Education Ministry promotes inclusive education …Persons with disability being targeted

by in Guyana, News
Georgetown: Inclusive education has been given a great deal of prominence in the Ministry of Education as part of its intent to foster improvement and expansion of the educational services offered in Guyana.  This notion was disclosed by Chief Education Officer, Mr. Olato Sam, recently.  However, he asserted that this area demands greater focus largely because of the paucity of available options for various under-served groups within the society.  As a result, Special Needs Education in particular is seen as one of the main points of focus for the Ministry’s Strategic Plan.  He emphasized the importance of ensuring that a clear policy in this area is developed for the education system and more importantly that the range of required services are given special attention for improvement. “To this end we have developed a Special Needs Education Unit within the National Centre for Resource Development (NCERD) that is now mandated to manage the implementation of our policies and plans and to further our broad objectives for greater inclusiveness.”  The new department, according to Sam, is currently being headed by Ms. Karen Hall.
In fact he disclosed that Special Needs Education has now been established as a discrete area of specialization at the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) so that “we can now have more teachers adequately prepared with the requisite skills and knowledge to further these efforts in our school system.”  In this regard he said that there is need for this area to be afforded more support and focus even as he amplified that the education system needs to be retooled, restructured and reoriented to ensure that inclusivity is embedded into the everyday practice and not be regarded as an adjunct programme. “That means the streaming of a range of services currently placed within the category of Special Needs is inevitable if we are to meet our mandate of modernizing the education system. We have a long way to go but it is our wish that centers like the Open Doors will be more intricately linked to the standard operation structures within the Ministry of Education, receiving the required resources and support to ensure their viability,” Sam noted.