At a Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion in 1990, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion shared a vi­sion of a school sys­tem where “stu­dents with spe­cial needs have the right to full op­por­tu­ni­ty for self-de­vel­op­ment in a whole­some ed­u­ca­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment and equal ed­u­ca­tion treat­ment in the most pro­duc­tive and least re­stric­tive en­vi­ron­ment.”

That de­c­la­ra­tion held the promise of a more in­clu­sive pub­lic school sys­tem that ful­ly meets the re­quire­ments of spe­cial needs stu­dents. In­stead, more than three decades af­ter the event at which that pro­gres­sive phi­los­o­phy was es­poused, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has ex­posed sig­nif­i­cant short­falls in ef­forts to de­vel­op a tru­ly in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. With the shift to on­line learn­ing, stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties have been left at a ma­jor dis­ad­van­tage.

In tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on So­cial Ser­vices and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion ear­li­er this week, Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase, founder of Autism TT, out­lined the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by spe­cial needs stud­ies be­cause they are “un­able to sit for long hours and they start ex­pe­ri­enc­ing headaches and eye prob­lems.”

Dr Ma­hase said there have been no ad­di­tion­al sup­port mea­sures from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to help with the tran­si­tion to on­line learn­ing, com­pound­ed by a lack of teacher’s aides or re­sources for teach­ers. Al­so, the stan­dard­ised cur­ricu­lum and eval­u­a­tion meth­ods do not al­low for dif­fer­en­tial learn­ing styles and abil­i­ties.

In­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion spe­cial­ist Leti­cia Ro­driguez-Cu­pid told the JSC the pan­dem­ic had been trau­mat­ic to many stu­dents, while prin­ci­pal of the Princess Eliz­a­beth Spe­cial School, Ger­ard Fred­er­ick, re­vealed that three stu­dents from the school were de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sit the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am.

These rev­e­la­tions stand in di­rect con­tra­dic­tion to the in­tent enun­ci­at­ed by the Min­istry’s Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) as far back as 2007, for an in­clu­sive sys­tem of ed­u­ca­tion pro­vid­ing seam­less sup­port from ear­ly child­hood to post-sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion.

This is the unit re­spon­si­ble for de­liv­er­ing an ar­ray of sup­port ser­vices to all stu­dents, in­clud­ing those with spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion­al needs. How­ev­er, it cur­rent­ly op­er­ates at 20 per cent staffing with on­ly 23 trained pro­fes­sion­als on staff—in­suf­fi­cient to ad­e­quate­ly meet the needs of the 3,365 stu­dents re­ferred there for sup­port ser­vices.

On­ly some of these stu­dents are cur­rent­ly ac­cess­ing the SSSD’s ser­vices, the JSC was told.

This is an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion on top of all the oth­er dif­fi­cul­ties the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry con­tin­ues to en­counter in fa­cil­i­tat­ing ed­u­ca­tion for the thou­sands of stu­dents cur­rent­ly un­able to at­tend phys­i­cal class­es.

Schools have been closed for one year and for that length of time, spe­cial needs stu­dents, along with thou­sands of oth­ers, have been de­prived of their right to an ed­u­ca­tion, not on­ly be­cause of the size of the coun­try’s dig­i­tal di­vide but due to the fail­ure to de­vel­op a sys­tem that caters to di­verse learn­ing abil­i­ties.

At this stage in our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, there should have been a well-de­vel­oped tem­plate for how to pro­vide all stu­dents the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­cess and suc­ceed in the na­tion­al cur­ricu­lum. In its ab­sence, there is the risk of too many stu­dents be­ing left be­hind.