Inclusive education: Addressing challenges of students with disability

In recent times, the call for inclusive education in Nigeria has continued to gain momentum as the world has adopted the notion that no child should be left out in gaining access to quality education. The Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for […]

In recent times, the call for inclusive education in Nigeria has continued to gain momentum as the world has adopted the notion that no child should be left out in gaining access to quality education.

The Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Also, one of the objectives of SDG 4 is proportion of schools with access to adapted infrastructure and materials for students with disability.

Inclusive education is defined in Nigeria as the process of addressing all barriers and providing access to quality education to meet the diverse needs of all learners in the same learning environment.

Reports indicate that Nigeria has one of the most unequal education systems in the world, with children with disability among the most disadvantaged, with just an insignificant number enrolled in school.

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The challenges of achieving it in the country has been attributed to lack of educational opportunities, poverty, armed conflicts and inequality between rural and urban areas.

Though some states set up special schools to support children with disability, with shifts in policies towards universal education access, there seems to be a problem. However, it is increasingly recognised that inclusive mainstream schools with access to specialised teaching represent good practice.

Education provisions of the Disability Act state that a person with disability is entitled to free education to secondary school level, and that all public schools, whether primary, secondary or tertiary, shall be run to be inclusive of and accessible to Persons with Disability (PWDs).

The act further provides that every school shall have at least a trained personnel to cater for the educational development of PWDs and special facilities for their effective education: braille and sign language and other skills for communicating with them shall form part of the curricula of primary, secondary and tertiary institutions.

However, this is not the case, as many schools do not have the trained persons nor the facilities to cater for the education of PWDs. This is in addition to some schools refusing to enrol them

The Head of Social Development Programmes at Plan International Nigeria, Laban Onisimus, said inclusive education meant an educational system where everyone came together to learn irrespective of their challenges and status.

He said, “However, what we usually term as inclusive education in Nigeria is mostly seen as special education. So, that is the first challenge that we have; defining what an inclusive education is. Even in the education sector, when you get it wrong from the definition, then that means subsequently what you’re going to be doing in order to respond to an education that is inclusive is going to be wrong from the beginning.

“Imagine a classroom where we have all of the learners irrespective of their learning abilities coming together. So, in a classroom where you have the lame, the blind and the person that is fit coming together to learn. That is what is termed inclusive education. However, in Nigeria, what we usually have is schools that are designated to people with special needs.”

He said he went to an inclusive school in Ethiopia and: “I saw learners from all walks of life coming together to learn under one roof. Now, the implication of that is that you need to have a teacher who is also vast; a teacher who can teach braille for the blind, a teacher who can do sign language, a teacher who also has the ability to understand how the learning process should take place.”

He further said this was really a challenge and as a nation: “If we don’t get it right from the definition of what inclusive education is, all that we’ll be doing will just be like responding to education of special needs.

“Now, once we get it right, then it’s easy for us to plan for it. So, it will be easy for us to plan for the teachers. It will be easy for us to plan even for the learners.”

To address the challenges, he said: “It will also be easy for us, for education planners, to sit down and say, okay, for this school, we will need A, B, and C to respond to children or learners with needs that are special. Now, one of the efforts that have been done so far, generally, what I see around is an infrastructure which, yes, this could just be one aspect of attending to inclusive education. When school classrooms are built, you see them building ramps for the disabled. Yes, so it’s just one aspect of it.”

He noted that it was not enough looking at the hardware component of it, hence what about the software component of it.

He said, “What about the ability of the teacher to have the ability to teach very well so that a child that has autism, a child that is blind, a child that is lame, a child that is deaf can understand under the same roof?”

He said Plan International was enlightening citizens on what inclusive education meant and engaging with duty-bearers as government officials to really plan effectively in addressing some of the challenges as they related to inclusive education.

He further said they had rehabilitated model schools, mostly in the North East, and made provision for those ramps and made provisions for toilets that were easily accessible to children with disability.

An educationist, Michael Sule, said Nigeria had a long way to go when it came to achieving inclusive education.

He said just like other challenges in the sector, inclusive education was still a mirage as the country had many of the children out of school, many dropped out and others could not go because of issues of insecurity which had fuelled abductions and killing of students, and above all, that most schools did not have the required facilities to teach children with special needs.

He further said, “Though just a little number of children with disability are allowed to go to school, and most of the majority are in special needs schools, but many are at home locked up either because the parents do not want the public to see such children for fear of mockery or largely due to there are no schools close by with the right facilities and teachers to accommodate such children.”

He added that the challenges were enormous and included parental and societal attitude towards such children, lack of appropriate schools within the communities, lack of learning materials and teachers, poverty and poor funding.

Having acknowledged the challenges of inclusive education, especially that faced by PWDs, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has moved to address the situation by making provision for all-inclusive education.

The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyode, said that education remained the cornerstone of self-actualisation and that it was a collective responsibility to ensure that every individual, regardless of his/her ability, had access to higher education.

Speaking at the first Africa Regional Conference on Equal Opportunity of Access to Higher Education (ARCEAHED), with the theme: “Advancing the Potentials of Persons with Disability (PWD) in Educational and Economic Development”, Oloyode said that for this reason, JAMB was dedicated to fostering fora that facilitated discussions on innovative strategies to enhance educational opportunities for all citizens, particularly those with disability.

While calling for actionable steps to improve the educational landscape for PWDs, he said that in their commitment to create an enabling environment that guaranteed equitable access to tertiary education, the board had reduced the registration fee for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) from N5,000 to N3,500.

He said, “To further support candidates with disability but with five O’level credits in Senior Secondary Certificate, we have, in addition to paying other charges (such as CBT centre fee) provided application documents free of charge. For the visually impaired and other candidates with disabilities who require special examination settings, we have also provided transport supplementation, free accommodation and transit for them and their guides during the examination process.”

He maintained that educational assessment rested squarely on equity, reliability and validity of the assessment and its processes, saying, “Consequently, inclusivity is non-negotiable in any assessment process that is worth the name of being a test or assessment. There emerges our motivation and inspiration for the length, breadth and depth of inclusivity in all aspects of our mandates.”

He disclosed that to ease the difficulties and encourage access for candidates with special needs, the board established 11 adapted centres across the country, expanded the special services to, in addition to the hearing impaired who were mainstreamed, candidates with autism, mobility impairment, paralysis, down syndrome, dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, albinism, cerebral palsy and other disfigurements.

The registra further said they had established the Disability Support Unit in JAMB and in most tertiary institutions in Nigeria, as well as the promotion of the study of Disability Support Services, to enlighten the population on the peculiarity and needs of PWDs on the campuses and in the larger society.

He said Nigeria should consider the adoption of Nigerian Sign Language (NSL) as the second national official language, noting that it would be a major demonstration of empathy for the large number of fellow compatriots with hearing impairment.

The Minister of State for Education, Dr Yusuf Tanko Sununu, said it was part of their mission to ensure that every individual, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities, was given the opportunity to thrive, contribute and lead in their communities and beyond.

Sununu said there was no doubt that the challenges faced by PWDs in accessing both education and economic opportunities had persisted despite significant efforts to create equal access and opportunities for learning and employment.

He said, “For persons with disabilities, the impediments to education are not only compounded by general societal stigmas, but also by physical limitations and institutional challenges. But as we have seen in various contexts, when these barriers are removed and the right conditions are created, the potential within every individual blossoms.

“The brilliance, creativity and resilience demonstrated by persons with disabilities enrich our educational institutions and more broadly, our economies.

“We must, therefore, support the inclusion of persons with disabilities in decision-making positions both in government and at all levels of society, as they are supposed to represent their experiences and unique challenges which cannot be represented by others in the shaping of policies and practices responsive to their needs.”

While noting that they must also address financial constraints students with disability faced through the provision of scholarships, endowments, interest-free loans and grants, the minister said, “JAMB also sought and obtained approval at the 67th National Council on Education meeting to exempt candidates with disabilities from Post/UTME Screening. I, therefore, reiterate, as already announced, that all tertiary institutions in Nigeria are to offer admissions to all candidates with disabilities who possess minimum admissible scores into the programmes of their choice after writing UTME.”

The minister further said that in realising equal access to education, the initiative had the ambitious target to enrol 825,000 students with disability cumulatively over the next five years.

He added that the DOTS policy took into consideration the unique needs of the vulnerable groups vis-à-vis their needs for quality education and assurance that every child, including those with disability challenges, would have adequate opportunities to acquire adequate skills to realise their full potential.