Education for children with disabilities, Kenya

We are delighted to report that our training of special school teachers advanced further in April 2024 when our latest group of 23 in-service teachers enthusiastically returned to Kenya Institute for Special Education for the second of their three course modules. This is the third group of teachers we are training and when they complete the course in November 2024, a total of 60 teachers will be fully trained and applying their new knowledge and skills in their school settings.

Many of the trainee teachers that attended the course in April have already identified some of their older learners with intellectual disabilities that are ready to make the transition from school to a productive adult life in the community. For example, Janet who teaches at Sahajananld Special School which is the largest special school in Kenya, having over 800 students. She says the course has greatly motivated her and she has committed herself to building the much needed transition programme within her school. The first of her school’s many students on the path to adult life is 21-year-old Jane who has moderate learning disabilities. Under the new programme, her parents are engaging well with the school in a plan for Jane to advance beyond education and help run a grocery shop with her mother when she graduates later in 2024 (pictured).

Another trainee teacher, John, from a school on the coast of Kenya illustrated the critical need for this training programme when he explained a revealing scenario to the training group. He described how when he joined his current school he found a student with learning disabilities who was stuck in school and had reached the age of 42 years, still sitting in class with other children. Until now, nobody had felt equipped to tackle the situation or devise a way for him to make the transition out of school.

In addition to contributing to the teacher training in April, Rob Aley, Advantage Africa’s Programme Manager, also took the opportunity to visit our two special units at Thinu and Mitaboni that are assisted with kind donations like yours made through GlobalGiving. Although the pupils were not around because of Easter school holidays, Rob met both head teachers and discussed forthcoming plans for the units. At Mitaboni we saw how the school’s vegetable garden was thriving in the rainy season (pictured) and we discussed plans to expand the other vocational training facilities with more poultry and possibly keeping some sheep to graze on the large school field. We were also encouraged to see that the school has managed to attract support from Agency for Disability and Development in Africa (ADDA) to build a smart new accessible toilet block for the learners and resurface the classroom verandas and incorporate more ramps. At Thinu we are currently preparing eight students for school-leaver graduations and transition to community projects in October 2024. Thinu is also partnering with Mitaboni staff to make an exchange/learning visit to Nile Special School in Nairobi in June which we will feature in our next report.

We are deeply grateful for your interest and generosity in advancing this project. Your support is vital in helping us achieve our goal of enabling every individual, regardless of their abilities, to reach their full potential in life. Thank you for your kind contributions which have made this important work possible.

Our initiative to train special school teachers in Kenya continues to make significant progress. The project is already creating important long-term benefits for the schools and the individual disabled school-leavers who are being supported to make the transition from school to a productive life in the community.

In November 2023 our second group of 20 teachers completed the final module of their training and are now applying their newly gained knowledge in their 20 schools. We have also enrolled a further group of 20 teachers who began their first module of training in November. When that group finishes we will have trained a total of 60 teachers altogether.

The teachers are very excited to be part of this unique new programme. Their commitment, enthusiasm and determination to make a change in their schools is clearly apparent from their strong engagement during the training programme. These observations are confirmed by the evaluation of the training, which showed that all the trainees rated it as very good or excellent. They also commented that knowledge regarding how to transition older learners with disabilities from school to community is much needed and they appreciate its practical relevance to their daily work. The outcomes of the training are also clear, with nearly all the trainees now running new structured ‘school-leaver programmes’ with colleagues in their schools. They’ve all supported at least one of their older students to make a successful start to adult-life after school, and many more can be assisted with donations like yours made through GlobalGiving.

Florence Ombongi a vocational class teacher from Kaimusi Special School (pictured below) says; ‘My eyes have been opened to the real-life opportunities for our school-leavers. I have to say that before this training we had very few ideas about how to graduate our students in a meaningful way, but now I’m confident, the knowledge is actually very empowering for me’.

During the training week in November, we also organised an important ‘Showcase’ meeting with senior level representatives of relevant government departments and other organisations in Kenya. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness of our project approach, showcase the successes and advocate for its inclusion in the national training syllabus for all special teachers in Kenya. Attendees at the meeting included senior representatives from the Ministry of Education, Department of Special Education, Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, together with civil society/NGOs and teacher and parent groups. The event was highly successful with good engagement from the attendees who expressed enthusiasm for the approach and support for its wider adoption. This was the first initiative by the project to engage wider stakeholders and we plan to build on this interest as the project progresses.

We appreciate this opportunity to keep you up-dated about our work to improve the education of children with disabilities in Kenya, like Oscar (pictured below) and sincerely thank those of you who generously support this project through GlobalGiving.