Education for children with disabilities, Kenya

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.