KZN Legislature offers support to special schools, visits Schola Amoris in Umzinto
MEC for Social Development Mbali Shinga engaged with the school's management and addressed both learners and staff.
The KwaZulu-Natal Legislature has begun conducting school functionality monitoring programmes in all districts in the province.
This began recently with all members of the legislature being deployed across the province, as part of an initiative which forms part of ongoing efforts to evaluate the functionality of schools and identify on-site challenges.
This year’s programme focusses on visiting schools that provide education to learners with special needs (special education).
In Umdoni, MEC for Social Development Mbali Shinga visited Schola Amoris Special School in Umzinto. She engaged with the school’s management and addressed both learners and staff accordingly. Additionally, Shinga presented gifts and sanitary packs to support learners, including those with special needs.
Shinga stated that special education plays a significant role in providing specialised knowledge, support, services and equipment to learners with high-level needs.
“These visits underscore the government’s dedication to enhancing service delivery and ensuring that learning environments are safe, functional and attentive to the needs of all learners,” she added.
As per the legislature, since the introduction of the inclusive education model, the very same special schools are expected to become resource centres for mainstream and full-service schools. There is therefore an undisputed fact that special schools need to be strengthened so that they can offer quality education in good conditions for their own learners before they can support other schools.
In this province, there are 76 public special schools, with only 27 of them qualifying for resource centre status. The legislature anticipates that soon, all special schools should serve as resource centres for other schools, and the following principles (among many) underpin the special role they must play in the mainstream:
• Promote full development, human potential, sense of dignity and self-worth, and strengthen human rights, fundamental freedoms and human diversity.
• Promote inclusion and participation of all learners in all academic, social and sporting activities in the school.
• Involve parents and the community in the life and services of the school.
• Avail specialised support to all schools in a district in an effectively managed programme.
The legislature believes that many factors hinder special schools’ progress towards achieving resource centre status; and that these affect special schools built in rural areas and townships before 1990.
It has been argued that the best-resourced special schools are in urban areas, where they can attract the best-qualified specialists and access better materials and assistive devices. It is for this reason that this year’s programme focuses on specialised schools.
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