ADDC Practitioners Interest Group 25 th May 2011 Inclusive Education – a Case Study from Samoa Sally Baker CBM-Nossal Partnership for Disability Inclusive Development

Samoa Inclusive Education Demonstration Program 5 year AusAID- funded program Funds existing education providers to scale up / shift to Inclusive Education practice What is aid? Photo: Sally Baker

Samoa Inclusive Education Demonstration Program Examples of supported activities: Early intervention services to support identification and enrolment of children with disabilities Specialist services to support participation in mainstream education, including: Sign language classes for children with hearing impairment, their families and teachers from mainstream schools Braille classes for children with vision impairment, and production of Braille teaching and learning resources Small grants to support the initiatives of mainstream schools to include children with disabilities Local Inclusive Education Advisor within the Ministry of Education, with availability of technical support, to develop policy Research projects, to generate data Awareness raising regarding rights to education

Samoa Inclusive Education Demonstration Program Lessons learned and ways forward: For sustainable change, implementation must be aligned with MoE systems, thus coordination must sit with the MoE: Advisory Committee, made up of Govt and Non-Govt stakeholders, chaired by Govt MoE has financial responsibility and accountability for program Dedicated Inclusive Education Advisor within MoE Development of an IE policy, lead by MoE Efforts to include children with disabilities in school cannot succeed without challenging negative community attitudes – awareness raising is essential The voices of people with disabilities themselves must be heard through the implementation and M&E process, thus DPO representation in the Advisory committee at minimum, but also other aspects of implementation, is essential