Beauty Chima, a teacher who attended an eye care workshop, now runs an eye screening session at her school. © Kerstin Hacker / Sightsavers

Working with teachers

Sightsavers works with local partners to ensure that children who are blind or visually impaired are included in mainstream schools. Yet in order for inclusive education to fully succeed, teachers need to be given the training and support they need to teach every child.

The issues

Many teachers in poorer countries cope with little training, poor pay and conditions, and enormous class sizes, so it isn't surprising that they sometimes find it difficult to attend to every child's needs. It is for these reasons that many teachers feel unable to accept children with disabilities into their classes, or unsure of how to work with them.

Teachers' attitudes and skills are the key to including disabled children in education. Social prejudices assume that children with disabilities are unable to participate in education. If teachers can be supported to challenge these assumptions, disabled children can quickly and easily be included in school.

Specialist teachers

Teachers specially trained to work with visually impaired and blind children can aid the inclusion process in the classroom. We support the training of these teachers, often known as itinerant teachers, who visit a number of schools in their local area teaching visually impaired children skills such as Braille, as well as supporting classroom teachers in the classroom.

The job of a specialist teacher

• Finding children not in school. Special needs teachers seek out children with sight problems who are not in school. Parents may not realise that school is a possibility for their child, so these teachers will explain the issues to them. If the parents consent the child will be found a place in school.
• Helping at home. Teachers visit the children and parents at home to help prepare them for school. This could include helping the child use a white cane, or starting to teach them Braille. They will also answer any questions that the parent or child has about school.
• Preparing for the classroom. Sometimes blind or visually impaired children are not ready to go straight into the classroom. In this case they can learn in a special resource room, where there is lots of special equipment to help them learn. When they feel confident they will join the other children in a mainstream classroom.
• Helping in the classroom. By giving one-to-one help to children in the classroom, through using Braille machines for example, specialist teachers help children who are visually impaired to become included in the classroom.

Achievements

 

Our work with education

Last year we helped to:

• Support 6,315 visually impaired children to study in mainstream education
• Train 2,623 teachers in special education skills, so they can support children who are blind or have low vision