By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
The Centre for the Promotion of Inclusive Education (CPIE), a local non-governmental organisation has embarked on the training of 200 teachers drawn from 70 secondary schools in Freetown on issues relating to pupils with disabilities.
The training which was divided into two seminars lasted for a day. The first seminar on the topic: ‘Toolkit for teaching students with disabilities’ was presented by the Chief Executive Officer of the Dorothy Springer Trust, a local Non Governmental Organisation, while the second seminar titled: ‘what is inclusive education?’ was presented by the Executive Director of CPIE.
Sierra Leone is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities, a document that calls for the provision of educational opportunities to all categories of persons including persons with disabilities. The country has ratified and domesticated the convention when it passed into law the Disability Act of 2011 and set up the national Commission for Persons with disability which was an outcome of the Act. Since the passage of the Act and the setting of the commission, the status of disabled students in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions remained unchanged.
The Executive Director of CPIE, Dr Christian Sesay Jr, said it would be difficult for inclusive education to be realised in the country when barriers still exist in the academic institutions.
Inappropriate curriculum for disabled children, lack of training programmes for teachers on issues of children with disability among others were some of the factors Dr Sesay said highlighted as barriers that would negatively impact on the smooth learning of the disabled children. The Special Needs Education specialist sees the removal of the barriers in mainstream education as a fundamental criterion in the provision of inclusive education.
He assured the audience during the official opening of Wednesday`s event that his organisation was determined to remove these barriers so that disabled children would not be marginalised in mainstream education.
‘’We will continue to engage stakeholders and support legislations that will eliminate such barriers,’’ Dr Sesay assured.
Zainab Kamara, a physically challenged lady, on a wheelchair, recently graduated from Fourah Bay College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Sierra Leone. She is now the Director of Empowerment for Disability, a local non-governmental organisation. She lamented the fact that education authorities build schools that are not handicap friendly, noting that she wanted to see more women graduating on wheelchairs.
She urged the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the university authorities to create structures that would sufficiently cater for the education of the disabled.
‘’As the government has offered the automatic scholarship for the disabled students, I urge the authorities not to make it tedious for us,’’ she appealed.
‘’If you are physically disabled, you must be mentally able so that your mental ability would outshine your physical inability,’’ she added.
Dr Abdulai Dumbuya, the Chief Executive Officer of the Dorothy Springer Trust, referred to section 9 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which, he said, condemned marginalisation of the disabled students.
The said section obliges all state parties to the convention to ensure that everybody had access to education including persons with disabilities who should be supported by government.
In this direction, he urged government to construct schools that would cater for the needs of all children but with a particular focus on the needs of disabled children. While calling on the attention of stakeholders to the special needs of disabled children, Dr Dumbuya cited a host of disabled dignitaries including the then President Roosevelt of the US and Professor Emeritus Eldred Jones who, he said, had offered valuable services to the world.
The Director of Special Needs Education Unit in the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Stephen Alie Korosa, said the actual realisation of creating facilities for the disabled students in all levels of academic institutions calls for the availability of both material and financial resources. He assured the audience that a lot of activities are taking place in his ministry to ensure that inclusive education that caters for the special needs of the disabled is provided in all learning institutions across the country. He said Sierra Leone had not legalised inclusive education but that the country was a party to a convention that called for it.
‘’The Inclusive Education Bill is being prepared and when passed into law, it will make it mandatory for schools and colleges to have facilities that will cater for disabled students,’’ Korosa explained. He said the government was on the verge of purchasing wheelchairs for disabled students and that an organisation based in Bo which manufactured wheelchairs had been contracted for the job of providing the vehicles.
He said schools and colleges would be furnished with lifts and ramps to enable disabled students to access their classrooms. He said an organisation known as The Disabled Children Network has been set up by his ministry and was working very hard to actualise that goal. ‘’When such facilities must have been provided, training workshops are not the right answer, but a robust teacher training on disability issues,’’ he said.
Minority Whip in the House of Parliament, Sidie Tunis, singled out the Child Rights Act of 2007 and the Education Act of 2004 which, he said, indicated that structures for inclusive education had already existed. He reminded stakeholders that section 3 of the Education Act called for the provision of education for all and that the same section provides for the establishment of separate schools for children with disabilities.
‘’Putting disabled children and able children together in learning institutions does not constitute inclusive education, but such system calls for proper planning,’’ he said. Tunis said logistical and financial constraints meant that there couldn’t be well paid and motivated teachers that could effectively handle children with disabilities in schools.
CPIE was established in 2012 on the basis that education should be provided to all and sundry thereby complementing the effort of government in the provision of education in the country. It has been training teachers from various secondary schools in the country on how to create an enabling environment where disabled pupils can favourably compete with others.
(C) Politico 28/07/15
