Stakeholders hold retreat on Inclusive Education

The importance of inclusive education has been taken to the front burner even as The British Council through her School Connect programme recently brought education stakeholders together from across the country to deliberate on this issue at the Radison Blu Hotel, Victoria Island in December 2022.

The two-day retreat was attended by teacher, school heads, education administrators, policy makers, directors from the state/federal ministry of education, NGOs and other education stakeholders to discuss way forward on inclusive education.

The programme features: paper presentation by facilitators, panel discussion, experience sharing, question & answer, networking session and strategic meeting, while communique was issued at the end of the programme.  

While fielding questions from participants, Dr. Umoh Essien, an advocate of special education from Uyo state said there is need to take the inclusive education beyond rhetoric as the inclusive education has already been passed into law, but it has not been in practiced. He also said that for any child with special need, there should be special teacher and assistants in place to make such child learn. He lamented that in most cases, this is not so in Nigeria as even the facilities and special needs experts are not in place to make this function as it is in developed countries where he has had opportunity to teach.

Emmanuel Yakusak, another participant who was also a presenter at the programme said the challenge in making inclusive education work has to do with advocacy. He said with more awareness, more children will be able to access quality education.

Gbemiga Bankole, an award-winning teacher from Alimosho Grammar School commended the British Council for outing up such an impactful programme as it brings together key players on the topic of discourse.