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Kids with special needs deserve more attention

Tendai  Madava Cool Writer
As the examination comes to an end, Tanaka, who unlike everyone else is not yet done, she is devastated. Is it because she did not prepare for the exam or that she was not given enough time to really perform and express her full potential?

Learners with special needs are obliged to write the exam within the same stipulated time as all the other students, yet they have “intellectual challenges”.

This has become the biggest drawback for learners with special needs.

They have not been given a fair platform to fully express their potential and are not accepted for who they are, but are rather forced to learn just like all the other students who do not have any challenges.

We should not segregate them because of their impairments and it should be noted that wherever they need clarification pertaining to a certain topic or a question in an exam, they should be given all the help.

Another group of students are slow learners and intellectually challenged according to the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders.

These learners need self help and interpersonal skills, as sitting and paying attention in class is a major challenge for them. The crucial part in the performance measurement for learners with impairments is providing them with accommodation.

This accommodation will minimise the barriers presented by their impairments, and will also support the learners’ ability in what they know and what they can do.

The performance measurement cannot be complete if there is very little knowledge on what the learners are studying, how versatile their studies are, what they are expected to know and how well they are learning.

We cannot segregate them because of their impairments, but rather we should give them more time to grasp the concepts of a particular subject and enough time to also meet the examination demands. With this, these learners will achieve reliability and validity as well as improvement in their sensitivity as learners and their rates of grasping concepts without being stigmatised.

Conclusively , they need to be assessed just like all the other students, but at the same time we should accept them for who they are and make learning conditions more suitable for them so as to make sure that at the end of it all an educational goal is achieved.

 The writer is a Lower six student at Mount Pleasant High School in Harare.