Relooking at education for all

For decades, Makande Primary School has been a lifeline for children with visual impairments. Its resource centre for the blind has proved quite handy for Chikhwawa District and surrounding areas since 1982, and there was never much to worry about. Occasional shortages of beds, writing materials and teachers for students with special needs seemed singular incidents.

From the school which targets a community of 100 000 people, its priceless contribution towards education of blind and visually impairment children is unmistakable.

Of the 2 254 learners at the school, 33 cannot see. They learn together, being subjected to the same notes and exercises teachers often scribble on the blackboard for lack of skills to attend to the needs of the visually impaired minority.

While the primary school is playing a pivotal role in ensuring equal access to education, shortage of special needs’ teachers at the school and sights of children who do not go to school present heartaches to George Gilinjala who heads the resource centre.

“Every child has the right to education regardless of their condition, but many are sidelined because their parents don’t seem to know that there are schools for the visually impaired,” says Gilinjala.

For 10 years since 2000, he was an itinerant teacher, working hand in hand with teachers in neighbouring primary schools and communities to ensure even the blind were going to school.

Three years ago, he was deployed to Makande Resource Centre, where parents and teachers refer children with visual disabilities for quality education.

During the period, he has seen the population of blind and visually impaired pupils in the hostels designed for 15 blind pupils double up—meaning two sleep on one bed and some have to use the floor. However, he perceives the prevailing overcrowding as a signal of the unsatisfied or underrated hunger for education among blind and visually impaired populations.

This calls for special interventions and greater investment to sensitise parents to the need to encourage the pupils to go to school.

“As a teacher for special needs pupils, I have come to appreciate that some parents don’t believe that their visually impaired students can go to school and go on to become progressive people like Ferguson Kalumbi who now teaches at Mapelera Primary School nearby.

This ignorance, coupled with the long distances to school with necessary facilities and teachers, account for low enrolment of people with visual impairments,” says Gilinjala.

The only school with facilities for the blind in Chikhwawa, Makande has 30 teachers. Only four are specialised in handling learners with special needs. Gilinjala is one of the two who work with those with visual impairments, while one handles those with hearing challenges and another those with learning difficulties.

With the shortage of skilled workforce, the blind at Makande have to do with regular teachers who tend to concentrate on the needs of those with sight.

Last year, a study by Blantyre Institute for Community Ophthalmologists (Bico) executive director Dr Khumbo Kalua confirmed the silent crisis. It also established that pupils with visual setbacks face a lot of difficulties in learning, one of the gaps the country must overcome to achieve universal access to education in line with Education for All (EFA) goals it adopted in 2000.

“Despite Makande Resource Centre being accessible, most visually impaired children in Chikhwawa are still not attending the school,” the findings show.

It estimates that the resource centre is only accessible to three of every 10 children in need, calling for government, non-governmental organisations and other change agents to invest in community awareness campaigns and public policies which focus on improving enrolment and quality of teaching and learning.

Every child holed home puts into question the country’s bid for inclusive education.

According to Malawi Union of the Blind (MUB) executive director Ezekiel Kumwenda, the example of Makande shows that education of the blind is not a priority. Mirroring the age-old imbalance, there are 31 primary schools and 13 secondary schools which take on board students with visual challenges countrywide.

“Real pursuit of education for all is not only about investing in regular pupils. It must also reach out to those with special needs, including visual impairments,” said Kumwenda.

He bemoaned long distances to the few schools with special needs facilities and lack of specialist schools, saying this condemns many visually impaired children to poverty and illiteracy.

“Illiteracy and poverty worsen the livelihood of people with visual impairments. If you educate a child, you are unlocking doors to a bright future. If you don’t, they will become beggars, you will give them K50 and they will continue going back to beg. Who respects blind people who cannot take care of themselves?” he explained.

There is need to open more schools for pupils with visual impairments—at least one per zone—and making needs’ education compulsory in teachers’ training colleges, he said.

MUB and other advocacy groups for the blind were not consulted in the upcoming curriculum which will make science subjects compulsory, although the country lacks requisite teaching aids for the blind. Mathematics also poses a big challenge because the country is yet to adopt algebra signs for the blind.

Apart from EFA goals, the country ratified Convention on the Rights of Children and UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities which entitles children with disabilities to quality basic education.

Tales of children with visual impairment who are not in school symbolise how government is neglecting its obligations—for the Constitution and newly passed Disabilities Act bar any form of discrimination in service delivery.

Meanwhile, many special needs pupils enrol in school at an advanced age. Away from Makande, Chipangano Batumeyo, 12, is a vivid example of the situation that perfectly pans out at Makande.

Soon after his sight was restored at a camp organised by Kalua and company, he confided his tearful story in The Nation.

It reads: The boy from Labson Village, Nthache in Mwanza, enrolled in preschool at age nine, when his age-mates were in Standard Three or higher. Typically, he was only referred to Msiyaludzu Primary School in Ntcheu, where he was among 40 visually impaired pupils, after a Good Samaritan had tipped his parents that blindness does not mean exclusion from school.

This makes the survivor a living testimony to the power of information in unshackling children with blindness and other visual impairments from the lurking shadows of illiteracy. n