News Desk : dhakamirror.com
About three-quarters of children with disabilities have dropped out of high school, and about 60% do not go to regular primary schools.
A recent government study found that only 8% of them go to primary schools for early childhood education, with girls enrolling at a rate of 5.39 percent and boys enrolling at a rate of 9.39 percent.
Parents said that many mainstream schools “still refuse” to take students with disabilities, even though a government directive told them to do so in 2009.
In this situation, the country is celebrating International Day of Disabled Persons to promote the rights and well-being of people with disabilities in all parts of society and development.
Education activists say that if this keeps up, children with disabilities will feel like they don’t belong in society.
THE DISMAL IMAGE
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) released a preliminary report on the National Survey on Persons with Disabilities (NSPD) 2021 in June of this year. It said that among children with disabilities, 40.55 percent are in primary school and 24.36 percent are in secondary school.
This report was made using information from interviews with people in 36,000 homes all over the country.
The highest number of children with disabilities who do not attend primary education is 70.73 percent in the Chattogram division, and the lowest number is 34.61 percent who do not attend elementary education in the Sylhet division.
Again, the number of children with disabilities who don’t go to primary school is highest in the Barishal division, at 88.70%, and lowest in the Rangpur division, at 64.47.
Such a grim picture was painted by the study when the government pledged to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal with a target to eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous people and children in vulnerable situations by 2030.
When asked, Director General Shah Rezwan Hayat of the Directorate of Primary Education and DG Professor Nehal Ahmed of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education said that many of their old schools lacked things like ramps, special bathrooms, and classrooms to help children with disabilities learn.
Both of them said that they are making sure the facilities are safe while building new buildings.
They also said that if they got specific complaints about teachers who turned away children with special needs, they would be punished.
