The Committee may wish to request in the List of Issues: Information regarding measures to implement and maintain the sexual offenders register in to ensure the safety of children with disabilities. Information on measures taken to curb levels of abuse of persons with disabilities in society as a whole. ARTICLE 24: Education Inclusive education Achieving the goal of inclusive education is a particularly challenging task in the South African context. On one hand, government is faced with transforming the former apartheid education structures which were built on the segregation of schools on the basis of race. This segregation extended to children with disabilities where schools for white learners with disabilities were well-funded, whereas support services for learners with disabilities who attended non-white schools were uncommon. On the other hand, the South African government must address the current issues in the education system relating to the quality of education and the barriers to learning caused by a number of related factors, including poverty, language differences, inflexible curricula, inaccessible environments, and inadequate support services. From the perspective of children with disabilities, the South African education system continues to maintain an exclusionary education system. The segregated nature of the education system is to an extent the result of the apartheid structure but also to an extent as a result of the conceptualization of Education White Paper 6 on Special Needs Education (WP6) of a 3 tier system, and the inherent poor implementation of WP6. In attempting to develop an inclusive education system by 2021, WP6 takes the approach of creating a system which will include a range of different institutions where learners requiring a low level of support attend ordinary schools, those needing moderate support attend a full service school, and learners needing a high or intensive level of support attend special schools. This contradicts the principles highlighted in the UN CRPD Committees general comment 4 and the recent WPRPD which determine that Persons
The Committee may wish to request in the List of Issues: Information regarding measures to implement and maintain the sexual offenders register in to ensure the safety of children with disabilities. Information on measures taken to curb levels of abuse of persons with disabilities in society as a whole. ARTICLE 24: Education Inclusive education Achieving the goal of inclusive education is a particularly challenging task in the South African context. On one hand, government is faced with transforming the former apartheid education structures which were built on the segregation of schools on the basis of race. This segregation extended to children with disabilities where schools for white learners with disabilities were well-funded, whereas support services for learners with disabilities who attended non-white schools were uncommon. On the other hand, the South African government must address the current issues in the education system relating to the quality of education and the barriers to learning caused by a number of related factors, including poverty, language differences, inflexible curricula, inaccessible environments, and inadequate support services. From the perspective of children with disabilities, the South African education system continues to maintain an exclusionary education system. The segregated nature of the education system is to an extent the result of the apartheid structure but also to an extent as a result of the conceptualization of Education White Paper 6 on Special Needs Education (WP6) of a 3 tier system, and the inherent poor implementation of WP6. In attempting to develop an inclusive education system by 2021, WP6 takes the approach of creating a system which will include a range of different institutions where learners requiring a low level of support attend ordinary schools, those needing moderate support attend a full service school, and learners needing a high or intensive level of support attend special schools. This contradicts the principles highlighted in the UN CRPD Committees general comment 4 and the recent WPRPD which determine that Persons
INT_CRPD_ICO_ZAF_30104_E.docx