Disability Rights Advocacy Center (DRAC) on Tuesday embarked on Advocacy visit to Federal Ministry Of Education to promote Inclusive Education policy for Children With Disabilities..
This visit is part of DRAC’s project on Inclusive Education supported by The Leprosy Mission Nigeria through funding from Liliane Fonds.
The Executive Director, DRAC, Dr. Irene Ojugo Patrick-Ogbogu, represented by Offiong Ita, a program manager at DRAC while speaking at the meeting, urged Ministry Of Education to double their efforts towards implementation of Inclusive Education Policy.
Mr. Offiong said that UNICEF postulated that 95% of children with disabilities in developing countries are out of school and 90% of them may never gain access to basic education in their lifetime.
“UNESCO report indicates that there over 10.5 million out of school children in Nigeria. It will not be out of place to estimate that 5 to 7 million of them are children with disabilities. This estimate is in line with World Bank and World Health Organization projections that persons bwith disabilities constitute about 15% of Population in developing countries and that between 80 to 90% of them don’t gain access to basic needs of life especially basic education”.
He highlighted some of the reasons why children with disabilities do not have access to education in Nigeria, which are the exclusive and Inaccessible nature, structure and system of practically all primary and secondary schools in Nigeria; the confinement of the education of children with disabilities to very few, poorly staffed, poorly equipped and outdated special schools, very low public awareness on issues of inclusive education; inadequate institutional and human capacities required to implement inclusive education; and inadequate, poor implementation or non-availability of appropriate legal and policy frameworks required for the implementation of inclusive education for children with disabilities.
“Children With Disabilities due to their lower attainment to education are at the lower economic status. They are more likely to leave school earlier with fewer qualifications which has placed them in the wrong side of poverty. Formal education is identified as one of the important exit route out of poverty and persons with disability are at disadvantaged position to have access to formal education due to discrimination and stigmatization.
He called on Federal Ministry of Education to urgently make all primary and secondary schools both public and private inclusive for all children with disabilities because this will drastically reduce the number of out of school children, reduce the social burden of unproductive and unskilled population and increase the human resource capacity in Nigeria.
The DRAC further made the following requests from Federal Ministry of Education to improve access to education and learning opportunities for children and youths with disabilities;
a. Commit to ensure progressive improvement for children with disabilities learning outcomes through implementation of inclusive education policies and frameworks.
b. Facilitate implementation of the National Policy on Inclusive Education
c. Collect and collate data of children with disabilities for purposes of education planning and financing.
d. Prescribe and maintain uniform standard of inclusive education throughout the Country
e. Control and monitor the quality of education for children with disabilities in the country.
f. Encourage domestication of National Policy on Inclusive Education at the state level,
g. Ensure adequate fund allocation towards Inclusive Education targeting children with disabilities.
h. Provide adequate teaching/learning infrastructures and materials for special /inclusive schools.
Abel Aisnedion, Director, Special Needs Education, Federal Ministry Of Education speaking on behalf of the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry Education said that DRAC is not new in engagement of MDAs to enhance the implementation of National Policy on Inclusive Education.
He said that on the level of the Ministry, they have been doing their part towards the implementation but due to the fact that education is the concurrent list, it makes it difficult for the ministry to compile states to implement the policy.
He urged the team to articulate all the requests and present it to the ministry. He assured that the requests would be properly addressed by the Ministry.
He also said that one of the challenges is low budgeting on education and inclusive budgeting.
He also promised to work with partners like DRAC to make presentations to National Council On Education to address some bottlenecks affecting access to education by children with disabilities.
In addition with DRAC staff, Chris Agbo Obiora of The Qualitative Magazine, Obinna Ekujereonye of Disability Advancement Initiative accompanied the team.
