When does inclusion become exclusion?

(article for good governance weekly)

This week I visited schools in Banke to find out how they include disabled children in mainstream education.

One of the schools I visited was attempting to include deaf children into its school fairly unsuccessfully. There was one very dedicated female teacher who was obviously doing her best to teach a class of fourteen children. The teacher had only received one month of sign language training and was there for very limited by her capacity to teach using sign language. The other difficulty she encountered was that the children were of all different ages. The outcome is a class of fourteen children who are not receiving education to suit their needs and abilities.

For the teacher to receive adequate skills in sign language she needs to receive a further six months training, but who will teach her class whilst she receives this training. And how can the problem of teaching mixed ability children in the same class be overcome.

In another school blind children were being integrated more successfully. The blind pupils are taught in the same class room using Braille and they are able to live at the school during school time to make accessibility easier.

It feels like the attempt to include the deaf children into mainstream education is having the opposite effect excluding them from the education they are entitled to and socially excluding them from the other school pupils. But with limited resources what is the answer?

Deaf children could be assigned their own personal signer who could interpret during class time or each teacher could be taught signing to a high level, but with limited resources these solutions are not practical. The alternative could be a district school in which all deaf children can access education which fits their age and ability and in which teachers receive the correct sign language training. In one way this would promote education inclusion but potentially would socially exclude them from every day society and family life.

There is no simple answer, it’s a complex situation made worse by limited resources and agendas for social inclusion. What we must also remember is that these children are individuals with their own thoughts and feelings and what suits one child may not suit another, ideally it would be good to offer children a choice of how they would like to be educated to suit their individual needs.