Publish Date : 03-Jul-2017
On June 29, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) signed a grant agreement with the Government of the Kingdom of Swaziland to provide grant aid of up to 1.723 billion yen for the Project for the Construction of Secondary Schools aimed at promoting Inclusive Education.
Through the construction of secondary schools and the provision of equipment and furniture, the project will prepare a learning environment that takes into account children with disabilities, contributing to implementation of the inclusive educational furtherance policy of the Government of Swaziland under which all children are to receive an education at mainstream schools.
In The Swaziland Education and Training Sector Policy of 2011, the Government of Swaziland defines inclusive education as meeting the needs of, all learnerswhatever their gender, life circumstance, state of health, disability, capacity to learn, financial or any other circumstance, and the government aims for all children to be educated at mainstream schools at all levels of education to the extent physically possible. Since 2006, the country has designated inclusive education model schools, and of the nine such primary schools, four accept severely disabled students, and inclusive education mainstreaming is progressing through educator training and the provision of facilities and equipment. Despite this progress, there is only one such inclusive education model school at the secondary education level as of 2015, and progress is lagging due to severe fiscal conditions.
The project will construct new accessible secondary schools, whose features include eliminating stairs, installing ramps, and having accessible lavatories. In total, the schools will have 20 classrooms designed with an inclusively designed basic environment to accommodate a range of disabilities, which is projected to increase the number of students, including those with disabilities, that can enroll by about 800, contributing to a higher quality of and a desire for learning. In addition, it is expected that the new secondary schools will be recognized by education specialists as model schools for promoting inclusive education, thereby contributing to inclusive education mainstreaming in Swaziland.
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