Who we are Chance for Childhood is an international children’s charity which strengthens and empowers local communities to protect children facing the gravest injustices.

Who we are We have been working in Rwanda since 2002 and are a key advocate for enhancing access to education for children special educational needs and communication disabilities We have been partnering with Empowering Children with Disabilities (ECD) [formally Nyabihu Demonstration School] since 2015 to deliver special education to deaf and hearing impaired children and to integrate children with SEN into mainstream school with LSA support.

About ECD ECD is the leading partner of C4C, implementing EEE Project in RWANDA ECD is composed of Nyabihu Demonstration School for the Deaf(NDCD) and EEE project – NDCD has got 130 deaf students, 61 deaf students attend nearby mainstream schools with their hearing peers.

Key Activities of C4C in Rwanda Community mapping study of people with disabilities in Musanze, Gakenke and Nyabihu Districts(part of EEE Project) Special education to deaf and hearing impaired children To integrate children with SEN into mainstream school with LSA support. Advocating for PWDs

MUSANZE District: Key finding from the mapping reports The outcome of the mapping study found 8,117 people living with impairments 63% were over the age of 25 years and 37% aged 3-25, 841 people were found to have a hearing or communication impairment The detailed data showed that 45.9% of people living with impairment had no access to education despite 74% of respondent confirming there was a nearby school Regarding the situation of stigma for children with disabilities, it was found that nearly 62% said that there is no stigma while 20% agreed and approximately 18% thought otherwise.

GAKENKE District: Key findings Gakenke mapping process found 8,605 people with disabilities, 62% of whom were over the age of people were found to have a hearing or communication disability (many of which were found to have multiple disabilities In Gakenke District there is a high level of stigma e.g. 30.1% of respondent said that their child would cause social problems for their family in the community and 38.7% felt that their child’s difficulties would cause them to have problems in getting married

Nyabihu District: Key findings Nyabihu Community mapping revealed that there are 6674 people with Disability which is a small number compared to Gakenke and Musanze District with respectively with 8605 and Persons with disability above 25 years of age present the big proportion with 4341(65%) compared to 233 (35%) of people under 25 years. Analysis showed also that gender consideration for primary impairment, male present a big proportion with 341(54 %) compared to female with 290(46%). Stigma is also observed in Nyabihu District, e.g % of respondent said that they would prefer that people didn’t know about their child impairment, 8.7 of uncertain and 8.7 of possible seems to be also indicator of stigma within the community.

Learning Support Assistant (LSA) scheme Piloting classroom support to children with Special Educational Needs in Musanze and Gakenke districts of Rwanda

What is an LSA? LSAs are members of the local community with some background in education (former teacher / mentor), who support up to 5 children with SEN during lesson and break time at school. LSAs offer academic, emotional and physical support to children for whom access to mainstream education has been difficult

Why did the LSA scheme start? During the community mapping of Musanze, Gakenke and Nyabihu, the EEE team found over 50% of school-aged children with disabilities had no access to school despite their being largely no geographical barriers. Using a carefully designed questionnaire, the EEE team assess the learning capability of each child to determine if they had capacity to learn in a mainstream environment with a little support. As the EEE project was also building an inclusive education environment through teacher training and advocacy, they targeted these same school communities to pilot an LSA scheme and reintegrate children into school to learn alongside their peers.

How does a child benefit? Each child receives support in the classroom and during recreational time as well as in their families (LSAs pay visits to families) to ensure they are able to keep up with their peers. LSAs are trained to repeat and simplify instructions from the teacher as well as helping to problem-solve and move at a different pace to the rest of the class. LSAs promote independence and social skills (in learning and life skills), provide personal and physical support (as required), and ongoing communication with classroom teachers, head teachers, and family members to ensure engagement in their child’s education.

LSA in Classroom

Results in Musanze District 34.5% of students showed significant progress 32.7% showed satisfactory progress 32.7% showed slow progress

Results in Gakenke District 29.7% of students showed significant progress 16.6% showed satisfactory progress 53.7% showed slow progress The results in Gakenke are incomplete due to lack of parent feedback; this could explain why the results are lower than in Musanze. LSAs in Gakenke have also had less training as they were only recruited in 2015.

Challenges and limitations Challenges to implementation Extreme poverty remains the upmost barrier to accessing education and children with disabilities require more medical attention thus creating a further barrier. To this end, children were also found to be attending without school materials. LSAs from Gakenke District are struggling with long distance from home to school Some teachers do not help children to learn while LSAs are not present.

Limitations of the monitoring framework and data collection Our monitoring has found that in many cases it has been impossible to measure the true impact of the LSA support because the progress of children with disabilities has not been recorded in schools. Therefore the baseline attainment is missing.

Limitations of the monitoring framework and data collection In some schools, the attainment results were in fact inflated for children with disabilities in order to encourage them, however this has distorted the true findings of the LSA scheme as many students seem to have a poorer attainment after starting the scheme but this does not reflect the reality.

Lessons and recommendations We underestimated the level of training required to ensure the right educational support to children with communication disabilities, therefore having refresher training was essential. The remuneration of LSA’s was sometime not adequate. Our original model of harnessing community volunteers was not seen through due to lack of interest from people with the necessary skills.

Lessons and recommendations The role of the LSA in liaising with parents, teachers and students is paramount and we have seen the importance of providing trainings to parents with LSA support to enable them to better meet the development and educational needs of their child The provision of medical assistance and/or assistive devices to children with sicknesses and physical disabilities would have been necessary to improve learning outcomes but was unfortunately outside of the project scope and budget.

THANKS For more information or a full copy of the mapping report please contact: