Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) have appealed to government and relevant stakeholders in education to "immediately" make funds available to implement the inclusive education policy.
Mr Brandford Tay, Member, Steering Committee of Coalition of NGOs for Disabilities in Volta Region, said it was not enough for government to formulate the policy and challenged it to demonstrate commitment to it through funding. He said the lack of funding to implement the policy had made most disabled children “passengers in schools...being promoted or repeated severally because they have no idea of what was being taught in class”.
Mr Tay was speaking at a PWDs stakeholder forum on special educational needs for children with disabilities. He noted that some schools continued to reject children with disabilities with the excuse of no teaching and learning materials or special needs teachers, and described it as unfortunate.
Mr Tay bemoaned the non-conformity of key stakeholders in the educational sector and called on authorities to help address the challenge because there was the "social need" to integrate children with disabilities.
Some participants noted that the West African Examination Council (WAEC) in filling forms prior to the final paper of this year's West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination made special arrangements for candidates with disabilities, but same was not done in previous papers and feared the candidates would be marked down.
They reiterated the call on government and district assemblies to involve PWDs in the preparation of budgets and allocation, especially in relation to education for all persons.
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