Despite the intensified awareness campaigns on the need for children with disabilities to be enrolled in schools, a research by Idah Muthoni Njeru from the department of Special Needs at Kenyatta University’s School of Education reveals that many parents in Embu county have still not heeded to the calls.
Njeru revealed that some of the factors that lead to low enrollment of girls with disabilities to school are old age traditions where boys are customarily more valued than boys. As a result of such traditions, most girls with disabilities are neglected at home and not enrolled in schools.
She further revealed that the plight of the girls rarely come to the limelight and when it does, it is when they are victims of sexual abuse and not because of the efforts being made to enroll them to schools.
She explains that poverty also greatly hinders parents from taking their children to school.
“It’s important to note though that some parents deliberately fail to enroll girls with disabilities to school because they are more comfortable leaving the girls at home to do household chores,” Njeru stated.
She revealed that the safety of the girls was also a point of concern or the parents who felt the girls risk being defiled on the way to and from school.
“Other parents lamented that most of the integrated schools are far from each other hence making it difficult for learners with disabilities to travel to and from school,” she explained.
The researcher expressed concern that the level of discrimination on children with disabilities was saddening with terms such as cursed, demon possessed and mad being used against the girls.
She noted that due to fear of ridicule, some parents failed to enroll the girls in school.
Lack of awareness on policy guidelines regarding education of girls with disabilities is also a major contributor for low enrollment of these girls.
Her research found out that while parents with low levels of education did not educate their children with disabilities, their counterparts who were highly educated struggled to ensure their daughters attained education.
Njeru warns that based on emerging statistics, unless the communities and parents changed their attitudes to appreciate that disability is not inability, the enrollment and retention of girls with disabilities in schools will continue to remain low.
She emphasized on the need for affirmative action to compel parents with girls with disabilities to enroll them in school.
She called for more advocacy to help change the attitudes of such parents to avoid discrimination their girls.
She suggested that parents neglecting to educate their girls needed to be taken through seminars to enable them realize that children with disabilities also had the potential to become professionals.
She called for the deployment of more role models to rural areas to mentor parents of girls disabilities on the importance of educations.
“Urgent interventions need to be put in place to encourage increased enrollment and retention rates of girls with disabilities in integrated primary schools in Embu County,” she implored.
The researcher felt that to ensure equal access to education even for the socio-economically poor parents, the government needed to make Special Needs Education (SNE) free in totality.
By Robert Nyagah
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