Disabilities are common. In Tanzania 8 % of the population are defined as disabled. This means that most people have someone in their family or neighbourhood who has been defined as not fitting in, not being normal, not as one should.
There are tendencies in all societies to exclude those not regarded as normal. Yet all people are different and we are all individuals, born with personal strengths and challenges. The definition of who is normal and who is not is a social construction created by ourselves. Instead of drawing a line between the normal and the disabled we must include every single individual and leave the diagnostic business of exclusion behind. Millions of people in the world with disabilities do not have access to the opportunities and resources needed to fulfil their basic human needs. Together they form a substantial proportion of the world’s poor. The global Millennium DevelopmentGoals (MDGs) cannot be met without specific effort being made to include persons with disabilities. One of the key measures is access to education.
While enrolment rates in Tanzania is high, school attendance for disabled children is low: only 4 out of 10 children aged 7-13 are attending school.
Poverty and marginalization are major causes of exclusion. Households in rural or remote communities and children in urban slums have less access to education. Disabled children suffer from blatant educational exclusion. Working children, those belonging to indigenous groups and linguistic minorities, nomadic children and those affected by HIV/AIDS are among the vulnerable groups.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics in Tanzania (NBS) and its 2008 Disability Survey the prevalence of disability is around 7.8% of the population, relatively equal between men and women. However, the prevalence is higher in rural (8.4%) than in urban areas (6.4%) and as mentioned earlier school attendance is low at around 40% and with less then 2% of those attending special schools. More than half of people with disabilities over 15 had attended primary school, but only 5% had attended secondary school and less than 1% completed tertiary education. Use of assistive devices among children under 15 is very low. Only 2.2 percent of those children were using any device.
I believe that an inclusive environment in the mainstream schools is the best possible option to enrol a maximum number of children with disability in education. The overall goal is to ensure that school is a place where all children participate and are treated equally. This involves a change of mindset. Inclusive education is away to transform the education systems to respond to the diversity of learners. In my view this means promoting child-centred methodologies that is to move away from rote learning and introduce hands-on, experience-based, active and cooperative learning.
Introducing inclusion as a guiding principle has implications for teachers’ practices and attitudes towards girls, slow learners, or children with special needs. Teachers have a foremost influence on learning. Yet their status and working conditions makes it difficult to promote inclusion. We need to do more to improve their lot. This is challenging for any country but in particularly for Tanzania since it does not only have a severe teacher shortage, but also a lack of adequately trained teachers.
It is encouraging that the Ministry of Education now is putting teacher training at the top of the priority list. Adequate pre-service and in-service teacher training is urgently needed to improve teachers learning. They also need training about inclusive principles and the basics of disability, to ensure that their attitudes and approaches do not prevent disabled children from gaining equal access to the curriculum. A recent visit to the SEKUCo-college of Tumaini University in Lushoto where this kind of teacher training is the focus strengthened me in that conviction. Moreover, policies must address teacher’s status, welfare and professional development.
An inclusive education system benefits girls and boys from all groups in society, not just disabled girls and boys. Education policies addressing the needs of all marginalised groups in society are likely to be more successful. Creating policies for separate categories of children is time-consuming, expensive and divisive.
It is inefficient to have school systems where children are not learning because of poor quality. Schools with high repetition rates often fail to work in preventive ways. The expenditure incurred by schools when students repeat a grade would be better used to provide additional support to those who encounter difficulties. Several cost-effective measures to promote inclusive quality education have been developed in countries with scarce resources. These include training-of-trainer models for professional development, linking students in pre-service teacher training with schools and converting special needs schools into resource centres that provide expertise and support to clusters of regular schools.
Finally, exclusion starts very early in life. A holistic vision of education is imperative. Comprehensive early childhood care and pre-school programmes improve children’s well being, prepare them for primary school and give them a better chance of succeeding once they are in school. It is the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children that benefit most from pre-school programmes.
Inclusion is about democracy, tolerance and respect for difference. Disability should not be the issue. It is the abilities, the capacity, the potential – inherent in every single child – that should be the focus. And children’s rights should be given much more attention as key to a decent society free of poverty.
Staffan HerrströmAmbassador of Sweden