of effective sports is endangered by the lack of homogeneity in the young trainee population as regards type and severity of the disability, age, maturity. After setting out the present situation and the function of sports in a vocational education centre for physically disabled young people, a school course system is presented that, by achieving a relatively homogenous composition of the sports groups, enables sport-oriented instruction to be realized. In this course system, the young people are allocated to the various courses through sport selection and counselling, based on the criteria of inclination and suitability. The range of sports offered also includes sports for the very severely handicapped, which are described briefly.