How teachers with disabilities are inspiring children with special needs to return to school

The timekeeper at Spire Road Primary School in Jinja City has sounded the gong announcing the start of lunch hour. It is 1 p.m.

The junior class learners dash out of their classes to the swing placed carefully in the middle of the school compound as the teachers make their way to the staff room where lunch, the occasional posho (maize bread) and beans, has been served.

Catherine Anyango, a braille mathematics teacher, is in no hurry to eat. She is busy taking one of her students through a maths problem using a braze et – an advanced multimedia player that reads out loud words written on a paper. She is a darling of her students, and this relationship has been the cornerstone of their success in the recent past.

Born with low vision, Anyango easily identifies with the learners with disabilities she teaches. She handles them with the care they deserve but still manages to get the best out of them. Two of her students beat the whole of Jinja City in mathematics in the 2021 Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE).

"We didn't have most of this technology when I was studying. It was extremely difficult for me. I am happy that these children do not have to go through the same hardships as I did. I am passionate about helping them succeed and remember that they are as capable as everyone else," she says.

One would think that her passion is motivated by her salary, but alas! Anyango is just a volunteer teacher who is not on a government payroll. Of the 26 teachers the school has, five are trained to teach children with disabilities and of these, only one is on the government payroll.

Anyango is grateful to UNICEF and the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) for furnishing the school with assistive device technology that has enabled self-teaching among learners with disabilities since they can record lessons on victor readers and access them at any time without any pressure.

"Even for us, the teachers, these technologies save us much time planning lessons by easing the teaching methods. Whenever I need to access materials online, I get on a laptop and access the Kolibri offline platform, with educative accessible videos that children enjoy. It is better than listening to me all the time," she adds.

Kolibri is an open-source online and offline platform on which UNICEF has subscribed inclusive schools to freely access multimedia learning materials for children with disabilities.

Anyango almost shares a story with Samuel Atuhairwe, Head of the Special Needs Unit at St. Bernadette's Model Primary School in Hoima Municipality. Having lost sight at five years, Atuhairwe studied at this same school where he has taught for a record 20 years.

For Atuhairwe, teaching is "a form of advocacy" against society's negative attitude to disability.

After taking a Bible reading at a public gathering attended by Uganda's President, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and the Omukama (King) of Bunyoro Kingdom, His Majesty Solomon Gafabusa Iguru I, Atuhairwe, who is married with four children, changed the mindsets of many parents – some of whom enrolled their children with disabilities to St. Bernadette's Model Primary School where he teaches.

"I have a family, a job and a Diploma, now pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Special Needs – just like anyone without disability. Besides teaching, I must demystify these stereotypes about Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) by helping those children still hidden in homes and communities due to their disabilities to start school," he adds.

Teacher training

Atuhairwe and Anyango believe that to bridge the gap in inclusive learning, more teachers with special needs need to be recruited, continuously trained and well-renumerated since most inclusive schools have less than five special needs teachers.

However, it is not just the special needs teachers doing heroic work. Teachers such as Francis Etyang and Brian Kizito have been part of the phenomenal work at Spire Road Primary School in Jinja.

Francis, who doubles as the Head of Science in Primary Five at the school, was selected for a course in Audiology at Zambia's Starkey Hearing Institute due to his work with special needs children whose outstanding performance was identified during the implementation of this initiative on digital accessible learning and was again recently bestowed a Fulbright scholarship for a master's degree.

Specious Katusabe and Susan Tuhaise spend several hours daily at St. Bernadette's Model Primary School, translating class lessons into sign language for hearing and speech-impaired learners.

One of the major challenges that inclusive schools face is the lack of electricity supply, especially in rural areas, which hinders learning as some of the devices require higher voltages than what solar energy provides.

Besides the challenges, Ronald Matovu, UNICEF's Education Officer, is optimistic that the National ICT in Education Policy Uganda is mooting to meet the digital technology gaps in schools and plug the internet and energy leaks that threaten to undermine inclusive