Inclusion of Disabled Children in Primary Education - Essay Example

Programme: Number: Module Module Module Leader: Word Count: The Impact of Including a Physically Disabled Child on a Mainstream Primary INTRODUCTION Education is the process through which individuals at different levels in the course their lives, acquire knowledge, skills and information that help them perform different economic and non economic activities towards the improvement of the society. The process of learning entails the giving instruction to the student, the instruction are given through training and by competent teachers. Teaching begins at an early age of the child development, the teaching school being classified as early childhood development, the children are first enrolled in baby class, then to pre unit and lastly to the nursery school. The next level of their education is the primary school. This education consists of six or seven years. The children enrolled in primary education are of the age of five or six years. According to UNESCO (UNESCO, 1994) almost 70 % of the children enroll for primary education. This report also suggests that most governments in all parts of the world are ready to archive a full universal enrollment of all children in primary schools by the year 2015. Disability is defined as an impairment, which can be either physical or mental that limits a human being from performing activities performed by an ordinary person. The Disability Discrimination Act(DDA) defines disability as a mental or physical limitation that has substantial long term negative effect on the person and limits his/her ability to perform day to day duties. With respect to this definition; substantial indicates that the disability can be minor or major. Long term means that its effects can last for one year minimum, the activities that the disabled person is unable to perform include but not limited to speech, hearing, sight, manual work, movement and reasoning power. According to research conducted by the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), the areas affected by disability include; performance of general task, communication impairment, limited or no mobility, lack of self care, limited learning ability, inability to carry out domestic function, inability for relationship with other people and the community as a whole. some of the most common disability among human being include; deafness, which is the inability to hear, blindness which is the inability to see, lameness which is the inability to walk or perform other physical tasks and mental retardation or cognitive disability which is the inability to reason or solve problems normally. According to a report by UNESCO (UNESCO, 1994) the implementation of inclusive education would be more advantageous to the disabled children in the long run. The report highlights that the inclusion of the disabled children will lead to the enhancement of a cooperative spirit between the disabled children and the other students. This will help the other students to accept the disabled children as part of the society. The other children will also help them in adapting to the ordinarily system of learning. Implementation of inclusive education is considered to be beneficial to all the children in the long run, initially the disabled children may feel a little different from other kids, but with time the children accept their differences. The children with disability will also run how to tolerate and accept each other differences. Special schools These are schools, specially designed and staffed with specially trained and experienced tutors in order to cater for education needs of disabled children. In these schools the student are given high attention and the teacher. The student- teacher ratio is less than 6:1. In addition, these students have special facilities e.g. sensory rooms, special swimming pools and other facilities that aid these children develop, learn, play and interact with each other. Some of these special schools include; school for the blind, school for the deaf, school for mentally impaired and many others. Lack of proper education in these special schools results in the children hating or rejecting education, report indicates that majority of the students with physical disability don't receive the required education, the education standards in these schools is substandard and is based on old curriculum that emphasized on some procedures that don't apply today (Hergarty,1990), most of the people who have gone through the special education program challenge it, they argue that it impacts a negative attitude to the mind of the child, it impacts a feeling of rejection by the society, this may demoralize a child make her/him less productive in the future.(Oliver 1995 ), according to those students learning in these schools, they argue incorporation of the disabled students to the mainstream primary school will be of great advantage. RESEARCH METHODS Though the disabled children are provided for with special schools, not all the special school has the capacity to enroll all the disabled children. Some of these students, with minor disabilities can be integrated to the main stream primary schools. Due to this inclusion, there are some positive and negative effects from this. During the recent years the number of disabled children being integrated in mainstream schools (Woolley, 2006). In respect to the Special Needs and Disability Act (2001), has increased significantly. According to a research conducted Hellene Woolley and Marc Armitage,( Woolley, 2006) who carried out a survey of disabled children learning in six schools in Yorkshire, the disabled student were found to engage in many types of games. The games were either facilitated by the tutors, by other children or by the disabled children themselves. According to the UNESCO report, (UNESCO, 1994) the following were quoted as the rights of every child. 1. All children have right to education and must have an opportunity to achieve and maintain acceptable levels of learning. 2. Every child has diverse unique interest, learning needs, talents and characteristics. 3. Those children with special educational needs have a right to regular schools and these schools should accommodate them. 4. All education systems should be designed in such a way to allow for accommodation of all children irrespective of their wide diversity. 5. The best method to fight against discriminatory and harassment of the disabled in the society is to adopt an inclusive education system. From the UNESCO definition, all schools should enroll all students irrespective of their linguistic, physical, intellectual, social and emotional needs. This rule means all children whether disabled or gifted, street children, children with differing linguistic, ethnic or religious groups have a right for education. This education should help the individual to first gain the basic education then help the disabled child be able to develop potential and become productive in life. There is need to look for broader way of defining inclusive education. . Emphasis should be made to define the difference between inclusive and integrated schools. Whichever the term, it should apply to a lager field rather than concentrating on education only. The education should be broader covering other social areas. Introduction of the inclusive education is expected to bring into practice the right for all children to be taught. If this is implemented then all children will have a chance to read and hence better their life in the future. Children with very severe difficulties should have a chance for learning even if it entails the child been taught at home. An example is like exposing a deaf child to grown ups who are deaf so that he can develop sign language. Inclusive education is also going to foster better relation and view of the society towards the disabled, currently the society views disabled people as one who can perform certain tasks. Segregation and isolation is common to most disabled children. If these children are taken to a special school then they might not learn how to interact with others. If however they are brought up together with other normal children then, they learn to socialize with the other kids and also the other kids learn to accept these children. The society in the long run will accept the difference while an element of tolerance is impacted on the disabled children. Families and people with disabilities will hence not be isolated or segregated in the long run (Coleridge, 1992). Change of school Change of school is one of the negative effects of the inclusion of children in the main stream schools, changing of one school to another can have negative effects of the student, if the student had developed and formed friendship ties with other students in a disabled school, the child can have problems adapting to the new environment especially where the child is meeting healthy normal kids with no disability. The child may have some problem in adapting to these changes. (Woolley, 2006) Equipment Physically disabled children require special learning equipment, swimming and playing facilities, these facilities are well provided for in special schools but in the mainstream schools these facilities aren't provided for. Thus any school taking special or disabled children should have the ability to cater for these children. A report about the inclusion of physically students in mainstream school (Woolley, 2006) suggests that the students with disability dint have the necessary playing equipment. The report further indicates that no school had audited or improved the playground to make it an all inclusive play ground with specially designed fixed equipment for the disabled children. Playground and play games According to a research conducted by Fitzpatrick, (2006) Disabled children were found to have some limitation when it came to games. These children have the following barriers; first the are faced with reduced opportunity to play during the school breaks because the have to perform various routines. Secondly, the staffs are not well trained on how to handle these kids; the teaching staffs also don't know the games the children play. (Woolley, 2006). Psychological effects The implementation of inclusive education may have some psychological effects on the development of the child, children are generally affected by utterances given by others and this may affect their attitude towards life. this may lead to self pity, self hatred, hating other people, hating education and hating parent. Subjecting the disabled child through inclusive education may lead to the child developing an inferiority complex; the child develops an attitude that others are better than him. Due to this the child shies off from responsibilities and tasks and prefers other people handling these tasks. This negative attitude can lead to the child dropping out of school; to prevent these teachers must ensure that all children participate in class, physical education and also in other social activities. Teachers and parents must also ensure that the children are involved in other physical works and that the child is given responsibility during common games. However the tread in psychological improvement of the disabled child is expected to rise due to inclusive education system. The survey by UNICEF, (UNICEF, 2000), showed that the behavior of the disabled children in the school was normal; the other student also accepted the children with disability well. In fact 93 % of the head teachers indicated that the students performed well in class. The behavior of the disabled children against the normal was about 94 %, the head teachers also showed that the cooperation of the disabled children and the normal children was 95.2 %; this clearly indicated that there were no social, psychological or cultural barriers between the disabled children and the normal children. The cases of dropout from school by the disabled students were favorably better. 22.7 % dropped out of school during their first five years of primary school while those who completed school with excellent performance were 29.2 %. This dropout rate is nearly the same with that of the normal students who drop out of school in their first five years. The researcher aims to study psychological effects and determine if there is any negative impact on the disabled child. Organization barriers These barriers were found to exist in schools with the disabled students; these barriers included the existence of many routines that have to be conducted by the disabled children which reduces the time they have to play. In most cases the student with disability were found playing by themselves. By doing a proper research the best routines can be selected while those with no significance can be dropped, the children can also be allocates more time so that they can play (Hanbury, 1995). Physical barriers Physical barriers such as toilets, ramps may affect the disabled children negatively. In special schools, the children have special toilets for these children but in some cases the main stream schools lack these special facilities for these children. the major obstacles experienced by the disabled children in the mainstream school are; the roads, the stairs and bathrooms which are made for normal ordinary students, these pose a big problem especially to those with physical disability such as lameness, blindness etc. for example, a lame student who uses a wheel chair to move will find it hard to climb through stairs to attend a class on floor one of a building. another physical problem are the classroom, the tables the chairs which are made for normal children with no disability, children with disability may find it hard to use these chairs and tables in some cases special tables may have to be allocated to them. It is however argued that in the long run the disabled children will have to adapt themselves to the changes making them adapt more better to the real life situations which don't at all time present special facilities for disabled people, an example is the publics toilet in towns which don't have special toilets for the disabled. According to Swain, 1993, other long term solution will be to enforce new building laws that dictate that building should have special pathways for the disabled; classes can also be moved to a location where everybody can reach, change of toilets, better and safe playing equipment to aid the disabled children to play alongside the other children. According to Hanbury (1995), the children can adapt using the normal chair in the long run, doors to toilets, bathroom and classes can be widened to enable student with disability to enter these classes without significant difficulties. the EENET (1997) report proposes a change in the equipment. These changes include, toilets electric switches which may be too high for the disabled child, the ground may not be even to enable the child to walk, heavy entrance doors to classes, toilets, bathroom may be difficult for the physically handicapped child to open, cars driving very fast in the school compound may not give a physically handicapped child time to close the road resulting to accidents, the drainage grids which are common on roads may be difficult for the disabled child using walkers feet to close as the walkers feet get stuck on the grid. Stairs and steps needed to be changed to ramps. The location of some equipment e.g. fire fighting equipment also need to be changed. The researcher hopes to conduct a survey of various schools, determine the facilities they have for special children and determine how the lack of physical facilities impacts negatively on the disabled children. Lack of special education facilities Due to lack of the necessary resources in special education schools makes these institutions an appropriate to train children with disability, a report by UNESCO (UNESCO, 1994) suggests that the inclusion of all student despite of their inability lead to better and beneficial education to all the children. However UNESCO points out that for this type of education to succeed then the current system of education has to be improved. according to Oliver, (1995) the inclusion of students with special needs does not primarily mean that the student require a specially trained teacher, he continues to say that all student face education difficulty at one stage of their life, he argues that all the teachers do not require special skills but needs more attention with the children. In this way the child can learn and attain better skills. A report by the UNESCO, (UNESCO, 1994) suggests that the teacher needs motivation, professional guidance, and better curriculum in order to implement special education. Different teaching strategies should be used by the teachers to enable all children to understand and apply the skills in life. Creative teaching can be another method of helping the children with disability adapt alongside the other children. The mentors can be trained on methods of creative teaching where all children participate. Introduction of group work can also help in inclusion of the disabled child in the ordinary classes. Training teachers how to handle these students can be of great importance, incentives given to handle these students can help motivate the teachers, involving the teachers and other student in finding solution to these students may also help. The researcher, through the questionnaire will determine the attitude of the teachers towards the inclusion of special education and by analyzing the comments by teachers better and quality treatment of students can be developed. Another big obstacle to the inclusive education is the teacher's attitude to disabled children. According to a survey in schools conducting inclusive learning, the teachers had fears that the disabled children needed a specialized professional to teach/ train them, the teachers also feared failing in their duty which is reflected on the student's performance. These mentors also expressed fears that they had no previous experience on handling disabled children. However it is argued that, due to the inclusion of disabled children in the mainstream schools, pressure to train these students will lead to the betterment of the teaching methods as teachers have to look for new ways that promote participation by all students making the education quality rise. This will help the disabled children understand what is being taught. Inclusive education will hence lead in the improvement of education in schools. A report by UNSECO (UNSECO, 1994) shows total lack of special equipment and facilities to enable a conducive environment for the disabled children, some of the thing lacking were specialized teachers, lack of tailor made timetables to suit the disabled children. The teachers were also found lacking the basic know how of how basic technical equipment required to train the handicapped children. It was also noted by the same report that the schools criterion for selecting teachers to handle the disabled were based on education and experience, while other chose the tutors based on sympathy and caring teachers. About 36.5 % chose teachers based on experience and qualification while 44.4 % chose the teachers based on the more caring and sympathetic teachers. This clearly indicates that the students lack the resources of qualified teachers to train the physically handicapped children. Another obstacles of inclusive education is that the special education offers or gives time to the student to grasp what he is been taught, special care has to be taken to the children with special needs, a disabled child is sometimes out of the class due illnesses and may fail to chat up with what he lost. Disabled children also require special responsibility and also special safety on all equipment, building and other facilities. There is need to evaluate the teaching methods and give all children ample time to understand what they are be taught in class. The population of the class is another limitation, many students per given teacher may hamper the training of the handicapped child who needs more time to understand a concept, these children need special care and may fail to understand a given concept because of their disability, hiring more teachers more teachers will help in overcoming this problem. Admission to schools Due to lack of facilities, most of the mainstream schools base the selection criteria on the extent of the disability. Many schools can only handle limited non severe cases of disability; this brings some element of discrimination on these children. Most of the school however do not conduct interview during the selection of the disabled children to join the school. According to the UNICEF report (UNICEF, 2000) Admission was based on the extent of the disability. From this report about 86% of the school did not have any procedure all interview for the disabled students. Decreased harassment by other student Due to the other student getting used to the disabled children, the harassment and discrimination against these children has gone down, the other children in the mainstream primary don't have a negative attitude towards these children, according to the report by UNICEF,(UNICEF, 2000) The rate of harassment and discrimination was very low, about 36.5 % of the school surveyed showed that discrimination never occurred while 53.8 % showed that harassment occurred rarely 3.8 % of the school reported some harassment and discrimination occurred. The researcher hopes to conduct a survey through questionnaire and determine the attitude of the children towards the disabled children and determine quantitatively the extent of the harassment and discrimination. Academic performance The inclusion of the disabled children to the mainstream primary education has been found to result in improvement of the academic performance by the disabled children, exposing these students to the competitive world sharpens them and this is reflected in their overall performance. This can be proved by a report by UNICEF, (UNICEF, 2000) which shows that the academic performance of the disabled student in mainstream schools was excellent. Out of all the disabled children under survey, 73.3 % performed very well. 10% of the total number of disabled students repeated classes due to failing to attain the required marks to proceed to the next class. This percentage was higher than UNICEF's target of 4%. The researcher intends to determine the level of performance by the disabled children and compare this results to that of the ordinary normal children. Parental participation Parental support and guidance is important in the development of the disabled child. However, the participation by the parent of the disabled child was however very low. 46% of schools reported that the disabled children parent or guardian never visits the school or classes. About 11 percent of the schools reported that parents of the physically handicapped children visit the schools regularly while 41.4 % showed that the parent occasionally visit their disabled children. Inclusive education also helps the parent of the disabled children be relived the burden of having to train these children how to perform some practical skills. According to Finkelstein (1996), some skills taught by the parent of the disabled children can be acquired at school. E.g. it takes the parent effort to train a disabled child how to sit in ordinary chair, how to use ordinary toilets bathrooms and other facilities, however if the kid interacts with other kids he can learn these skills by himself. Head teacher response From the survey conducted by UNICEF, the head teachers agreed that inclusive education was beneficial to the disabled children, 71.2 % agreed that the inclusion of disabled children in main stream primary education was a success, 17 % indicated that the did not see the success of the inclusive education, of all the head teachers interviewed 69.1 % agreed that the inclusive education was the best, 13.4 percent recommended the establishment of training centers within the school where these children would be trained while only 9.4 % were for the retention of special schools. This clearly shows that the integrated approach is best for all children irrespective of their physical, mental, religion or sex differences. By asking head teachers about their view of inclusive education through a questionnaire the researcher will be able to determine the attitude of the school heads and also get vital first hand information about the impact of this type of education. Financial support Inclusive education is also a very economical method of education. All students can be taught in one school. Inclusive education removes the necessity of setting up special schools which are expensive to build and maintain. It also removes the need for parents to spend a lot of money in training their child. It is expected that the physically disabled child will pay the same tuition fee, development fee and other charges as the other kids. Conclusion In conclusion it can be seen that the beneficial aspects of incorporating disabled children in the mainstream primary education far outweigh the disadvantages of such integration. The integration of these handicapped students has also been found to have physical, emotional and psychological benefits to the individual. Since the inclusion of these children has more positive effects, there is need for finding amicable solution to the problems highlighted herein; these can be solved by training the teachers, creating awareness to the parent that their participation is of great importance. There is also the need to improve and advance the facilities and buildings and also create awareness to the community that "disability is not inability". This will generally improve the learning and living condition for the disabled. For inclusive education to be enhanced properly then the society must accept that all children can learn, accept the various differences between the children, build up systems, structures and methods to help train all children, Provide to a wider scale an inclusive society where the needs of the disabled are addressed. To enhance and constantly improve inclusive education, Better teaching strategies should be adapted to overcome the problem of crowded classes due inclusive education. References Coleridge, P., 1992. Disability, Liberation and Development. UK/Ireland: Oxfam. EENET, 1997. 'Focus on Teacher Education' in Enabling Education: Issue 2 Manchester: [online]. EENET. Available at: http://www.eenet.org.uk/key_issues/child_child/promote.shtml [accessed 29 April 2009]. Finkelstein, V. and Stuart, O., 1996. 'Developing New Services' in Hales, G (ed), Beyond Disability: Towards an Enabling Society. London: Sage Fitzpatrick, L., 2006. Including disabled children. [Online], Available at http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/including-disabled-children-1063 [accessed 29 April 2009] Hanbury C., 1995. The Child-to-Child Training Pack, Unit 2. UK: The Child-to-Child Trust. Hegarty S., 1990. The Education of Children and Young People with Disabilities, Principles and Practice. Paris: UNESCO. Woolley H., 2006. Inclusion of disabled children in primary school playgrounds [online], available at: http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/inclusion-disabled-children-primary-school-playgrounds [accessed 29 April 2009] Oliver M., 1995. Does Special Education Have a Role to Play in the Twenty First Century Journal of Special Needs Education in Ireland. Vol.8, No.2, pp67-76. Swain J. et al (1993). Disabling Barriers, Enabling environments. UK: SAGE Publications. UNESCO, 1994. The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education. Paris: UNESCO UNICEF, 2000 Disabled Children in Mainstream Schools, [online] UNICEF. Available at: http://www.unicef.org/evaldatabase/index_14290.html [accessed 29 April 2009] QUESTIONNAIRE For the purposes of research, the writer has developed a questionnaire to aid in investigating the practicality of inclusive education and its effects on the disabled child. The researcher hopes to carry out this study in several schools which conduct inclusive education. The questionnaire is generally to be filed by teachers, head teachers, the students and the disabled students. QUESTIONNAIRE Q1) Does the school have enough facilities to train disabled children Name of the school . Head teachers name Equipment for special education moving/shifting Classes Ramp(s) special building(s) Special equipment(s) installed Any modification(s) to existing building(s) Any modification to any existing school equipment(s) tick yes no Yes No 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2. 3. 4. Head teacher remarks Q2) Are there any psychological, social or cultural barriers To be filled by disabled children. Name of the child Yes No Do the other students harass you Do you like the other children Do the other kids help you Do you play with the other kids Do you like the teachers Are they good to you Do the other children abuse you Do you like going to school Q3. Do the children perform well academically Name of the teacher. Academic of four disabled children Academic performance of student Name of student Subject 1 (Linguistic studies) Subject 2 (Mathematics) Subject 3 (any other subject) Overall performance in all examined subject 1 2 3 4 Average performance of all disabled students (per class) Teachers Remarks Academic performance of four normal children Name of the teacher .. Academic performance of student Name of student Subject 1 (Linguistic studies) Subject 2 (Mathematics) Subject 3 (any other subject) Overall performance 1 2 3 4 Average performance of all normal students(per class) Teachers Remarks Q4. How many children drop out of school Name of the head teacher . Name of the school Number of disabled children dropping out of school in the last five(5)years Number of normal children dropping out of school in the last five(5) years Head teachers remarks Q5. Do the parents of the disabled child contribute to his/her well being Name of the head teacher. Name of the school Number of parents visiting the disabled children in the last 3 months Number of parents visiting normal children in the last 3 months Head teachers remarks Q6. What is the attitude of the teachers towards the children with disability Name of the teacher . Tick where appropriate Yes No If yes, describe Do you find it hard to train disabled children Do you find it hard to use equipment for training disabled children Do you think inclusive education is the best for disabled kinds Do you need extra training to handle disabled children Read More