Environment

Disabled children missing out on education

Tree planting is an essential part of forestry management
Tree planting is an essential part of forestry management

Mercy Mwale has no hope for her eight-year-old disabled child who has been confined to her house at Khombedza in Salima.

“I feel like I am being punished for my son’s disability. Seeing my son failing to access education because of his disability makes me sad. Able-bodied children go to school, but my son just stays at home,” laments 36-year-old Mwale.

Like many developing countries, Malawi’s education for children with disabilities is still skewed, with many disabled children like Mwale’s son having little or no access to formal education.

A 2014 Global Campaign for Education’s (GCE) report notes that a Malawian child with disability is twice as likely to have never attended school as a child without a disability. Girls with disabilities are worse.

“In Malawi, one study showed that more girls with disabilities have never attended school compared to boys with disabilities,” reads the GCE report, noting this translates into lower literacy rates for youths and adults in the long run.

In a communiqué presented to government by children with disabilities at Kaliyeka Primary School in Lilongwe during this year’s commemoration of the GCE Action Week in July under the theme Equal Right, Equal Opportunity: Education and Disability, the children asked government to address lack of disability-friendly environment in the country’s primary schools.

“Remember that disability is not inability. Due to lack of support, a lot of challenges affect our leaning process. We don’t have a resource room for our pullout education Braille materials; a must for learners with visual impairment. We also lack mirrors and speech rooms for learners who access sign language due to hearing impairment.

“Also, some of the students with intellectual disabilities do not have access to drugs that help relieve problems in the brain. We also need user-friendly buildings starting form classrooms to the toilets for those that are physically challenged,” reads the communiqué in part.

Kaliyeka is one of the few primary schools implementing inclusive education systems in the country to ensure both learners with disabilities and those without disabilities access basic education.

The school’s head teacher, Heldala Mpokosela, says the school has few teachers specialised in special needs education who tirelessly work to ensure children with disabilities complete primary school and progress to secondary school. He says some of their disabled girl pupils have been selected to national secondary schools in the past two years.

“Currently, we have 74 pupils with disabilities at this school, but we face many challenges to successfully teach,” says Mpokosela.

Malawi has about 1 000 trained special needs’ teachers against the demand of about 12 000 teachers.

Civil Society Education Coalition (Csec) vice-chairperson Julie Juma says while government has a critical role to play in addressing the challenges faced by children with disabilities in accessing education, parents of the children also need to ensure they send them to school.

Minister of Education, Science and Technology Dr. Emmanuel Fabiano says government is ready to engage all stakeholders in policy dialogue that will help make inclusive education a reality for all children with disabilities in Malawi.

“One of the pillars of the National Education Sector Plan focuses on access and equity, as it is linked to creating opportunities for all children regardless of their circumstances.

“In fostering government’s intent to equalise opportunities between regular and children with disabilities, government has endeavoured to mainstream disability in all sectors of education and programmes, ncluding establishment of special needs education units in teacher training colleges as a short-term measure while embarking on the construction of the Special Needs Education Institute,” says Fabiano.

He says the Ministry of Education has also established a Directorate of Special Needs Education to ensure that schools provide an environment where learners with special needs can access education without hindrances, adding government is also ensuring that all new classroom blocks are constructed with disability-friendly designs.

“However, it is no secret that government alone cannot manage to address this huge challenge facing the education of children with disabilities. I would, therefore, like to call upon all key stakeholders to continue working together to make the right to education for these children a reality,” says Fabiano.

Csec and its partners recently implemented various activities at the national and district level to sensitise communities to the right to education for children with disabilities.

Meanwhile, children with disabilities, especially those living in rural areas like Mwale’s son would continue to helplessly admire their peers going to school if efforts to change the status of affairs would not be expedited.

According to Csec, unless these challenges are addressed, the standards of inclusive education in Malawi will continue to dwindle to the disadvantage of children with disabilities.

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