The Not-so Inclusive Education Policy in Ghana

Observations on the not-so Inclusive Education Policy in Ghana

My son Giovanni doing some exercises

When I talk about policy, they are the least read posts on my blog. But It's something I can't avoid. I live in a developing country and many of our policies are a fail because they simply do not bare in mind those who are living and breathing the challenges: The current policy on inclusive education is one example. I do not want to make this article technical and so I have chosen only certain parts of the policy that really bother me. I've put into context an article or two that will give you a brief description of the policy. If you would like further information on it, I suggest you go to Ghana Education Service, Intelectual Disability Unit in Accra.

This is not an assessment of the policy but I'm just pin pointing some things I already don't feel comfortable with that came up at conference I attended on cerebral palsy and I would like others to be aware of.

I'm part of a group of special mothers and last week we were confronted with devasting news: one of our mothers had lost her child. When I heard it I asked myself, what could have possibly occurred? Was it a seizure? Death isn't something new in our group and we hear of children with special needs even being put to death by their own caregivers/parents out of frustration, but this was some how different and sort of sudden.

It's something we do not talk about but death occurs pretty often and most of the time sudden, for kids with cerebral palsy, escpecially in developing countries.There are no statistics unfortunately on the life expectancy of children with cerebral palsy but usually if given full attention and care they live very long. So far the recurrent causes of death of children with cerebral palsy range from caregivers/parents giving the child a concuction, maltreatment, child underfed, untreated hip displacement, lack of medical attention, the list goes on. With the right education and socio-economic support from various stakeholders expecially government, I believe the death rate of kids living with cerebral palsy in Ghana will be reduced drastically.

I had the opportunity to attend a national conference on cerebral palsy just the other week
and various stakeholders were present. By the way it wasn't so national as I felt the attendance wasn't great, the Deputy Minister of Gender was there anyway.

Me with Hon. Mrs Gifty Twum-Ampofo, Deputy Minister of Gender, Chikdren and Social Protection for Ghana 

 I learnt quite a bit from this conference and I wanted to share to create public awareness of an existing system that is currently failing to meet the needs of children living with disability.



1. There are 12 special boarding schools and 23 units for children and youth with intellectual disability. 

Mrs Hannah Awadzi, Head of Special Mothers Project 

An example of the special boarding school is the one for youth who have poor eyesight or no vision at all, located in the Volta region. 

The 23 units are supposed to be classrooms attached to a main school that will cater for children above 5 years old who have mild to moderate special needs. I visited the Medina Cluster of schools where there is a unit, and the classroom dedicated to this was empty. No child and no equipment to even validate that it is was a special unit classroom. some parents had tried to bring their wards to the school only to be turned away because the school authorities said they had to get the child assessed first before he/she could be admitted. Even if your child was admitted there are absolutely no chairs or tables for the children (can't even blame the school for this). The units even lack staff to attend to the children. There is a current ban on recruitment of teachers and attendants. Even the criteria for admission (which is my next point) to get into such a unit would awe you! 

2. There are requirements that must be fulfilled before you get to place your ward into a special unit school. Here are some of them:

            a.Your child should be between 5 to 12 years old
It's pretty disturbing to hear these kinds of things especially when we have so many infleuncial women in this country that could do something about it.  So what are we to do with are kids until they reach 5? Did you know that there are no public nurseries or creches? So basically after my 3 month maternity leave my child cannot go to school because government has not made provision for public nurseries and creches. No wonder I'm always seeing little kids roaming around the salon while their mothers braid hair or something because they simply have nowhere to go. As for the maternity leave, it's another policy that has to be reveiwed.

           b. Child must be toilet-trained 

I think this particular point gave me the biggest blow. Although there are no statistics avaialble MOST kids below 12 years who have cerebral palsy are not toilet/potty trained. Moreover what exactly is the definition of potty trained? Many kids with cerebral palsy are non-verbal and even if they could speak and tell you they want to go to the restroom, physically they might not even be able to go by themselves, they would need help. So really what is the deifnition of this thing called toilet trained? lol I understand we are merely beginning and we don't want to bite more than we can chew and so the policy has been selective on the type of children they can look after as government lacks teachers trained in looking after children with special needs.

           c. Child must go through a medical assessment 

The medical assessment is soooooo tedious. The government has assesment centres, you will visit an assessment centre after going through that, you will still need to go to a medical facility for  a thorough medical assessement. What kind of tedious affair is this? This discourages so many parents from even putting their kids into schools. The procedure is long, cumbersome and discouraging. 

Some assistive equipment that some special mothers make for kids with cerebral palsy

          d. Child's condition must fall between the mild to moderate category 

Again what is the definition of mild to moderate? This means the child can probably walk? talk? I have had the opportunity to meet about 100 kids with cerebral palsy in Ghana and I haven't met any that are able to speak yet. Some do walk, others are learning and yet to walk.

If I take Giovanni as an example, considering the criteria above, there is aboslutely no way he would  be able to attend a special unit school.

I am quite disappointed that government has formulated policies around people living with disabilities but it is quite clear that many of these policies actually didn't take into consideration the reality on the ground. The policy in all has been drafted out quite nicely and a number of stakeholders were involved in the drafting including the Ghana Federation of People with Disabilities. I have to admit that it is a recent policy so I can't complain much about the implementation process because it's obvious a lot needs to be done; however certain parts just don't sit well with me and need to be reviewed.

Moving forward, I learned that the University of Education Winneba, is training teachers so they will be able to handle kids with special needs to some extent. Then again the government has placed a ban on recruiting teachers at the moment due to lack of funding or something of the sort. 

I believe government needs to be more interested in creating more community based centres to give support to children with special needs and their caregivers. A lot can be done to support parents/caregivers so they do not feel trapped or helpless and resort to killing their children. 

My conclusion is, again we are being excluded in an inclusive education policy. The policy itself states that "Every child has the right to quality education; thus all children should have equal opportunity to access education". Government needs to sit down, re-think and review some parts of this policy in the future to make it wholesome and true to its word in providing equal opportunity for all.

Please watch this touching video created by Special Mothers Project (a support group for mothers with children with cerebral palsy), SWEB Foundation, Multikids Foundation, Liliane Fonds and Cerebral Palsy Africa, it will give you insight on what some of our mothers are going through. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlL2GQ8Qti4

If you would like to read further here is the policy:  Ghana's Inclusive Education Policy 
This link also gives a brief description of the policy if you cannot read the 47 page document  https://www.unicef.org/ghana/8493.html .