Educational

Education for children with disabilities 

Lawmakers heard that children with disabilities are unable to exercise their right to basic education. They face a wide range of barriers, which prevents them from having access to any form of support services offered within a school environment.

Human Rights Watch, Section 27 and Inclusive Education South Africa highlighted that nearly 600 000 children with disabilities are out of school because public ordinary schools are refusing admission and not fulfilling their obligations. Special schools also turn away such children because of their inability to cater for their individual needs. Many children are put on waiting lists for up to four years in order to be accepted into a special needs school that will cater for their specific disability. These needs vary and require different responses and resources. Wheelchair-bound students need ramps while blind students need braille facilities. Additionally, parents struggle to cover the high expense of having a child with a disability and this adds to the high percentage of children not attending schools. The majority of these learners do not have access to government subsidised transport and it can cost up to R800 a month just to transport a child with a wheelchair to school and back. All this is in addition to challenges around the quality of education and training of special needs educators and lack of resources, such as Braille machines and textbooks, for learners with disabilities. The lack of sufficient professional staff like nurses, therapists, psychologists and social workers is another concern. In addition, no special needs school is listed on the annual no-fees school list. The NGOs said this matter requires a system-wide response and advised the Department to submit annual figures for children who are excluded.

The Department affirmed its commitment to widening access to education and making sure that no child is left behind. While it acknowledges the challenges, there is progress towards creating a conducive environment to ensure learners with disabilities receive quality education. Government-allocated funding was used to buy assistive devices, provide learner transport, develop infrastructure, train professional support staff and purchase learner/teacher support material. About 800 schools are being reconfigured into full service schools and resources are being dedicated to those schools. More than R5.7 billion was allocated to special schools in 2014/15, while R400 million was earmarked for strengthening full service schools. Draft funding norms have been developed to address the disparity of funding full service schools across all provinces and the implementation of the inclusive education policy requires integrated planning at all levels. Interestingly, the performance of special needs schools is higher than public ordinary schools for both the Annual National Assessments and the National Senior Certificate.

 MPs commended the Department for the work done but expressed concern that implementation in the provinces was not taking place as expected. They said the number of children that were not covered by special education was worrisome. They called on everyone to join hands and focus on what needs to be done to ensure that every child with a disability of compulsory school-going age is enrolled in a registered education programme or school, and has full access to the learning process through access to reasonable accommodation and support. 

The White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was gazetted in March. It states that persons with severe difficulties had the worst educational outcomes – only 5.3% attained higher education, 23 .8% had no formal education and 24.6% had some primary education. Another finding is that children with severe difficulty in walking and communicating have the lowest proportions attending school, while those with severe difficulty in seeing had the highest proportions in school.