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Children
with disabilities marginalised in education
National
Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH)
Extracted from Disability Update,
Sept 12-19, 2006
September 14, 2006
World Literacy Day (8 September) has come and gone and Zimbabwe
celebrated it secure in the knowledge that it has achieved near
universal primary education for all, having recorded a net enrolment
ratio of 93% in 2002 and 98% literacy level for 15 -24 year olds
in 1999. It is, however, a sobering revelation that despite these
impressive literacy levels, 67% of the estimated number of 200 000+
children with disabilities in Zimbabwe have no access to education.
Ironically, it is children with disabilities who need education
most of all, yet most of them remain ignorant and illiterate. Not
only is education fundamental to the development of both individuals
and societies; it is also fundamental to fighting the poverty, oppression
and discrimination that is synonymous with the lives of people with
disabilities.
Despite the government’s commitment to
"Education for All", the government’s Millennium Development
Goal of ensuring that, between 2000 and 2015, all Zimbabwean children,
boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full programme
of primary education, will remain unfulfilled if education for all
is construed to be a privilege of the able-bodied only and not as
a right for all. A UNICEF report (1999) paints a grim picture of
the educational prospects of children with disabilities. It notes
that virtually all children with disabilities receive inadequate
formal education, the vast majority of them receive no education
at all and that girls and rural children suffer the greatest losses,
spending their days idly in the company of caregivers who are non-responsive
and likely to regard them as a burden. The social stigma attached
to disability, lack of awareness of special schooling possibilities
and entry barriers resulting from tuition fees or transportation
costs, fear, ignorance and poverty combine to limit access of children
with disabilities to specialized schools and rehabilitation. It
is illustrative that the study revealed that, for children aged
1 to 12 years, the non-enrolment figures of children with disabilities
were more than four times those for children in especially difficult
circumstances. Clearly, children with disabilities are the worst
disadvantaged and experience the most difficult barriers in accessing
education.
The denial of education to children with
disabilities has far-reaching consequences on the life and welfare
of the individual and the development of the society. The World
Education Forum (2000, para 6) defines education as a fundamental
human right which is the key to sustainable development and peace
and stability within and among countries and notes that it is an
indispensable means for effective participation in societies and
economies of the twenty-first century, which are affected by rapid
globalization. The point cannot be overstated – education is crucial
to human survival and to the development of both society and the
individual. This is even more so in the present era of the Information
Age and the attendant effects of globalization, which has heightened
the need for enhanced person-to-person, people-to-people, and country-to-country
interaction across the geographical and cultural divide. In this
vein, education has become an indispensable means for effective
participation in the globalised societies and economies of the 21st
century. The denial of the opportunity to acquire this indispensable
means of effective participation in society to people with disabilities
therefore constitutes a fundamental right violation as it places
them on an unequal platform to harness the benefits accruing from
this participation in the wider society.
The worsening economic climate in the
country, which caused many children to drop out of the school system,
has had the greatest impact on the most vulnerable group – children
with disabilities. Inflation has pushed up the cost of school uniforms,
stationary, public examination fees and bus fares, further compounding
the constraints to access to education faced by children with disabilities.
Spiraling unemployment and falling government revenues have meant
that cutbacks had to be made in education spending. All this has
tended to reverse the gains made in the school system, especially
in respect of the attainment of universal education for all. This
is bound to further increase the marginalization of children in
school systems and in societal systems in general. Clearly, the
need to ensure real access to educational opportunities for children
with disabilities, who are generally poor, discriminated against
and are at particular risk of dropout is a major challenge and has
never been greater than before.
Unless ‘inclusive’ education systems
in which ordinary schools are made more capable of educating all
children in their communities regardless of their physical, intellectual,
social, emotional, linguistic or other conditions, the marginalization
of children with disabilities will continue unabated and the goal
of education for all by the year 2015 will remain unrealized. The
development of inclusive education systems also requires the mobilising
of community resources to provide cost-effective services and maintain
the rights of persons with disabilities to remain in their communities.
In order for inclusive education to be
a reality, however, it is necessary to understand the barriers to
equal access to education faced by children with disabilities, before
proceeding to reduce all such types of barriers to learning and
developing ordinary schools which are capable of meeting the needs
of all learners. It is also necessary, from the onset, to move away
from the traditional, medical model of thought which views disability
as a ‘personal tragedy’ which limits the capacity of the disabled
person to participate in the mainstream of society and that it is
the responsibility of the people with disabilities themselves to
try to fit in with the world as they find it – a world built by
non-disabled people to meet the needs of non-disabled people. Rather,
it is necessary to understand that societies are organised to meet
the needs of the non-disabled majority rather than the minority
of people with disabilities and it is necessary for every right
thinking member of society to take proactive measures to ensure
the inclusion of this marginalized sector of the population in educational
and other systems
Inclusive education is not a pipe dream.
It has been implemented successfully in the Nordic countries and
UNESCO (2000) reported that in China, the government’s aim was to
create 1.8 million places for disabled children in ordinary schools
and to train up to 1 million teachers. The president of Uganda declared
in 1997 that he would make education free for four children in each
family and that priority should be given to children with disabilities
and the girl child. Some progress has been registered in this regard.
In Zimbabwe, the need for inclusive education beckons more than
ever before. Literacy for all can never be meaningful if that literacy
excludes 10% of the total population of the country, a population
that needs that literacy more than any other sector not only for
personal and collective development, but more importantly, as an
invaluable tool for fighting the twin evils of poverty and discrimination
that characterise the lives of people with disabilities.
Visit the NASCOH
fact
sheet
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