Coil: Guyanese children without value?

Teaching aid from Gifted Hands Learning Centre

By Vidyaratha Kissoon

The child wrote Common Entrance. Her mother took her to register at the secondary school.

The head teacher at the secondary school refused to register the child.

The child is blind.

‘We aint’ got facilities fuh blind chirren’

Another head teacher said the same thing.

The child’s mother has been fighting to ensure that her child gets care and education as guaranteed in the Constitution of Guyana.

The child’s mother was advised by a friend in the Government to just register at a private school which will guarantee support. She might get help with fees for the private school from the Government.

Two other children who are blind and who should register for secondary school are also facing the same discrimination. They don’t have friends in Government.

The bureaucracy in the Ministry of Education is overwhelming for the parents. One of the parents does not want put her child in an environment where there was initial hostility.

Parents have to consider placement in schools close to homes and work places as there is no guarantee that minibuses would be safe for blind children.

The Constitution of Guyana states that :-

Article 27 (1) Every citizen has the right to free education from nursery to university as well as at non-formal places where opportunities are provided for education and training.

Article 38E. Formal education is compulsory up to the age of fifteen years

Article 149H. (1) Every child is entitled to free primary and secondary education in schools owned or funded by the State.

The Persons with Disabilities Act (2010) states in Sub-Part II that

14. The Minister responsible for Education in collaboration with the Commission [National Commission on Disabilities] shall formulate and implement the National Education programme to ensure that –

(a) persons with disabilities are not excluded from the general education system on the basis of disability, and that children with disabilities are not excluded from free and compulsory primary and secondary education on the basis of having disabilities;

(b) training programmes for teachers specialising in disabilities are developed and implemented so that the requisite trained personnel are available for special schools and integrated schools for children with disabilities; and

(c) special education is made a compulsory component of the teachers’ training curriculum offered

by institutions established to train teachers.

15. (1) The Minister responsible for Education, after consultation with the Commission, shall ensure that the special requirements of persons with disabilities are addressed when formulating and implementing educational policies and programmes.

(2) The Minister responsible for Education shall encourage learning institutions to take into account the special needs of persons with disabilities with respect to the entry requirements, pass marks, curriculum, examinations, auxiliary aids and services including accessible formatting, use of school facilities, class schedules, physical education requirements, and other relevant matters.

16. Subject to the Education Act, the Minister responsible for Education shall –

(a) promote the integration of students with disabilities into the regular school and learning institutions;

(b) promote the establishment of special schools by the government and the private sector for those persons in need of special education, so that children with disabilities living in any part of Guyana shall have access to these schools;

100. equip the special schools with vocational training facilities; and

500. encourage the development of a system of support services for special education in schools.

17. The Minister responsible for Education and Minister responsible for the Public Service shall facilitate students with disabilities who are financially challenged but academically inclined who seek to pursue or are pursuing post secondary or tertiary education and such facilitation may be in the form of scholarships, grants, loans and other incentives to qualified disabled students.

18. (1) The Minister responsible for Education shall establish and maintain a complete, adequate and integrated system of special education for persons with disabilities.

(2) The Minister responsible for Education shall establish –

(a) special education classes in schools and facilitate learning in subject areas including Braille, alternative script, augmentative and alternative modes, means and formats of communication, orientation and mobility skills;

(b) Braille and record libraries or sections within existing national libraries throughout Guyana.

(3) Parliament shall provide funds necessary for the effective national implementation of the special education facilities.

(4) Local Government Authorities shall adopt appropriate measures to facilitate the implementation of the special education programme.

19. The Commission shall initiate or cause to be initiated research by official and non-governmental agencies for the purpose of designing and developing new assistive devices, teaching aids, special teaching materials or other materials or items as are necessary to provide persons with disabilities with equal opportunities in education.

The love and respect for a child with disabilities though cannot be legislated in the Ministers, head teachers , teachers and people responsible for education. There is a lot of ‘may’ , so it is really up to how the Ministers of the day value the lives of children and people with disabilities.

Karen Hall laughs , a bit cynically , when she talks about the Persons with Disability Act and how it is not being implemented.

Karen is a woman with physical disabilities. Her mother insisted she attend ‘regular’ school. She is about to embark on a PhD programme.

Karen used to work at the National Commission on Disabilities and then moved to the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD) in the Ministry of Education as the Subject Specialist for Special Needs Education.

After years of frustration at seeing her work not coming to fruition, and proposals not being implemented, she moved to the University of Guyana..

She recalls the struggle of trying to get the Ministry of Education to recognise that special needs education requires additional budget and political will.

She got the feeling that children with disabilities were seen as having little or no value in the way in which success is measured.

It isn’t as though Guyana does not have the technical knowledge about how to fix the system.

“NCERD has the knowledge. At NCERD, they do the training and support for the teachers and parents. They are not responsible for the implementation and monitoring of the policies. It is not as though the Ministry does not know what it has to do, it knows. It is as though there is no strong will and that since the “return on investment’ in the education of a special needs child is low , everything is left to ‘goodwill’ and luck and chance’.

There are a range of conditions which cause disabilities. The field of knowledge is growing about education of children with disabilities.

Marcia Smith is the proprietor of Gifted Hands Learning Centre. Marcia has a son with autism (autism spectrum disorder).

“He was 2 years old when a nurse told me. I did not know what the nurse was talking about”.

Marcia is grateful for the knowledge she gained through a British diplomat in Guyana. The family had access to persons who were involved in supporting children with autism and invited parents and caregivers to learn about autism.

“We all benefited and I will always say how grateful I am for that knowledge”

Marcia became involved in caring for other children with autism and other disabilities. Parents encouraged her to open a school. Two other private schools opened for children with autism.

“It is a business, I have overheads. But I can’t raise fees , because parents have expenses.” She has received furniture from Food for the Poor. However, Gifted Hands cannot get funding from some agencies since it is registered as a business.

She has to find facilities which have healthy areas for playing and out door activities. She has to consider the teacher to student ratio.

“I don’t want to say no to parents”

She has run out of space and has applied to the Ministry of Education for use of buildings and class rooms which are not in use. The school age population is shifting and some schools are under utilised.

Marcia and her staff benefit from training and other support from NCERD She makes the appropriate teaching aids and purchases others.

There is no standard curriculum in Guyana. Marcia and other interested teachers and helpers were advised to ‘adapt the Nursery school curriculum’ appropriately.

She is grateful to the teachers in the public school system who have loaned her materials to photocopy.

She knows about stories of children with disabilities who do not have ready access to the public school system. She knows that there are families who keep their children at home because who feel that the public schools are not helping the children. Some cannot afford the transportation and other costs.

Her son, Jared, is in the public school system. “I thought he should be in mainstream school”.

It was a battle as the confusion over the ‘Automatic Promotion’ and other policies meant that children who needed more time to deal with the curriculum were being pushed out of the school system.

“My oldest student is 48. The cognitive age is sometimes lower than the biological age”

Marcia has a student with cerebral palsy. “Mentally, there is nothing wrong with her. She could be in the public school system and I am sure would do well.”

However, the student cannot use her hands to write and there is no system in place to ensure that she would have access to the teaching assistants and assistive technologies in the public school.

The Government is mandated to provide the human and other resources to support the education of children with disabilities.

Karen Hall recalls that some schools with supportive staff tried their best.

It seems that the administrative overhead on the schools increased.

“One headmistress [of a rural school] had to keep justifying why she had two teachers over the ‘quota’. The two teachers were working with 11 visually impaired children in a rural school… it seems as though the spreadsheets did not have room to explain the variances. The HM had to keep doing this with every return to the Ministry”

The National Commission on Disabilities (NCD) is responsible for the oversight on the Persons with Disabilities Act. The NCD recently announced that it would be doing a house to house registration.

There is no news of how the NCD represents persons facing discrimination. The Persons with Disabilities Act allows the NCD to take legal action against persons who discriminate against persons with disabilities. There are no reports of any prosecutions of any individual or organisation which has discriminated against persons with disabilities.

Karen believes that the NCD should consist of more persons with disabilities.

“It is time now. We have persons with disabilities who have knowledge and who are aware of their rights. The agencies should be able to find representatives who are persons with disabilities to form the Commission”

She remembers while working at the NCD office, that many proposals were rejected by the Commissioners. Other things a 2010 Inclusion Policy remained in draft.

“I remember a VSO (volunteer) in tears after all her recommendations were thrown out. The VSO had done research into a policy document , and made appropriate recommendations which were related to Guyana’s situation’

Karen laughs as she remembers being disciplined while she was working at NCERD.. “I had sent in a proposal , and there was no acknowledgement of receipt or feedback. I shared the proposal with a consultant and I was disciplined for giving out information which was not approved”

Guyana apparently has a long history of attempting to deal with the education of children with disabilities.

According to Karen, “Guyana was the lead in the Caribbean, we started before many others. Now Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados have gone way past us”

There were institutional relationships to train teachers in the UK and in Jamaica. Special schools were opened. There were glitches, but with new knowledge, things should have been improving.

According to Karen, “Many institutions and organisations have been providing assistance to Guyana. There are possibilities to restore relationships to get the technical knowledge back into our system , but we have to get implementation and monitoring of the teachers… We need to have further education so that teachers who are interested in special needs could access the training’

I wrote last week about the lost children in the examinations. Children with disabilities are probably even more likely to be lost or forgotten in the public education system in the path to examinations.

The Guyana Society for the Blind supports blind students who want to take CSEC exams. The support is for older children and is available in Georgetown . The GSB is not  School for the Blind/Visually Impaired.

Kaieteur News reported in July 2016 about Leroy Phillips, a blind student at UG . Mr Phillips expressed his frustration at not being certain of financial support. It would appear that ‘Minister’ has to get involved. The financial support however for tertiary education should be part of a system of support as required in Section 17 of the Persons with Disabilities Act.

It seems as though Mr Phillips has to depend on the patronage of the Minister of Education , rather than have assured access to financial support.

There should be no patronage or reliance on goodwill or luck and chance for any child or other person with a disability to access education in Guyana.

Removing stigma

There is still stigma associated with disability. The mass media and culture continue to discriminate against people with disabilities. The discrimination faced by persons with disabilities means that families have to work harder beyond ensuring accommodation and support to ensure their loved ones can be seen as equal citizens.

Recently, I had to plan a workshop around Healthy Relationships. I came across  a video  which featured persons with Downs Syndrome and other disabilities. I realised that in my work, I had been excluding persons with disabilties.

Some young participants giggled when they saw the first person in the video. It was an opportunity to talk about discrimination against persons with disabilities.

Karen remembers there was a desk at the Ministry of Labour for persons with disabilities. She said that there was a policy in the public service to have at least  1% of the employees as persons with disabilities. She benefited from this policy. She turned up for her first job in the public service, with a reluctant supervisor, but with her qualifications and appointment intact. She doesn’t think that the policy, or the desk exists any more.

Marcia Smith says she knows the stigma pushes many parents to be in denial. She always tries to raise awareness. “Jared is my tour guide”

Marcia recalls the excitement of a mother of a 15 year old student with autism.

“She saw him reading a book. He could read after many said he would not be able to learn. That was her son passing 20 subjects”

It is a shame in Guyana, in 2016, that children with disabilities have to struggle to have access to education and services.

It is a shame that the rhetoric and the legislation have been useless and that children can be refused entry to the schools for which they qualified.