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Disability
is not Inability |
Inclusion challenges of free education in Kenya.
08th November 2006
Disability bring with it physical or communication issues that
make a child with disability not able to access regular school
environment. Our schools are not built to cater for any disability.
To provide education for the children with any special needs there
must be adjustments which have to be financed by someone to enable
free access. The schools are required to adjust to accommodate
various needs according to the special disabilities of the children
in the local community. Currently there is no law that guides
this adjustment, making most schools at no obligation to provide
disability friendly education. Many have therefore missed school
all together.
Current policy adjustments to accommodate inclusion is constrained
mainly by lack resources and political commitment mainly justified
by the song about lack of clear statistics. However the dilapidated
state of the few schools speaks volumes about the attitude of
the government to special education. There is also too much domination
of access defined by physical access. For a long time the definition
of disability has been defined by persons with physically disabilities.
This has lead to the implication that physical adjustments of
structures (an expensive undertaking) is all that is required
to ensure access to systems and structures including education.
This thinking largely informs even the persons with disabilities
Act 2004.
While this is the most visible, sensory disabilities provide
more challenges especially in education and health access. Essentially
disability should be guaranteed complete free education from nursery
to university. The Deaf, the deafblind and the blind provide a
real challenge in terms of health or education for all. Their
population is sizeable enough to cause worry about the current
tendency to exclude them from the system. Education is he number
one right a nation can give any citizen of whichever abilities.
There have however been improvements in the last two years that
need special mention. The establishment of the national council
for persons with disabilities Council with its budgetary allocation
implies a lot in terms of the future. The council has developed
a strategic plan and is currently in the first year of implementation
among other things the council is in the process of registering
PWD organizations and individuals. It may not be an easy exercise
but worth a try. The ministry of education is also developing
a policy paper of education for PWDs especially those with communication
disabilities and the rules of inclusion for the pupils who can
easily be integrated in regular schools at minimum adjustments.
The Kenya Institute of Education has also though not public yet
has developed a syllabus for the children with hearing impairments.
This is a big step in the direction of setting common standards
both in instruction methods and materials. How ever it may be
still foolhardy to expect a jump in enrolment of children with
hearing impairments. This is mainly due to the fact that quite
a number of parents may need convincing to take them to school,
even if it were available. A more astute approach may be the government
to take a leading role in ensuring that school for children living
with disabilities is totally free.
Another would be to provide access to school. This can be achieved
by ensuring that if you have a registered child with disability,
s/he will be provided with education from nursery to university.
This education should be at the local community school.
Access to local community school requires adjustments on the
part of the school. Such adjustments must be relative to the most
common disability in the community. This requires large amounts
of resources. More so a law that makes it illegal not to enroll
a child on the basis of disability would ensure each school unless
the disability is of special level of which referral should be
done, any child with basic deafness, blindness or physically impairment
should be enrolled into at least one local district school.
The provision of instruction materials for the children with
hearing impairments like their blind counterparts is not a cheap
exercise. Publishing these materials need specialized knowledge
currently not widely available. The population of children with
disabilities does not warrant much business sense for the entry
of big time publishers. If the books were developed it would be
too costly that the schools may not buy all the books for all
the subjects unless they are provided with more cash.
It thus still remains that for the children with sensory disabilities
to have access to free education substantial amount of resources
has to be availed that is currently not forthcoming from the taxpayers
for sometime. The current school-based training of teachers in
special education is not effective. One the burden of enrolment
has led to a high teacher/pupil ratio that makes attention for
special needs pupils impossible. Inclusion strategies are therefore
failing with the introduction of free education. Teachers are
burdened by the sheer numbers let alone special needs pupils.
Its unfortunate that pupils with disabilities still face the
same school structures and systems both in instruction and examination.
This is unfortunate given the fact that children without disabilities
have advantages in various areas and cannot therefore be expected
to fairly compete with pupils with disabilities. How can a deaf
pupil face the same examination with a pupil with hearing senses
in the same time using the same equipments? How can a pupil who
uses his/her legs to write be examined on the same time and using
the examinations that require the use of hands-based equipments
like geometrical set?
Category: Education
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