Inclusive learning issue in Malaysia

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/education/2014/12/21/of-kids-and-inclusive-learning/

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Children with special needs and capabilities must be nurtured and allowed to grow alongside their ‘normal’ peers at school for better outcomes. 

Every children deserves an equal rights in education and no one should be left isolated by looking at their disability. As start towards inclusive education the government has took initiative to implement inclusive special need education system.

The Education Ministry offers three options under the National Special Needs Education system specifically for those with hearing, visual or learning disabilities.

They include:

• Five secondary schools, three vocational colleges and one school each for children with visual and hearing disabilities;

• Special education integrated programme which has a special class in 2,000 government or government-aided schools and

• Inclusive Education Programme (pupils with disabilities or special needs who are placed so that they can integrate with other students in mainstream classes).

Although the intention is there to overcome discriminatory menatlity and educate the society, thus is still lacking of enrollment, trained teachers, disable friendly facilities and etc.

As of April 30, the number of children with special education needs in inclusive education program stands at 58,253 while 1,742 schools offer inclusive education programmes.

It has not been an easy ride and there are many challenges. They include:

• The shortage of qualified teachers, shortage of professional support such as speech and language therapists and educational psychologists.

• The lack of a tailored curriculum for certain learning disabilities;

• Inadequate disabled-friendly facilities in mainstream schools;

• Lack of uniformity of access to education services especially in Sabah and Sarawak and the interior of other states; and·

• Insufficient sensitive technological devices like hearing aids, Braille typing machines etc.

We need to create a strong awareness on the communities that students with special needs have the potential to excel and their disability can be minimised if they are given equal opportunities to learn in the mainstream classes.

The latest thinking on the critical importance of inclusive education highlighting on what can still be done, calls for a review of the existing practices, perspectives and framework by carrying out case studies and making relevant analyses of the data collected.

This move needs to explore the full array of social and educational benefits of the different programmes for students with disabilities. It also needs to explore how related evidence of return on investment in the global knowledge economy can be manifested and managed across other countries.