More than one out of four pupils receives special support
During the school year 2010-2011, 10,883 pupils received some kind of special education or support, or 25.6% of all pupils. That is an increase of 229 pupils from the previous year or 2.1%. Never before has a greater share of pupils received special support since Statistics Iceland started its data collection on special education in 2004-2005. The largest proportion of pupils receiving support is among pupils in fifth grade (10 year old pupils), or 28.1% of the cohort. During the school year 2009-2010 these pupils (then in fourth grade) also received most support. Of pupils receiving special support 61.4% were boys and 38.6% were girls, a similar split as in the previous school year. When comparing with data from the previous year more pupils now receive support both in the regular classroom and in a special education classroom. Also, more pupils receive support only in the regular classroom while the number of pupils only receiving support in special education classrooms has decreased by 801 from the previous year.

In the data collection last spring, headmasters were asked to provide more detailed data on pupils in special education. Based on these data there are 6,527 pupils in compulsory education with an official diagnosis. Two out of every three are boys, or 66.6%. Most of these pupils are in the fifth grade (782) and in the seventh grade (770).

Headmasters were also asked to list students who received special support in Icelandic, because they have another mother tongue. These students are 1,442 and are fairly evenly distributed by grade. On average there are 79 boys and 65 girls in each grade who receive this type of support.

An increase in the number of hours for special education and support
During the school year 2010-2011 43,428 teaching hours per week were used for special education and support in compulsory schools. There were 18,003 teaching hours undertaken by special education teachers (41.4%) and 25,425 by assistant teachers (58.6%). Compared with the school year 2009-2010, the share of hours taught by special education teachers has increased. The number of teaching hours used for special education and support was greatest during the school year 2007-2008, 44,490 hours.

All grades fulfil the legal requirement on the minimum number of weekly instruction hours
During the school year 2010-2011 pupils in grades 1-10 received a total of 340.0 lessons per week. The total weekly instruction time has increased by 0.1 instruction hours on average since the school year 2009-2010. On average, the legal requirement on the minimum number of weekly instruction hours is fulfilled for all grades.

There are 179.6 school days on average
According to the law on compulsory schools from 2008 the annual school period for pupils should not be shorter than 9 months. The number of pupils’ school days during the school year should not be fewer than 180. The school period is counted in school days, which are divided into teaching days, examination/assessment days and other teaching days. Other teaching days are days when teaching according to the timetable does not take place, such as when field trips and school trips are organised.

The average number of school days for all grades was 179.6 which is a decrease of 0.2 days from the previous school year. There were 180 school days or more in over 71% of all schools, the number of days ranging from 142 to 200. In the previous school year, a number of schools had to close for one or more days because of bad weather. The difference in the number of school days by grade is minimal. The number of teachers’ working days decreased by 0.2 on average from the previous year, seen in the number of working days outside of the regular school operation time. The average number of teachers’ working days during the regular school operation time was unchanged from the previous school year.