Children with disabilities are treated as outcasts although the South African Schools Act states that all pupils must learn under one roof ‘I am 14 years old. I was born blind. I live with my mother here in Kwesine Hostel. I am going to school this year. I like school. I like the singing and playing, but most of all I like the learning. I am learning to read Braille. But last year I did not go to school for the whole year. I started school, but then the school transport brought me home for the holidays and they did not fetch me again. I knew it was because I had not paid school fees … When I don’t go to school I just sit around here. I don’t have friends here.”
These are the kinds of problems facing children with disabilities, according to Duduzile, one of the children featured in the Soul Buddyz life orientation book.
The South African Schools Act has an inclusion policy but there are several barriers to implemention. Sue Goldstein, project manager of Soul Buddyz, says: ”In South Africa, almost half a million children need disability services. Almost 70% of children with disabilities are presently out of school. Youth with disabilities are less likely to access youth development programmes and find employment than their peers. More than 80% of black children with disabilities live in extreme poverty and have little access to appropriate health care and early childhood facilities. Most children with learning disabilities in black schools go undetected and do not receive proper support which causes many of them to drop out of school.”
A survey conducted by the Disabled People’s Society of South Africa in the Lowveld District of Mpumalanga found that the majority of children with disabilities were not in school. Between August 1999 and July 2000, of a total number of 145 children between the ages of 6 and 15 years with disabilities, only 26 were in school.
Despite these statistics, Mpumalanga is home to Kamagugu, the first inclusive school in South Africa where sign language is recognised equally with other languages. The school is the result of the initiative of the Kamagugu Residents’ Committee and the Provincial Forum of Disabled People Organisations.
Kamagugu is registered as an ordinary primary school with the Department of Education and is therefore not a special school but a dual-medium school with English and SA Sign Language as the main mediums of instruction. The school receives a special education needs subsidy for every learner with a disability.
Deaf children living in the Greater Nelspruit District who want to be taught through the medium of SA Sign Language are welcome at the school. Learners with visual disabilities living in the Greater Nelspruit District will also be enrolled as soon as a Low Vision/Braille Unit has been established at the school.
Despite these achievements, the school has not been without problems. The school is starting to change the thinking within the department, which is increasingly recognising that having two separate systems for learners with disabilities and able-bodied learners needs to change. Goldstein adds: ”Inclusive education has wide-reaching benefits for both children with and without disabilities. Inclusive education has the potential to reduce fear and to build friendship, respect and understanding. It also facilitates familiarity and tolerance which reduce fear and rejection.
Research shows that children do better, academically and socially, in integrated settings. In 1997, the Minister of Education commissioned a report om disability education which recommended that: The report recommended that: the label special education needs should be got rid of as it stigmatises learners and promotes separate education; focus on the barriers that prevent learning; learners with disabilities should have a choice of where to learn; ordinary schools need to transform and discriminate less by addressing attitudinal and physical barriers; and very severely disabled learners will continue to learn at specialised sites of learning.
All schools should establish a support team that will work with district teams to minimise barriers and problems within the school.
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, March, 2001.
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