What are the challenges faced by developing countries in providing for children with special educational needs? How should special schools and units relate to the aims of mainstream educational provision? Are attitudes towards special education still shaped by the colonial legacy? Do ministerial directives on special education actually influence provision?

Research from the University of Reading, UK, assesses the attitudes and practices of headteachers working in the field of special education in two Kenyan provinces. The study notes that although Kenya’s school system is working to counter traditional concepts of education and disability, there is an ongoing emphasis on control, containment and care. It suggests that progress at the policy development level should be matched by school-level focus on providing a broad and balanced education. There needs to be more emphasis on preparing disabled children for employment.

Three quarters of Kenyan pupils with special educational needs are in special schools with only a quarter in special units within mainstream schools. Generally, children with mental handicaps are placed in these units while those with physical handicaps and hearing impairments attend special schools. A number of individual schools are struggling to meet simultaneously the needs of children with mental and physical handicaps and those with both hearing and sight impairments.

The study welcomes the fact that, despite limited available resources, staffing ratios are as low as eight pupils to one teacher for special schools and units. Considerable progress has been made in recent years and the range of special needs now being addressed in Kenya is extensive. At the planning level, thinking has moved beyond just coping with behavioural difficulties to encouraging spiritual and moral development, creative abilities and personal and social development.

However, it also notes that:

• there is no indication that being a unit within a mainstream school – as distinct from a separate special school – leads to provision of more mainstream education
• more than one in four headteachers surveyed did not list attainment of basic literacy and numeracy skills as an important objective of special education
• schools and units concerned with sensory disabilities are more conventionally academic and vocational in their aims, while those working with children with physical and learning disabilities are more concerned with care and containment
• many headteachers still expect pupils with mental and physical handicaps to spend their lives at home and not to move on to employment, further education or training
• like many of their counterparts in developed states, Kenyan teachers emphasise the need to contain challenging behaviour and to promote obedience, spiritual development, personal care, domestic skills and cleanliness
• headteachers frequently cite behavioural problems as the main reason for maintaining separate special provision.

If Kenyan schools are going to really implement the recent ambitious aims of special education policy, they need to:

• give more thought to the students’ future employment and provide relevant vocational training
• monitor school level implementation of national policy objectives more rigorously
• develop a broader understanding of international developments in special education theory and provision.

Source(s):
‘The aims of special education schools and units in Kenya: a survey of headteachers’, European Journal of Special Needs Education, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 229–239, by J. Muuya, 2002 Full document.

Funded by: Association of Commonwealth Universities

id21 Research Highlight: 2 October, 2003

Further Information:
Jacqueline Muuya
School of Education
University of Reading,
Reading RG6 1HY
UK

Contact the contributor: esr98jrm@reading.ac.uk

University of Reading, UK

Other related links:
'Education for all? The challenges of inclusive education'

'Including disabled children in regular schools: the Ugandan experience'

'Nothing about us, without us': including disabled people in poverty reduction work

The Enabling Education Network (EENet) has resources on inclusive education worldwide