Oped»
Forget them not
APR 19 -
Thanks to the efforts of the government and the active support of concerned agencies, Nepal’s illiteracy rate has been gradually decreasing. According to the Department of Education, however, 10 percent of the 3.2 million school-age children (five to 14 years old) in the country are still out of school. This being the case, the 2010 School Enrolment Campaign was launched on April 15 throughout the country. The campaign has been conducted every year from the past six years with the aim of bringing education to more students to meet the millennium development goals (MDGs) and the slogan of “Education for All” by 2015. According to the Ministry of Education, the strategy is to encourage guardians to bring their children to school for admission between April 15 to 26 in time for the new academic year.
Though this is a very positive step taken by the government, it is very sad to note that issues of educating children with disabilities have been almost ignored by this campaign. According to the Situation Analysis of Disability in Nepal (NPC/UNICEF/New Era, 2001), 68.2 percent of all persons with disabilities have no education. If children with disabilities are not included in this scheme, this programme will not be as successful as it needs to be because access to education by children with disabilities has yet to be resolved.
The history of education for children with disabilities in Nepal is not a long one. It formally began in the 1960s with the establishment of schools for children with visual impairments in 1964, and for children with hearing impairments in 1967. Principally, each school offers either integrated or special education, and is supported with a resource room and resource teachers to prepare new students with the necessary basic skills. These skills differ according to the type of the impairment -- with reading and writing Braille as very basic skills for children with visual impairments and sign language and lip reading for those with hearing impairments. These skills have to be offered to students with disabilities before placing them in the mainstream classes.
In 1973, the Ministry of Education established the Special Education Council (SEC) to look at the issues of education for children with disabilities. SEC primarily made decisions that included free education for children with disabilities up to high school, a stipend for college level students with disabilities and training of teachers for Special Education. Similarly, the Disabled Persons Protection and Welfare Act (DPWA) of 1982 also ensured free education for persons with disabilities. However, these decisions of SEC and the DPWA’s provisions were not implemented, and children with disabilities have a limited choice of programmes, often limited to mainstreaming with insufficient assistance. As a result, strengthening and expanding educational programmes for children with disabilities have not been as successful as had been hoped.
In 1994, the Basic Primary Education Project (BPEP) was started. It aimed to provide primary education to children with disabilities by adapting the BPEP special education programme as part of the EFA provision. According to the statistics contained in the book Status of People with Disability (People with Different Ability) in Nepal, (Prasad, L. N. (2003), 1,800 students with disabilities had benefited from the BPEP. The book further stated that, among students with disabilities, 620 students learned sign language and 500 learned Braille.
Though there is no data available on the number of Nepali children with disabilities, there were an estimated 28,000 school-age children with visual impairments alone, according to Hall (1990). There are other children with disabilities including those with physical, hearing and intellectual impairments along with individuals with psychiatric and developmental disabilities, whose number is unavailable. Among these children, very few have benefited from the educational opportunities. Likewise, individuals with deafblindness are totally excluded from the educational opportunities despite the fact that each of them has a great potential to be a fully functioning and even influential human being in the spirit of Helen Keller.
On the subject of education, the author does not mean to criticise the qualifications of teachers who are engaged in teaching students with disabilities in general. However, these teachers require up-to-date training and disability-specific skill sets in order to provide students with quality education. It is mandatory to receive specialised certification in the faculty of education in Nepal to become a school teacher; but there is still no similar institution to provide standardised professional certification to teachers of children with disabilities.
At present, only informal programmes are offered to these teachers, and that by non-government organisations (NGOs). Without teachers having prior knowledge of disability-specific teaching skills, or at best informal training, we can hardly expect that they can effectively teach students with disabilities. The Ministry of Education established institutions to improve access to education, but does the government not also hold some responsibility for preparing quality teachers at a standardised professional institution? Furthermore, problems due to insufficient disability-specific teaching materials must also be remedied.
Where materials and resources are concerned, for example, the existing method of students with visual impairments requiring the help of an assistant to take exams is problematic. It can be remedied by making exams available in Braille, for example, or by providing other constructive alternatives such as teaching computers. Students will only be able to explore their real potential once they are able to take exams fully independently.
There is no doubt that the beginning of the 21st century has broken new grounds in almost every area of basic education, whether with regard to adult literacy, decentralised planning, improved access, preparation of teaching-learning materials or even reaching marginalised groups. At the same time, however, it is also a fact that though some NGOs have provided a limited amount of basic facilities to a few of the many children with disabilities, the role of the government does not seem to be sufficient in order to offer quality education for these children. Despite several international declarations including the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action (UNESCO, 1994) the country simply is not fulfilling its responsibility to educate children with disabilities as part of mainstream education.
Similarly, Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has clearly stated the ways in which governments have to address the educational needs of persons with disabilities. Despite the unanimous decision regarding this treaty by Nepal’s parliament, it has not yet been ratified with the UN. Once Nepal deposits the ratification of the convention with the UN, tackling disability issues more broadly will be relatively straightforward. If the government seriously wants its citizens to be educated and enjoy the already justified high returns from education, both on the social and economic fronts, it must address the issue of access to education for persons with disabilities. Finally, although a positive step, the campaign to enrol students and improve literacy will not be truly successful until the fundamental rights of children with disabilities to receive basic education is guaranteed by the government by appropriate policies, strategies and programmes.
kamal@bfp.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp
(The author, a researcher on disability issues, is currently working at the University of Tokyo and is the first Nepali with a disability to receive a PhD)
Posted on: 2010-04-20 07:22
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