Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mahmood on Thursday said that remote education has been faced multiple challenges, particularly, for the disabled children amid COVID-19.
However, he said, things are getting better now as the government is taking special measures to address the digital divide for the education of children in urban and rural geographies and with diverse needs.
He was addressing the First Hybrid International Conference 2021 on Global Academia during and Post Covid-19 organized by Federal College of Education and Sightsavers in Islamabad.
The two-day conference was aimed to come up with practical recommendations and solutions to get students back in schools in an enabling and safe environment.
According to United Nations report, more than 91 per cent students have been affected by the schools closure. By April 2021, about 1.6 billion young students were out of schools. The school closures and the loss of family incomes kept students out of school indefinitely.
Shafqat Mahmood said that the government is taking considerable steps for the education of children with disabilities. He shared that various tertiary education institutions exempt candidates with disabilities from inaccessible admission tests, has relaxed age limits, providing fee concessions, and also offering appropriate examination modalities.
He also mentioned that school‘s infrastructure would be wheelchair-friendly for physically challenged children, while sign language and braille specialist teachers should be available to cater to the needs of children with hearing and visual impairments.
He said, the government would also arrange the transcribers/writers to assist the children with visual impairment during written exams. Furthermore under the school eye health project, Federal Ministry of Education in partnership with Sightsavers is providing free eye health screening, providing free eyesight glasses, and treatment for all other complications of eye health to more than 200,000 school aged children of Islamabad.
On this occasion, Munazza Gillani, Country Director Sightsavers said that it is the need of the hour to translate inclusive education policies into actions.
She said that Sightsavers has trained teachers on inclusive education of children with disabilities in the classroom, established the model inclusive technology labs at school and university level, equipped government institutions with accessible learning resources, accessible IT software and braille books for students with visual impairments.
