Amira El-Noshokaty joins in reviewing a plan to include children with special needs in mainstream primary schools Amr Ashour, 14, gives a shy smile. He likes school, he says, and he enjoys the company of his fellow fifth-year students despite his difference from the majority of them. According to his elder sister Safaa, given Amr's condition -- which has trapped him in a toddler's body and keeps him more or less stationary the whole time -- this was not always the case. The nearest special-needs school was too far to be a practical option, and when he was finally registered at his present private primary school, Amr was frequently mocked and bullied. The principal has managed to control the situation, however; so much so that Amr is now not only academically, but socially top of his class. But to get to the present position, Amr's family had to go through an expensive two-year battle. Yet Amr is but one of some two million school- age children with special needs, of whom only about 50,000 get their fair share of education. The figures were cited by Nabil Sisostres, network coordinator at the Together For Family Development (TFD) institution, speaking at a recent conference on the subject, which called for the inclusion of children with special-needs in mainstream schools. Founded in 2003, the TFD includes over 13 NGOs specialising in special needs: "There are some 7.5 million people with special-needs in Egypt, and if you count the concerned parties -- with four to a family -- that makes 30 million, 10 million of whom have the vote. Just imagine the power they could wield," explained Sisostres. They need not be legally and socially marginalised, in other words. And sure enough, in the last few days, the government has permitted the admission of students with "mild disabilities" in elementary and primary schools throughout the country -- among the first step in a five-year plan of the Education Ministry starting in the school year 2007-08 -- reflecting the success of pilot projects implemented by the Support Education Training for Inclusion (SETI) Centre of CARITAS, an NGO, in 1998-2007. An eminently commendable step. According to Nagib Khozam, SETI Centre director and professor of education psychology at Ain Shams University, "the pilot was implemented in 15 elementary and primary schools, the latter all public, in collaboration with UNESCO and Save The Children Egypt, with approval from the Ministry of Education." It involved teacher training, support groups and various facilitation programmes as well as a campaign to raise awareness among children and staff. And the result? Inclusion is feasible, and will have a positive impact on both special-needs children and their peers. In this context, Amany Ibrahim remembers how difficult it was for one of her twin sons, Abraham, born with walking and hearing disabilities, to find a place in school. While regular schools refused to include him, his IQ was significantly higher than the special-needs school average. "But he had to learn," she added, explaining that it is thanks to the SETI project implemented in Tor Sinai School that he received any schooling: "he's in his fifth year now. He is well loved and has made friends." Despite declarations of the rights of the mentally challenged and the disabled, in 1971 and 1975, respectively, the inclusion move is relatively novel throughout the world. At the local level children with disabilities are provided for under the 1996 child law and the first and second Decades for the Protection of Egyptian Children (1989-99 and 2000-10), neither of which has granted the right to inclusion. Though the current child law (under amendment and discussion at the Shura Council) grants education for all children; some articles limit those with special-needs to special education. Hence the whole matter is left to the principles' choice of convenience. So far, primary, preparatory and secondary students with disabilities continue to be legally subject to the whims of school principals, unless they attend one of three types of specialised schools in Egypt, as defined in Silent No More, a comprehensive guide on the topic published in 2002: schools for the mildly retarded, with IQs of 50-70; schools for the blind and visually impaired; and schools for the deaf and hearing impaired. Those under the ministry's jurisdiction do not accept students with an IQ lower than 50, and they teach a simplified version of the curriculum, while those for the blind and the deaf follow the regular curricula using Braille and a mixture of sign language and visual aids, respectively. In effect the ministry caters to no more than four per cent of the disabilities with which Egyptian children are afflicted, as a TDF study recently found: for no convincing reason, learning disabilities, speech impediments and dyslexia, autism, social and psychological issues, physical disabilities, multiple disabilities and brain injuries resulting from accidents are not officially attended to. Yet the power of the will has often transcended official limits, as success stories documented by TFD demonstrate. Ashraf Ramadan, a 34-year-old car mechanic who, due to his paralysis, was denied the right to mainstream education, finished his vocational training and learned computing besides: "For me, learning is the challenge of breaking free of the dark room, which should be abolished by law." Speaking on condition of anonymity, the parent of a second-year student with learning difficulties explains that he was frequently denied admission to school and referred to "as if he was born in the jungle" until SETI made a positive change not only on his academic prospects but his behaviour: "at the end of the day, my child is a human being." Korolos, six, was likewise denied admission to regular schools due to a hearing disability. As Alaa Sebeh, the UK Save The Children Middle East and North Africa disability advisor, puts it, "current conditions are in violation of all international treaties. According to the Ministry of Education, 38,808 out of two million children with special needs get any form of education, with no more than a few hundred included in mainstream education." Sebeh stressed the positive impact of such inclusion in regular schools which, unlike special-needs schools, will provide adequate training for inclusion in society at large. Still, housewife Sahar Ali disagrees: "aside from inevitable harassment by schoolmates, how, for example, will children with mental disabilities benefit from regular schooling?" As a mother, Ali said, she encourages social inclusion but not at the expense of the child's welfare. According to Sebeh, however, 85 per cent of the children in question can attend and fully benefit from regular school; the fact that this fact is not as widely known as it might be is due to civil work progressing in closed circles, lack of effective networking and lack of involvement of the government and, especially, the media. "Only a year ago lots of networking efforts in lobbying for our cause proved successful." Meanwhile, some 30 million Egyptians will be waiting. We claim the ability to look at "the others", but will we ask ourselves whether we can really see them?
