Vusumuzi Dube
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
‘SPECIAL’ classes in the country’s schools are slowly being eliminated owing to the shortage of teachers trained in special needs learning in the country.
This has seen these learners being side-lined, disadvantaged and missing out on education despite government calling for inclusive education and learning spaces. ‘Special’ classes were introduced in schools to cater for pupils that have learning challenges and cannot cope with the learning pace of their peers.
The classes house learners in different grades and are meant to assist the learners at a pace suitable to them owing to their different abilities. However, there are reports that there is a shortage of teachers that are trained in special needs that man these classes with learners reportedly spending their days sitting in disused classes with no sound learning as teachers concentrate on the other learners with no learning challenges.
Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Cde Edgar Moyo said learners were separated according to ability with those that have challenges being put in the special classes.
“People with intellectual challenges, largely in a school system, are screened. In the Ministry we have a department called the Learner Welfare Special Needs Education Department. So, they are supposed to screen learners for intellectual disabilities so that special classes are created and then special strategies that are commensurate with those incapabilities are then attended to by special teachers,” he said.
Deputy Minister Moyo said special needs teachers are trained, largely at United College of Education in Bulawayo but revealed that the numbers were too few to cater for the volumes of children with the learning challenges.
“Yes, granted we are not so many as to satisfy the needs in the country. However, in our Inclusive Education Policy, our teachers are expected to do some targeted teaching so that they do not leave anyone behind in their teaching strategies. However, those with severe challenges are then supposed to be taken to special institutions where specialists and perhaps peers are present and then those can be assisted,” he added.
Recently, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education was confronted by Parliamentarians who felt that the education system was not as inclusive as it should be.
“Are you aware that with regards to inclusive education, children are disadvantaged because of their different abilities? Many schools are now doing away with special classes. You will find that where there is a class of 50 pupils, it is not possible for slow learners or mentally challenged pupils to be able to cope with the rest of the class.
“They are being put in classes that are not proper. Some of them are being placed in very bad classrooms, for example in Norton, they were put in a storeroom. In Chinhoyi, I heard that pupils who understand sign language were gathered in a classroom where there is no learning because the teacher does not even know sign language,” said Senator Nasper Manyau.
Ms Sibonisiwe Mazula, the coordinator of the Zimbabwe Down Syndrome (ZDSA) acknowledged that children with both learning and physical disabilities were being sidelined in some schools.
“I visited a school here in Bulawayo, I saw a little girl with Downs Syndrome seated outside and I enquired why the child was outside and the teacher told me that the parents had not brought any toys for them to spend the day playing with. Then I questioned the teacher why the child was being side-lined as the child was paying school fees and if the teacher was not teaching her then that was a disservice to the child. How does a child in primary school socialise with a doll and toys all day when there are humans in the school? This was the teacher for a special class for that school,” she lamented.
Mrs Mazula said the issue of sending special needs children to specialist schools was also disadvantageous to the learners as some of the institutions were expensive.
“Most of these special needs schools are expensive and parents with children with special needs cannot afford them in many cases hence they want to send them to schools nearest to them which must be inclusive but that is not happening.
“I was told at one school that as long as the class did not have at least five learners with special needs like Downs Syndrome then they could not enrol them into a special class. I said to them that was not fair as that child must be included to learn with learners that are abled differently,” lamented Ms Mazula.
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