Zimbabwe Has Shortage Of Special Needs Teachers – Deputy Minister

Zimbabwe has a shortage of teachers trained in special needs which has resulted in special classes slowly being eliminated from schools.

“Special” classes were introduced in schools to cater to pupils that have learning challenges and cannot cope with the learning pace of their peers.

Special needs teachers are trained, largely at the United College of Education in Bulawayo but they are too few to meet the need.

Reports indicate that at some schools, learners with special needs are spending their days sitting in disused classes with no learning as teachers focus on the other learners with no learning challenges.

Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Edgar Moyo, confirmed the existence of special needs classes in the school system. He said:

People with intellectual challenges, largely in a school system, are screened. In the Ministry, we have a department called the Learner Welfare Special Needs Education Department.

So, they are supposed to screen learners for intellectual disabilities so that special classes are created and then special strategies that are commensurate with those incapabilities are then attended to by special teachers.

… Yes, granted we are not so many as to satisfy the needs in the country. However, in our Inclusive Education Policy, our teachers are expected to do some targeted teaching so that they do not leave anyone behind in their teaching strategies.

However, those with severe challenges are then supposed to be taken to special institutions where specialists and perhaps peers are present and then those can be assisted.

Sibonisiwe Mazula, the coordinator of the Zimbabwe Down Syndrome (ZDSA) recently said that children with both learning and physical disabilities were being sidelined in some schools. She said:

I visited a school here in Bulawayo, I saw a little girl with Downs Syndrome seated outside and I enquired why the child was outside and the teacher told me that the parents had not brought any toys for them to spend the day playing with.

Then I questioned the teacher why the child was being side-lined as the child was paying school fees and if the teacher was not teaching her then that was a disservice to the child.

How does a child in primary school socialise with a doll and toys all day when there are humans in the school? This was the teacher for a special class at that school.

| The Sunday News