Teacher training for inclusivity at selected schools in Gege branch of schools, Swaziland

Abstract

The Kingdom of Swaziland is a signatory to policies on universal education that seek to ensure the provision of high quality basic Education for All (EFA). EFA is a commitment to providing equal opportunities for all children and the youth as provided for in its highest piece of legislation. With the view to providing equal education opportunities to all children in the country, a draft inclusive education policy was drafted in 2006. The implementation of this policy meant the introduction of inclusive education into mainstream schools and all teachers in the country’ schools were called upon to have adequate capacity to teach learners with a wide range of educational needs. Inservice teachers received inadequate staff development ahead of implementation of IE and a majority of teachers never received pre-service inclusive education training at tertiary level. The primary purpose of this study is to explore teacher training at inclusive schools in Gege branch of schools in order to determine how not enough training and sometimes lack of professionally trained inclusive teachers shall have an implication on inclusive education programmes and the quality of education in the country going forward. The term branch in the context of this study refers to schools found under the Gege constituency, which are sometimes refered to as Gege cluster of schools in some education and teacher circles. This study chooses to use branch as it is used in official national government documents. This research is a qualitative interpretive case study based selected schools in the Gege branch of schools. Data was obtained through semi-structured research interviews and documents analysis, processed and analysed through data coding, unitizing, categorising; wherein the themes that emerged became the findings of the study. Themes that emerged highlighted that teachers have divergent understanding of Inclusive education. Some teachers are unaware of the governmental policy regarding teacher training for inclusivity at inclusive schools in Swaziland. Un-inclusive curriculum, big numbers of learners, lack of resources and teacher’s lack of competency were found to be barriers in the implementation of inclusive education.