Mainstreaming Education of the Children with Disability in Bangladesh

Abstract

The rights of the children with and without disabilities come forward in recent decades. Different countries of the world including Bangladesh set policy emphasis on mainstream education for the children with disabilities instead of special education schools. The aim of the present study was to explore the present scenario of the mainstreaming education of the children with disability in Bangladesh. Towards attaining the broad objective, the study has also focused on some relevant objectives such as, to know the socio-demographic situation of the children with disabilities, to find out the facilities and the problems of mainstreaming education of children with disabilities, to know the dropout tendencies of children with disabilities and to produce the recommendations to overcome the problems related to mainstreaming education of the children with disabilities. Qualitative research method was adopted for this study and five primary school teachers and five parents of the children with disabilities currently attending mainstream school were selected by using purposive sampling method for the study. Findings of the study revealed that adequate resource allocation is absent to continue mainstreaming education system, but gradually improving. The study showed that insufficient trained teachers, transport problem and extra expenditure for children with disabilities make parents stop sending their children to school. The study also revealed that classmates, peer and people of the society some extent behave rude with the children with disabilities, though there are some people support much to continue their education. The study further revealed that poor academic improvement of the children with intellectual disability, discourage the parents to send their child to the mainstream school. Besides, the social skills of the children with disabilities are improving through this system. The major findings of study showed that the school does not have proper facilities to meet the required need of the children with disabilities like appropriate infrastructures, teaching aids, assistive devices, and learning materials. Although there are different government and non-government activities those are available to promote the mainstreaming education system, the opportunity of mainstream education for the children with disabilities is yet to develop.