“It is no garden party,” said Peter Evans, international disability expert, during a recent meeting held at Cambodia’s Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport in the building of Department of Planning last Friday. It is the country’s first attempt to include children with disabilities in Education for All programs. The large tents set up outside of the health centers, schools, and other sites set up to welcome disabled children are attracting flocks of out of school kids. They are screened by a group of medics and assisted on the spot or referred for follow up treatment.
This project, implemented by the Ministry of Education as part of the current Education Sector Plan, is focusing on understanding the needs of those children who are not part of the system – excluded, marginalized, and disabled. Who are these children? How many of them are there? Why are they excluded?
Technical working group meetings are held on the regular basis, and bring together stakeholders involved in managing and implementing this project on the ground. Representatives from three departments – primary, special needs and department of planning – meet and share progress, decide and agree on the next steps, and address any of the on-going concerns.
Over the past year and a half I’ve had a privilege to watch this project unfold – from the very first steps of program design, pre-testing, pilot projects and now a national implementation of data collection. What started as a small initiative supported by the Minister is now a robust program involving on the ground work in 12 out of 24 provinces, including hundreds of data collectors, a team of more than 30 medical professionals managed by Handicap International Belgium and teams of trained data entry staff. Everyone from village chiefs, commune councils, teachers and school directors, representatives from the Local Education Donor group are supporting this work and a large group of disability NGOs are looking at the Cambodia’s Ministry of Education as a new leader in bringing the disabled kids to school.
A lot of work lies ahead, as data collection is one of the first steps in the planning process, but there is no stopping Cambodia now. The commitment is there and enthusiasm is growing by the minute. These children are no longer invisible – they are coming out in large numbers – 403 in the Battambang province alone – with very different needs ranging from easily treatable conditions like blocked ear wax causing hearing loss (at one site 38 children diagnosed with hearing problems were assisted on the spot by simply removing ear wax and starting a round of antibiotics) to conditions requiring long-term treatment.
Collecting data and treating disabled children will enable the MOE to set goals and to monitor progress and, ultimately, included these children in the education system. Recently the Secretary of State, HE Nath Bunroeun proclaimed that the next Education Sector Plan will focus on providing education to disabled and excluded children and on early grade reading programs.
All children in Cambodia have the right to go to school and to receive quality education – and that includes children with disabilities, who have been largely excluded prior to this initiative.
