WILLENE HOLNESS, BRIGITTE CLARK, RUTH NYAMADZAWO AND DENIS MOOGI
Early childhood education (ECE) for children is increasingly recognised as essential for children’s developmental needs and, frequently in Africa, to mitigate the effects of intergenerational poverty.
Unfortunately, however, in South Africa and Kenya, children with disabilities are frequently excluded from ECE. In parts of both countries, many parents lack the ability to identify their children’s disabilities unless these are physically evident. This leads to drastic delays for such children in reaching their developmental milestones.
Worse, at the community level, many cultural and religious beliefs attribute children’s disabilities (whether physical, developmental or psychosocial) to curses, incest, a punishment for past-life sins or sins committed by family members. Consequently, families living in these communities might hide their children with disabilities or seek spiritual or witchcraft solutions, rather than present their children for assessment at a health or educational assessment facility. Such children mighty even be expelled from their families and denied the right to a name and identity and the benefits of registration in terms of access to a disability grant.
Further, discriminatory admission requirements or barriers to inclusion may be faced by parents and caregivers who attempt to access ECE for such children as many Kenyan and South African ECE centres are not adequately equipped with assistive technology, appropriate teaching materials, or training and support for practitioners.
Thus children with disabilities face significant challenges in accessing high-quality ECD services, in mainstream ECD centres and in specialised centres that cater specifically to the needs of children with disabilities. The few specialised centres for the children are often far from the child’s home, particularly in rural areas.
There are frequently long waiting lists and a lack of funding to support children’s participation in such centres. Main-stream ECE centres are often not physically accessible, with inadequate facilities and infrastructure. Some children with disabilities are forced to remain at home where domestic financial resources to assist with ECE are frequently limited as only children with severe disabilities qualify for the Care Dependency Grant in the case of South Africa.
Policy and Law Reform?
Kenya and South Africa have undergone law reform processes over the past few years, with a shift in the provision of ECE to the ministries responsible for education (in 2017 for Kenya and in 2021 for South Africa). The Kenyan government appears to possess greater political will towards entrenching a universal right to early childhood education for all children, including those with disabilities.
In this respect, the Kenyan Basic Education Act (2013) and the Sector Policy for Learners with Disabilities (2018) mandated the strengthening of early identification, assessment, and placement of children with disabilities to ensure equal opportunities in ECE; and the Early Childhood Education Act (2021) provided specific measures to create an infrastructure to facilitate access to ECE for children with disabilities.
The Persons with Disabilities Act 2003 was intended to promote and protect the rights of persons with disabilities but fails to specifically provide early identification, assessment, and intervention measures and accessible and inclusive early childhood education for children with disabilities.
There are no provisions in the act requiring schools to have accessible infrastructure, specialised equipment, or trained personnel to cater to children with disabilities. However, Part IV of the proposed Learners with Disabilities Bill 2023 mandates the identification and assessment of children with disabilities, which includes the creation of a registry at the local (“county”) level to facilitate screening and assessment of every child suspected to have a disability, regardless of whether they attend a school. This is to ascertain their educational needs and appropriate educational provision.
By contrast, the South African legislation contains no explicit legislative commitment to children with disabilities, aside from a non-discrimination provision and the recognition of all children’s rights to development and to engage in play and other recreational activities appropriate to their age and ability to create a responsive environment in the Children’s Act (2005).
The Children’s Act also regulates the registration of early childhood development programmes and services through a national and provincial strategy, giving consideration to children with disabilities. The provinces are mandated to prioritise funding of ECE programmes for children with disabilities, but this is generally not done. In 2020, the Children’s Amendment Bill (the Bill) sought to extend the provision of ECE services for children with developmental difficulties and disabilities beyond school-going age until the year before the child enters school and an inclusive ECE system on a national and provincial level.
However, the bill failed to address the effects of the proposed migration of ECD from the Ministry of Social Development to the Ministry of Basic Education. Nor did the bill address the problems faced by under-resourced unregistered ECD centres that do not receive a government subsidy.
Finally, the bill’s proposal to make funding for poverty-stricken communities and children with disabilities discretionary (instead of mandatory, as at present) indicated a disregard for such children in ECE. The South African Law Reform Commission is seeking to domesticate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities through potentially enacting a disability-specific Act or amending the Promotion of Equality and Prohibition of Unfair Discrimination Act of 2000 which prohibits unfair discrimination against persons with disabilities.
While necessary and laudable, the process is not prioritising legislative protection for ECE of children with disabilities. The Children’s Amendment Act of 2022 commenced in January 2023, but the bill’s draft provisions on ECE had been abandoned in 2021. ECE has not remained on the law reform agenda in South Africa.
Early Screening and assessment
Early screening, identification and assessment of children at ECE level assist in the provision of inclusive education in schools. Epidemiological data to allow planning, and implementing measures for the health and education services for children with disabilities is required, along with appropriate data collection and the development of a realistic plan for supporting existing centres and home-based programmes.
The Kenyan Education Assessment and Resource Centres (EARCs) which provides early screening and intervention for children with disabilities, are often ill-equipped and lack the necessary capacity to carry out functional assessments with around one-third of county EARCs with only one officer and assessors assigned to EARCs typically lack insufficiently trained in functional assessment to assess learners with disabilities.
A lack of expertise and structure impedes the performance of multidisciplinary teams to assess children with disabilities. In some parts of the country, there is no formal working relationship between the Ministry of Health and the local (known as county) government with EARCs, with only 15% of EARCs involving nutritionists and speech therapists.
At the school level, admission policies do not necessitate disability screening or assessments before pupils join the school. Consequently, almost a fifth of learners in special schools and around half of those in integrated units nationally are not assessed before admission. There is a lack of an integrated data management system for the early identification, assessment and placement of learners with disabilities in early childhood programmes in Kenya. Inaccurate and delayed data dissemination on assessed learners and their placement complicates the effective planning and allocation of available resources to children with disabilities in early childhood education.
South Africa’s Policy on Screening, Identification, Assessment and Support (2014) seeks to standardise the procedures to identify, assess and provide programmes for learners who experience barriers to learning, including children of compulsory school-going age and youth who might be out of school or have never enrolled in a school due to their disability or other barriers, and those in schools (special or mainstream) who are failing to learn due to particular barriers.
However, this policy does not extend to the early childhood phase. The provision for screening and identification and assessment only for school-going ages might be too late for this potentially lost generation of young children with disabilities. At present, primarily NGOs or ECEs specialising in special needs provide disability-specific screening – for example, schools for children with autism or cerebral palsy may have “assessment units” which, at a fee for the most part, assess children to identify their educational needs. There remains a disconnect between screening and assessment and admission to and progression of children in ECE centres.
The Way Forward
A comprehensive package of ECD services is needed in both countries, based on the provision of inclusive education, health care, nutrition, social protection, and parenting support programmes, promoting a shift to home and community-based centres. As called for in 2015 by the South African National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy and in 2018 by the White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, public provisioning of ECE services and programmes is needed to secure the universal availability of quality ECE services; and equitable access for children vulnerable to exclusion, prioritising the prevention of disability and encouraging the inclusion of children with developmental difficulties and chronic disabilities.
Furthermore, a national integrated referral and tracking system for children with disabilities is required to assess the implementation of the policies and interventions. In South Africa, precedence should be given to the enactment of a legislative provision that recognises the right of all children to ECE, emphasising the need for consultation with persons with disabilities to ensure ECE becomes a reality for all children with disabilities whether through sector-specific legislation or not.
Barriers to admission to ECEs and early screening, identification and assessment of children with disabilities in the early childhood phase should be removed in both countries. The Kenyan government should strengthen the public institution providing education assessment services to children with disabilities and provide the required resources for sustainability. Considerable financial investment and governmental intersectoral collaboration with the NGO sector are required for both countries if the priorities for children are to be fully implemented and a meaningful attempt made to create opportunities for this grossly neglected generation of children.
The authors seek solutions for the slow implementation of inclusive education legislation and policies in early childhood education in South Africa and Kenya.
Holness is a senior lecturer; Clarke is an honorary research fellow and Nyamadzawo is a post-doctoral fellow of the School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Moogi is the founder and chairperson of CRESNET, a community-based organisation focusing on children with disabilities and chairperson of Action for Children with Disabilities Network in Kenya, which advocates for the rights of children with disabilities in education, rehabilitation and protection.
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