The Kenya Union of Special Needs Education Teachers (KUSNET) has urged the Ministry of Education and Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to quickly address the glaring gaps in the Special Needs Education (SNE) sector.
Addressing a consultative forum of Curriculum Support Officers (CSOs) for SNE drawn from 12 counties at Racecourse Inn in Eldoret, KUSNET Secretary General James Torome said that they had identified obvious gaps negating gains in the SNE sector and had forwarded the same to the Ministry and TSC for action.
Torome highlighted that the main hiccups include; Lack of funding for co-curricular activities for SNE learners, poor infrastructure in SNE schools, obsolete assessment tools used by SNE CSOs, lack of effective monitoring of schools occasioned by lack of vehicles and funds, and lack of periodical capacity building for SNE teachers.
He added that negative attitude by stakeholders had affected the opening of new units and failure to include persons with SNE knowledge in the County Education Boards were also overlooked issues.
However, Torome thanked TSC for creating a division to coordinate SNE activities at the commission headquarters, urging them to further decentralize the directorate up to the sub-county level.
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The union boss further commended the Commission for embarking on serious deployment of SNE teachers in regular schools to special schools and units across the country. He urged the commission to expedite employment and deployment of SNE teachers to prevocational levels which are equal to grades 7 and 8 in the SNE schools.
The CSOs blamed the Ministry for doing little to the SNE sector on matters funding, saying that their work cuts across all sectors of the ministry yet they were being given little attention when monitoring co-curricular activities at all levels.
By Our Reporter
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