International Day Of Persons With Disabilities: Pandemic paused their education

Mohammad Alif's life has utterly changed.

The sixth grader was a resident of Blind Education and Rehabilitation Development Organisation (BERDO) in the capital's Mirpur. He was fond of his fellow students who also lived at the facility.

After the school closed late March due to the pandemic, his father Joynal Abedin, a police constable, took him back home, which is also in Mirpur.

"My son's studies came to a complete halt in the first three months. He got depressed. Although she has to take care of the younger children, my wife learnt to read Braille and started teaching him at home," said Joynal.

Since the family does not own any smart device, Alif has not attended the classes his school has been giving twice a week for the last few months.

His hardship is multiplied by the thousands of students with disabilities either in mainstream or special schools.

Rights activists say these students lack access because of a lack of study material in format suitable for children with special needs. Students with hearing impairment miss out on lessons because of the absence of sign language interpreters.

Society for the Welfare of the Intellectually Disabled, Bangladesh, widely known as SWID Bangladesh, has 539 special schools with over 27,000 students.

Classes have remained suspended in these schools since March 17. The closure has been extended until December 19.

"We cannot offer online classes as we need to adopt individual teaching techniques for each student. Each student has a different set of needs," said SWID Director Nurul Islam said.

He said they usually give some basic training to parents so that they can impart lessons to their children at home.

Nurul Islam estimates that there are around 45,000 students at non-government special schools and some 2,000 at government ones.

Special schools assess the needs of a student and prepare a separate teaching process for them. In mainstream schools, the students with special needs attend classes with other students.

REMOTE LEARNING NOT FOR THEM

The government first launched teaching through TV and then introduced classes over radio for primary school students and asked educational institutions to begin online classes.

But online classes are not accessible to those with learning disabilities and visual or hearing impairment.

"In schools, the students with disabilities usually face problems like lack of ramps, proper classroom environment, and unavailability of trained teachers. But they are facing a different set of challenges now," said KM Enamul Hoque, deputy director of Campaign for Popular Education.

TV and online education, developed as a temporary solution, do not focus on children with special needs, he added.

Many of these children are at risk of dropping out, he said.

Jahangir Alam, coordinator and thematic expert of Disability and Inclusive Development at the Centre for Disability in Development, said teachers impart lessons on TV and online classes using various graphs, pictures or video presentations.

But visually impaired students or those short of hearing cannot benefit from such classes, he said, adding that the students might be forgetting what they had learnt previously.

Sign language interpreters and subtitles must be added to the TV classes. He said.

'WE ARE WORKING ON THE ISSUE'

The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education is trying to make remote learning friendly for students who need special attention, said its Director General Prof Syed Md Golam Faruk.

"We will try to include sign language interpreters in TV education by next January," he told The Daily Star.

According to the Directorate of Primary Education, the number of students with disabilities last year was 1,24,056 at primary schools and madrasas. Some 69,046 of them were girls. At least 37,186 were physically handicapped, 13,901 had poor eyesight and 6,083 were short of hearing.

In secondary schools, there were 65,985 students with disabilities. Of them, 23,975 were girls, 22,561 were physically handicapped, 15,455 were visually impaired and 5,261 were short of hearing.

"It is true that we have not been able to bring all students under the coverage of online and TV education. But we are working on the issue," she said.