Make special needs education a priority

DR RADICA MAHASE

An open letter to The Honourable Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, Minister of Education.

Dear Ma’am,

At the press conference organised by the Ministry of Education, last Friday you outlined your ministry’s plan for the upcoming school term. Sadly, at no point in your address did you mention what the ministry is putting in place to ensure that children with special needs also have equal access to an education. You only addressed the topic when asked by a reporter what is being done for special needs children. Even then you did not outline any firm plans for children with special needs.

Ma’am, please make special needs education a priority and treat with it as distinct from general education. Historically, in TT, the education of our special needs children has not been given any significant consideration. In fact, until last year when your predecessor Anthony Garcia attempted to implement the Inclusive Education Policy (mind you, it took ten years to even start to implement this policy!) special needs education has been dealt with in a very haphazard manner. Children with special needs have been ignored for the most part and many with hidden disabilities have been home, with no access to a formal education for many years, if not throughout their lives.

Here are some suggestions from myself and other parents/caregivers of children with autism/ special needs:

Please do not put back the Inclusive Education Policy somewhere on a shelf to collect dust. Although the ministry had only now started to implement it (September 2019) it has the potential to provide a good education for those children with special needs who can attend a government school. In the couple of schools where it was implemented, though only for one term, children were able to access an education; were in a school environment with a principal/teachers who were trained to deal with their children and were given an individual education plan and had access to teacher’s aides and some kind of therapy services.

We hope that when covid19 restrictions are lifted and schools reopen, that your ministry will continue to focus on the implementation and monitoring of the Inclusive Education Policy and that it will be extended to more schools in every educational district.

Please take into consideration the different levels of needs when treating with children with special needs. We have tended to lump all children with special needs into one category and say that we are catering for their intellectual development. In your press conference you stated, “There may be some classes because you know some of our special needs children are involved in the regular population so they will be catered to by their teachers in the normal way.”

Ma’am, "the normal way" has failed many of our special needs children. While there are children with special needs in the regular schools who are able to keep up with a regular curriculum and standardised methods of teaching, the majority need special attention and because this have not been forthcoming, they struggle to keep up with their peers. Also, “the special aids and teacher's aides and so on” that you mentioned have never really been as forthcoming as you may believe. We have parents who have applied and are waiting for teacher’s aides for as long as two years.

We strongly suggest that you pay some attention to increasing staff, providing training and resources to Student Support Services so that this department can be more effective. Also, please focus on hiring/training teacher’s aides so that they are available to provide that individual help to special needs children. This department was limited in how effective it could be in pre-covid times so with the restrictions in place now we cannot assume that it will be any more effective.

Children with special needs should have equal access to an education even during covid19 restrictions. They should be acknowledged in you addresses and treated equally. Please prioritise special needs education. I am kindly requesting that you meet with NGOs and other stakeholders so that we can discuss and devise a more structured, practical approach to helping our special children while we are under covid19 restrictions. With all due respect Ma’am, children with special needs are citizens of this country and it is your duty as Minister of Education to ensure that every single child has equal access to an education. I have utmost faith that you will do your duty and do it well. Thank you, Ma’am.

Dr Radica Mahase is the founder/director of Support Autism T&T