The successful integration of disabled children in their local school reinforces the awareness raising campaigns which are central to the goals of CBR; Parents become more motivated to support their children's educational development. The Kibwezi programme continues to be highly successful in placing disabled children in their local schools. However their success has been hampered by a failure of the education system as a whole in Kenya to embrace the principles of inclusion. At a local level relations between the CBR programme and the teachers in the local schools are good, but the Ministry of Education's policy of placing disabled children in special units has sometimes undermined the work in Kibwezi. Small units Placing children in specialist attached to mainstream schools is a way of providing specialist expertise nearer to home. In some ways it is a half-way house between segregated provision and full inclusion. Units are a Western model, however, and their effectiveness, like that of special schools, is being questioned in the West. The current term being used in the UK is 'resource base' or 'resourced provision'. The emphasis is therefore on the resources allocated to the school, rather than the physical structure of a separate unit. Save the Children set up a special class for children with learning difficulties attached to a primary school in Thailand in 1989. This was in response to the needs of parents whose children were on a waiting list for a day care centre. The aim was to gradually integrate the children, beginning with lunch and play time, sports, music and arts, and then academic lessons. A specially trained teacher supervised the class. The project achieved some success in integrating the children and was extended to a second school (Holdsworth and Kay, 1996). However many drawbacks were identified: When the mainstream teachers experienced any problems with the children with learning difficulties they sent the children back to the special class; Any children who were experiencing difficulties, who hadn't previously been identified as such, or who had behaviour problems, were sometimes sent to the special class; The supportive head teacher left and the children with learning difficulties were excluded from the school roll; The existence of a special class and special teacher reinforced the idea that mainstream teachers did not have the responsibility or skills to teach these so-called 'special' children; The success of integration into certain classes depended upon the goodwill and skills of the individual teacher. There was no whole-school policy;
The successful integration of disabled children in their local school reinforces the awareness raising campaigns which are central to the goals of CBR; Parents become more motivated to support their children's educational development. The Kibwezi programme continues to be highly successful in placing disabled children in their local schools. However their success has been hampered by a failure of the education system as a whole in Kenya to embrace the principles of inclusion. At a local level relations between the CBR programme and the teachers in the local schools are good, but the Ministry of Education's policy of placing disabled children in special units has sometimes undermined the work in Kibwezi. Small units Placing children in specialist attached to mainstream schools is a way of providing specialist expertise nearer to home. In some ways it is a half-way house between segregated provision and full inclusion. Units are a Western model, however, and their effectiveness, like that of special schools, is being questioned in the West. The current term being used in the UK is 'resource base' or 'resourced provision'. The emphasis is therefore on the resources allocated to the school, rather than the physical structure of a separate unit. Save the Children set up a special class for children with learning difficulties attached to a primary school in Thailand in 1989. This was in response to the needs of parents whose children were on a waiting list for a day care centre. The aim was to gradually integrate the children, beginning with lunch and play time, sports, music and arts, and then academic lessons. A specially trained teacher supervised the class. The project achieved some success in integrating the children and was extended to a second school (Holdsworth and Kay, 1996). However many drawbacks were identified: When the mainstream teachers experienced any problems with the children with learning difficulties they sent the children back to the special class; Any children who were experiencing difficulties, who hadn't previously been identified as such, or who had behaviour problems, were sometimes sent to the special class; The supportive head teacher left and the children with learning difficulties were excluded from the school roll; The existence of a special class and special teacher reinforced the idea that mainstream teachers did not have the responsibility or skills to teach these so-called 'special' children; The success of integration into certain classes depended upon the goodwill and skills of the individual teacher. There was no whole-school policy;
bonn_2.docx