The Sunday News
Michael Mhlanga
Children with disabilities are ten times less likely to go to school than children without disabilities. This is a startling piece of knowledge that reveals the privilege many who consider themselves “abled” should introspect. According to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Annual Statistics Report 2014, the prevalence of in-school children with impairments was 34 734.
This figure increased to 52,232 in 2016 signalling an almost 50% growth and there is adequate reason to believe the number has increased.
The increase in number does not mean the increase in school access, but extensive research and data availability of children with disabilities, especially in rural schools.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, education is difficult to access for poor children in general, with the barricade being far worse for children with disabilities in particular.
This week I posit the “Whys” and “Hows” that barricade special needs children in their quest to access quality education. I interrogate these barriers through three prisms of macro, micro and meso-accessibility barriers.
To provide balance, I question government policy, State resource distribution and international efforts as macro-problems in educational accessibility for children with disabilities. Equally important, schools infrastructure, teacher training, community, family and friends’ perceptions will be regarded as key barriers at a micro-level. Lastly, meso-barriers to education which are mainly concerned with the form of impairment, feelings, attitudes and perceptions held by children with disabilities will be discussed.
In development and disability discourse, disability can be understood as physical, intellectual and emotional impairments.
The present and evident truth is that disability is characterised by limited access to resources, stigma and societal discrimination and mythologising of causes of disability.
In 2007 Zimbabwe signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and ratified it in 2013 but there is limited evidence of domesticating the convention owing to lack of policy aggressiveness in policing provision of disability equity and equality.
Also, Zimbabwe ratified the Convention on the rights of the Child of 2007 and 2008 which then brings to attention the worrisome nature of education access for children with disabilities.
They say poverty has a child’s face and in this context, there is a strong correlation between poverty and disability, especially in developing economies of the global south and their rural settings in particular. Poverty is one of the elements which characterises families in developing countries.
The cost of medication and assistive devices or mobility aids required by most children with disabilities are highly priced making them unaffordable to many, because most of the developing countries have to import assistive devices and some of the medication and they are chronically faced with the lack/shortage/absence of foreign currency. As a result, the poor families are forced to keep their children at home and subsequently denying them access to education.
Another emerging factor is of fragile government policies and systems in most Sub-Saharan countries that inhibit access to critical resources for its poor citizens.
This macro-problem is amplified when it pertains people with disabilities, particularly children. Government policies and systems such as education and data collection systems concerning children with disabilities are still limited if not absent — the tragedy of institutional memory and data collection tools in developing economies.
While this is a global problem, it is magnified in Sub-Saharan Africa as it leads to poor planning for education service delivery for children with disabilities. For instance, Zimbabwe has a comprehensive Disabled Person’s Act Chapter 17:01 5/1992,6/2002,22/2001 coupled with the Education Act Chapter 25:04 of 1987 and revised 2016 which prioritise the rights of persons with disabilities and emphasise indiscriminate universal access to education.
Zimbabwe, like other Sub-Saharan countries has its own domestic policies which are however, informed by the international conventions and instruments such as Jomtien World Declaration for Education For All of 1990, Universal Primary Education (UPE) and the Sustainable Development Goals of 2015.
The domestic policies of individual countries like Zimbabwe are informed and designed in such a way that education is a human right and children with disabilities are entitled to that basic right and the constitution should protect children, particularly those vulnerable. As such, ineffective Government policies remain a barrier to quality education of children with disabilities.
Children with disabilities are also faced with micro-barriers to accessing quality education, key among them are location and state of schools, teachers and attitudes of the community, family and friends.
The physical inaccessibility of schools to children with disabilities forces children with disabilities to stay out of school.
Physical accessibility of schools as an aspect of school organisation includes proximity of the school to the child’s home, and the appropriateness of its facilities and architecture in terms of allowing physical access to the school.
While there is no universal benchmark to what makes normal distance to school, 2km or 30 minutes walks are on the upper side for a school going child, and this is worse, for children with disabilities in urban areas and excruciatingly worse in rural areas.
Even if proximity is not the problem, poor school infrastructure rehabilitation decreases readiness to support the access, participation and achievement of students with disabilities.
Inaccessibility of schools relates to the notion that most schools’ infrastructure create a dis-enabling environment because it either lacks pathways or ramps to enable the learners with physical disabilities to enter into school buildings with ease. With this supposition, the lack of such makes it extremely difficult for learners with disabilities, for instance those who are wheelchair bound to manoeuvre from one point to the other.
While proximity is a problem, teacher skills is a worse one. The school environment plays a pivotal role in accommodating and stimulating learning and teaching interest.
Special needs children need specialised teachers. The in-service Early Reading Initiative (ERI) and Performance Lag Address Programme (PLAP) by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education in partnership with UNICEF and Global Fund has complemented efforts.
However, not as much felt as the challenges on the ground. In 2018, 80 000 primary school teachers were trained under this supplementary skills programme and it would be more celebratory if teachers from rural areas are a priority in this programme.
With such a commendable approach to enhancing teacher training, the learning experience can be believed to be changing, but what is left is an effective compulsory teacher training course on special needs children.
