Foundation for Education and Rehabilitation of Special Children (FRESH) General Secretary Ashba Kamran said on Sunday that “education for all” was a distant dream and for disabled people, it was even harder to achieve in Pakistan.
She said latest surveys revealed a dismal outlook in the country as only an extremely low percentage of disabled people in Pakistan had received some form of education. The surveys also showed that most mainstream schools lacked facilities to deal with disabled students with a good number having a policy against giving admissions to such children, she added.
Ashba said disabilities such as poor vision, speech or hearing impairment and those arising from cerebral palsy and allied disorders such as thalassemia, dyslexia and aphasia had been recognised as major forms of Learning Disabilities (LDs).
She said: “LD is a neurological disorder that affects the brain’s ability to receive, process, store and respond to information. The term ‘learning disability’ is used to describe the seemingly unexplained difficulty a person of at least average intelligence faces in acquiring basic academic skills.”
She said not aiding students with LDs was hampering national progress. She said a person despite having average or above-average intelligence, without any sensory problems (like blindness or hearing impairment), could still be struggling to keep up with people of the same age in learning and regular functioning because of LDs.
In Pakistan, said Ashba, around 15 percent of all schoolchildren were suffering from learning disorders and most schools failed to lend a sympathetic ear to the problem. As a result, LD-affected children were branded failures, she said. Ashba asked the government to formulate a constructive policy for LD-affected children and ensure school vigilance and parental awareness in this regard.
