ESEPAF’s ongoing and proposed subsequent work (3 January 2006)

Summary: ESEPAF has recently initiated an ‘Inclusion’ and ‘School-exchange’ programme.

The programme focuses on developing inclusive practices in all aspects of school culture and, laying a concerted partnership between school children, teachers and communities in identifying the out-of-school children, and, finding lasting solutions for getting them included in regular schools.

"A co-operative, supportive partnership between school administrators, teachers and parents should be developed and parents regarded as active partners in decision making"

(The Framework for Action on Special Needs Education—Salamanca, Article 61).

The programme, we hope, will be implemented through three consecutive projects over a period of 3 years in one pilot Sub-County in Kamuli district:

• Project 1: School-Exchanges; Developing Inclusive Practices through School Children and Teachers.
• Project 2: School-Community Mapping
• Project 3: Embracing Diversity; Developing Welcoming Schools and Supportive Communities.
• Project 1 is currently in progress, and, together with project 2 (to come next) when the program is officially launched in the pilot Sub-County, will run concurrently —right from year 1—and, continuously to the end of project 3.

In brief, project 1 is a re-orientation of school culture aimed at arousing child-to-child conscientiousness and attitude change; prompting teachers to work together particularly on curriculum adaptations and, developing co-operation between schools.

In practice, project 1 takes the form of school children and their teacher(s) visiting a nearby school for a sharing lesson in one subject or two. Subject teachers of the involved schools present a variety of work in form of questions for the pupils to chose from and discuss about, within themselves.

Teachers who are knowledgeable in particular subjects then help the children to finalise each task with alternative ideas or supplementary facts; teachers themselves also get the opportunity to build on their academic experiences besides sharing ideas on appropriate teaching approaches for given topics.

"Inclusion cannot be done by one school in isolation. Much more good work will be undone if a pupil has to transfer schools and the receiving school is not prepared to adapt to his needs". (UNESCO, 2003).

Project 2 will fundamentally take the mode of questionnaires that we are developing using UNESCO’s ILFE toolkit.

ESEPAF’s proposed approach at this level is to train at least 4 pupils and one teacher per school—government-aided and private alike—and, one community leader at each village council committee in the chosen pilot project Sub-County.

Trained participants will primarily help in completing the questionnaires in form of child profiles for each school-going-age child located outside school.

The questionnaire is being systematically planned in such a way that it should give details of a child’s life background, including previous school history if any. We hope this will in general enable us make a comparison between the home/community and school-based factors behind the ‘out-of-school’ or ‘dropout’ incidence.

ESEPAF will further use the findings at a later stage in project 3 to sensitise schools and communities, a point where we intend to give critical attention to development of Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) and a link between schools and parents.

The trained pupils and their teacher will form a School-Community Mapping (SCM) committee at each school and this will be coordinated by the teacher.

The participating community leaders will be of help in contacting caretakers/parents/guardians of the out-of-school children and in encouraging other community members to join in the effort.

ESEPAF’s member teachers will take on the role of monitoring progress in different areas; matching and/or sorting findings to avoid duplication and, also, convening participants on quarterly basis, to take decisions on findings.

Together there are at least 40 schools and 55 village council committees in the proposed pilot Sub-County—Nabwigulu.

This means that at least 255 participants will be part of the formal information collection exercise—160 pupils from 40 schools; 40 teachers and 55 village council committee participants.

While ESEPAF’s member teachers meet all administrative costs in project 1, project 2 and 3 will require external assistance over the 3 years. Project 2 in particular will necessitate the following, in the pilot project cycle:

• Stationery
• 300 Reams of computer printing paper.
• 2 computer sets and applicable software
• 50 Flip charts
• 30 Boxes of Markers
• 120 Boxes of pens
• Notebooks; 765 Copies
• Photocopier
• 2 Motor cycles
• Fuel
• Training of participants.

The overall cost of the entire programme in the pilot Sub-County is not yet established and this is because we are still building on activities for project 3; a definite figure will be known by the time we finalise our first project proposal.

ESEPAF’s member teachers will cater for office rent (as they ever do now and in the past) and equipment maintenance and other administration costs.

Project 3 has been planned to run for at least the last 24 months of the programme in the chosen pilot Sub-County. It will be the implementation of resolutions and recommendations from projects 1 and 2.

In speculation, project 3 will take the following approaches:

• Providing Inclusive Education orientation and/or training to teachers. Teachers need to learn basics in Braille; sign language; warning signs and teaching approaches for particular learning difficulties and, creativity for working with classes of a heterogeneous learner population.

To ensure this, ESEPAF needs to support at least two teachers per school to go through orientation workshops or other short-term training sessions.

The training will be conducted locally by hired facilitators from the District ‘EARS centres’ and alternatively at a Teachers’ College.

• Helping children and teachers to acquire specialised learning materials where required. In addition to materials supplied free of charge by MOES, ESEPAF’s cooperation with other organisations is an advantage in getting more. EENET, a UK-based organisation told us in early 2005 that through our friendship with them, they can supply to us Braille materials free of charge if we need them.
• Meeting with Headteachers, teachers and members of school management committees to resolve on ways of sustaining the SCM activities—through school children—and how parents can be involved in their children’s learning.
• Organising for local community sensitisation meetings for community leaders and parents. In the process, ESEPAF seeks to orientate parents in CBR and community action on meeting the educational needs of the most vulnerable groups of children—orphans, disabled and all out-of-school children.

ESEPAF’s mission in the programme is of communities where children are supported to access school, and, welcoming regular schools where both the in-school and out-of-school children are included and retained—reducing dropout rate.

Again, the entire cost of the 3 projects in the pilot Sub-County has not yet been defined.

This is on decision that we are still welcoming innovative ideas from other practitioners as regards what would be the most sustainable intervention methods/activities in the terminal stages—project 3—of our proposed work as described herein.

Besides, we are contemporarily being constrained with the lack of computer facilities. Had we to have at least one computer set in place, we could have had better management and expeditious development of our work in addition to proper storage and utilisation of electronic documents that we receive from other organisations and the Internet.

In the same order therefore, we have not yet finalised the overall work plan nor have we yet disseminated any project proposals to lobby for support. In specific, our hesitation is with belief that without a computer, we may not be able to develop competent project proposals or have consistence in project execution, in relation to early speculations and expectations.

More literally even, securing our own computer facilities at this moment does not mean we are right away ready for subsequent work in project 2 and 3. It necessitates us from thence, an allowance of a 2-3 months time for breaking down a conclusive and/or final work plan and project proposal for our own reference as well as in seeking for external support.

We shall therefore be very happy to share ideas with other people and hope our work would interest any one who supports inclusion as a way of building a fair and more just society.

ESEPAF Contact

PO BOX 16
Tel: + 256 78 601073
Kamuli Email: [email protected]
Website

Bibliography

We’ve combined ideas from a number of resources and, to this effect, we appreciate the courtesy rendered to us by the many organisations that always avail to us their publications/CD-ROMS free of charge and postage.

• Preparing Teachers for Inclusive Education; Video Based Training Course. (Special Education Unit, Ministry of Education, Lesotho, 1996).
• Learning from Difference CD; Action Research Guidelines, 2004. (EENET, C/o Educational Support and Inclusion, School of Education, University of Manchester UK). Website: http://www.eenet.org.uk
• CBR: A strategy for Rehabilitation, Equalization of Opportunities, Poverty Reduction and Social Inclusion of People with Disabilities; Joint Position Paper, 2004. (ILO, UNESCO, WHO).
• Inclusive Schools and Community Support Programmes: 1996-1997 and 1998-2001, UNESCO.
• Including the Excluded; Meeting Diversity in Education. Example from Uganda and Romania (UNESCO).
• The UN Declaration on Human Rights (1948).
• The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989).
• World Declarations on Education for All (Jomtien, Thailand 1990)
• The Salamanca statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994).
• The Dakar Framework for Action (UNESCO, 2000)
• Draft Dakar Framework for Action, (UNESCO 1999/2000)
• Millennium Development Goals on Education. (UNESCO).
• Meeting Basic Learning Needs: A vision for the 1990s (Background Document for the World Conference on Education for All, Jomtien Thailand). UNESCO 1990.
• Education for All: Round Table Themes II, III and I, World Conference on Education For All, Jomtien Thailand. UNESCO 1990.
• Embracing Diversity; A toolkit for Creating Inclusive, Learner-Friendly Environments (ILFE) —UNESCO 2004, Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, Bangkok Thailand.
• Conceptual paper: Overcoming exclusion through Inclusive Approaches in Education (UNESCO 2003)
• Curriculum Differentiation Materials ( UNESCO 2004)
• The open File on Inclusive Education: Support Materials for Managers and Administrators (UNESCO 2001) and a sister booklet (UNESCO, 2003)
• Understanding and responding to children’s Needs in Inclusive Classrooms: A Guide for Teachers (UNESCO 2003)
• Special Needs in the Classroom: A teacher Education Resource Pack (UNESCO 1993)
• Education in Emergencies (Save the Children UK 2003)
• Planning working children’s Education (Save the Children UK 2004)
• Schools For All: Including Disabled Children in Education (Save the Children UK 2002)
• Inclusive Education; where there are few resources (2002) —Atlas alliance Norway.
• Basic Education in Rural Africa—Save the Children Norway.
• The Uganda Government White paper on education (1992).
• The Constitution of the Republic of Uganda (1995).
• UPE policy, Uganda (1997).
• Children’s Statute, Uganda (1996).
• Local Government Act, Uganda (1997).
• Making Inclusive Education in Uganda a Reality (MOES 2003, Uganda).
• A stakeholders’ handbook for enhancing UPE (MOES, Uganda).