A/HRC/43/41/Add.3 44. Notwithstanding the strong commitment of the State towards inclusive education, important challenges remain to be addressed to ensure that children with disabilities access education in regular classrooms on an equal basis with others. For instance, there are long waiting times to obtain individual accommodation, which can take six months or longer in some cases. The lack of adequate services for pupils with disabilities and their families puts them under significant emotional and financial pressure. In fact, many schools lack specialized teachers, school aides and adapted materials and have limited capacity to provide curricular adaptations and accommodation in the classroom. Some parents struggle to navigate the local support system, including the division of responsibilities between the Labour and Welfare Organization, the Educational and Psychological Counselling Service and the National Service for Special Needs Education (Statped). The Special Rapporteur encourages the authorities at all levels to strengthen coordination among service providers in order to ensure a seamless transition between services and an integrated delivery system. 45. Sámi children with disabilities face additional challenges owing to the lack of competent teachers who speak Sámi languages and understand their culture, the lack of adequate support and adapted materials in Sámi languages and a teaching environment that is not always culturally sensitive. While the Statped has a Sámi department with eight advisors, there is no such equivalent for the Educational and Psychological Counselling Service, where there is limited knowledge of Sámi culture. 46. Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to bullying and violence at school. The process of inclusive education not only entails inclusion in the classroom, but also a change of culture and opportunities for children to socialize and participate in extracurricular activities. The Special Rapporteur received worrying reports from the Ombudsman for Children about the use of coercion in school, for example towards autistic children and those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who are sometimes locked alone in rooms or physically held to the ground because teachers lack the skills to support them. F. Work and employment 47. Under the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Act, public and private employers have a duty to provide reasonable accommodation to workers and job seekers with disabilities (in line with articles 2 and 27 of the Convention), and to make active efforts to promote equality in the workplace. In June 2019, the Parliament amended the Act to strengthen the provisions on active equality efforts, such as clarifying the duty of employers to make efforts to prevent intersectional discrimination. 48. According to the 2019 labour force survey, the estimated employment rate among persons with disabilities was 43.8 per cent, compared to 74.1 per cent for the general population. For those aged between 25 and 39, the employment rate was 53.2 per cent, compared to 83.5 per cent for the general population. 11 The national inclusion initiative 2018–2021 aims to improve access to jobs on the open labour market for persons with disabilities and those with a “gap in their curriculum vitae”. The initiative strengthens services for certain groups of unemployed persons with disabilities and provides opportunities for adapted education and training. It also introduces a minimum recruitment quota of 5 per cent for workers with disabilities in the public sector. The Labour and Welfare Organization manages labour market policy and takes measures to enhance the participation of persons with disabilities in employment, including by giving them priority in labour market programmes, wage subsidies and temporary employment. 49. While welcoming these initiatives, the Special Rapporteur was informed that their impact is limited and that intersectional inequalities remain. In 2018, the Office of the Auditor General criticised the Labour and Welfare Organization for inadequately following up on their programmes, stating that three quarters of persons with “reduced working capacity” who completed labour market programmes were still unemployed one year later 11 10 See www.ssb.no/en/arbeid-og-lonn/statistikker/akutu.