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AfricaNews - KENYA: Giving life to the deaf - The AfricaNews articles of ibrahim
From a distance, a crowd of students revel around a volleyball pitch, cheering their team as they engage their opponents in a fierce challenge to win the ball, amazingly on coming closer no one hears their shouts, only the sound of clapping hands fill the air. The excitement and enthusiasm in their faces is too much to ignore.
Welcome to Wajir School for the deaf in north-eastern Kenya, a rare school that caters for a forgotten lot. The school which was established 1995 as a small unit attached to Wajir primary school with only six pupils is now a fully-fledged one with 108 students. It provides a conducive learning environment where students find people they can easily relate with.
Apart from the normal school curriculum, the school imparts the students with life skills that will enable them be independent adults capable of taking control of their lives in future. “A deaf child can do everything in the same manner a normal child can do. The only problem is their inability to hear,” says Mrs. Kheira Kassim, the head teacher.
She confirms that disability is not inability.
A testimony to their success in 2007, the school emerged the second best nationwide in the Kenya certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination among the deaf schools. “If given chance, deaf children can succeed to their full potential. We should not close windows of opportunities for them because of their disability,” she notes.
Recently when AfricaNews paid a visit to the school, the students were busy preparing for the inter-school ball games. In one of the friendly matches played against Wajir primary volleyball team, the deaf students were too strong for their opponent beating them with an exuberant performance.
Their rivals were not able to match their skillful execution of the ball coupled with the decisive blocks and the exquisite delivery of their shots. Madam Kheira says there is lack of parental participation and involvement when it comes to the child‘s development.
“Some parents just dump their children in the school with no follow up on the child`s development.
“Sometimes teachers are forced to look for the parents when the school breaks for the holiday,” she states.
Confinement
She adds that most parents confine their deaf children to the house whenever they sense a child has some form of disability instead of exposing them so as to get the necessary help to fit in the society.
Every year the school embarks on a recruitment exercise to literally fetch out deaf children abandoned in the villages. “We bring students from as far as Turantura and Admasajida to give them the opportunity to access the free primary education although some parents often resist exposing their disable children,” the head teacher reveals.
Teachers at the school are often confronted with difficulties as some students have multiple disabilities hence require extra attention.
“The school has been forced to employ extra none teaching staffs who work 24 hours on shifts to cater for such students,” says Mrs. Kheira. “Dealing with students with special needs is a task that requires dexterity.”
The school, the only one of its kind in the entire North eastern province and the upper eastern survives on support from the ministry of education and seasonal donors, is often overstretched and lacks the wherewithal to cater for the ever increasing needs of the students as they do not pay cost sharing fees unlike their counterparts in the mainstream primary schools. Inadequate learning materials, resource constraints, lack of accessible health education information are other major challenges facing the institution.
Challenges
“Our curriculum is totally different from the mainstream schools, most of the books used are sign language-based which are not locally available,” Mrs. Kheira states.
Most students drop out of school after successfully completing their primary education due to lack of a secondary school which hampers access to higher education as the nearest school is located in Nyeri in Central province of Kenya.
In his speech while releasing last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE), Education Minister Professor Sam Ongeri stressed the need to give equal opportunity to access education to all members of the society including those with special needs. “Through our increased support in this area, we have seen more students with special needs accessing secondary education and enrolling for the KCSE examination over the years.”
In 2009 there were 420 KCSE examination candidates with various disabilities which reflected an upward increase of 76 candidates from 344 in 2008 which translates to a 22.1% increase. The minister decried the low enrollment for national examinations among the students with special disabilities.
“While my Ministry is committed to carry out the necessary capacity and infrastructure development in this sector, it remains the duty of education managers and other stakeholders to encourage and support parents and guardians to enable them to deal with the negative attitudes that some of the parents hold with respect to children with different kinds of disabilities and enroll them in specialized schools.”
From a distance, a crowd of students revel around a volleyball pitch, cheering their team as they engage their opponents in a fierce challenge to win the ball, amazingly on coming closer no one hears their shouts, only the sound of clapping hands fill the air. The excitement and enthusiasm in their faces is too much to ignore.
Welcome to Wajir School for the deaf in north-eastern Kenya, a rare school that caters for a forgotten lot. The school which was established 1995 as a small unit attached to Wajir primary school with only six pupils is now a fully-fledged one with 108 students. It provides a conducive learning environment where students find people they can easily relate with.
Apart from the normal school curriculum, the school imparts the students with life skills that will enable them be independent adults capable of taking control of their lives in future. “A deaf child can do everything in the same manner a normal child can do. The only problem is their inability to hear,” says Mrs. Kheira Kassim, the head teacher.
She confirms that disability is not inability.
A testimony to their success in 2007, the school emerged the second best nationwide in the Kenya certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination among the deaf schools. “If given chance, deaf children can succeed to their full potential. We should not close windows of opportunities for them because of their disability,” she notes.
Recently when AfricaNews paid a visit to the school, the students were busy preparing for the inter-school ball games. In one of the friendly matches played against Wajir primary volleyball team, the deaf students were too strong for their opponent beating them with an exuberant performance.
Their rivals were not able to match their skillful execution of the ball coupled with the decisive blocks and the exquisite delivery of their shots. Madam Kheira says there is lack of parental participation and involvement when it comes to the child‘s development.
“Some parents just dump their children in the school with no follow up on the child`s development.
“Sometimes teachers are forced to look for the parents when the school breaks for the holiday,” she states.
Confinement
She adds that most parents confine their deaf children to the house whenever they sense a child has some form of disability instead of exposing them so as to get the necessary help to fit in the society.
Every year the school embarks on a recruitment exercise to literally fetch out deaf children abandoned in the villages. “We bring students from as far as Turantura and Admasajida to give them the opportunity to access the free primary education although some parents often resist exposing their disable children,” the head teacher reveals.
Teachers at the school are often confronted with difficulties as some students have multiple disabilities hence require extra attention.
“The school has been forced to employ extra none teaching staffs who work 24 hours on shifts to cater for such students,” says Mrs. Kheira. “Dealing with students with special needs is a task that requires dexterity.”
The school, the only one of its kind in the entire North eastern province and the upper eastern survives on support from the ministry of education and seasonal donors, is often overstretched and lacks the wherewithal to cater for the ever increasing needs of the students as they do not pay cost sharing fees unlike their counterparts in the mainstream primary schools. Inadequate learning materials, resource constraints, lack of accessible health education information are other major challenges facing the institution.
Challenges
“Our curriculum is totally different from the mainstream schools, most of the books used are sign language-based which are not locally available,” Mrs. Kheira states.
Most students drop out of school after successfully completing their primary education due to lack of a secondary school which hampers access to higher education as the nearest school is located in Nyeri in Central province of Kenya.
In his speech while releasing last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE), Education Minister Professor Sam Ongeri stressed the need to give equal opportunity to access education to all members of the society including those with special needs. “Through our increased support in this area, we have seen more students with special needs accessing secondary education and enrolling for the KCSE examination over the years.”
In 2009 there were 420 KCSE examination candidates with various disabilities which reflected an upward increase of 76 candidates from 344 in 2008 which translates to a 22.1% increase. The minister decried the low enrollment for national examinations among the students with special disabilities.
“While my Ministry is committed to carry out the necessary capacity and infrastructure development in this sector, it remains the duty of education managers and other stakeholders to encourage and support parents and guardians to enable them to deal with the negative attitudes that some of the parents hold with respect to children with different kinds of disabilities and enroll them in specialized schools.”