Teachers' Attitudes towards Inclusion of Special Needs Children into Primary Level Mainstream Schools in Karachi

1.IntroductionThe inclusion of students with special needs in mainstream education has been a major cause of concern for many governments around the world. It is a national and international development that is supported in national legislation and in statements and reports that have been issued by international bodies such as the United Nations and Council of Europe. The Salamanca Statement (UNESCO 1994) advocated that children with special educational needs (SEN) should have access to mainstream education so as to provide a basis to combat discriminating attitudes. The statement is therefore conceived as forming the basis for inclusion and a shift from segregation by creating a welcoming community, building an inclusive society and achieving education for all.Inclusive education is a key policy in a number of countries, including the UK and US. The New Labor Government in the UK addressed the issue through its Green Paper within a few months of taking office. A major driver of all these efforts and developments has been concern that children's rights are being compromised by special education. This is because these special children are segregated from their typically developing peers and the mainstream curriculum and educational practices. Here, the issue of the actual effectiveness of the different educational approaches has been a matter of concern for some other time. Most of the studies on the effectiveness of special education is based on empirical research. We believe that the issue should be primarily determined through the perspective of values and ideologies which promulgates that all humanity is equal and therefore everyone, whether disabled or not, should have an equal right to education. (UNESCO, 1994, Statement, p. ix)The last census done in 1998 shows that of the total population in Pakistan, 2.54% is disabled in some form. This amounts to a total of 3,286,630 people. However, even this value is very small as it ignores those who are mildly disabled. The highest number of disabled is in Punjab (1,826,623), followed closely by Sindh (929,400). Of the total number of people disabled, 0.82 million are children between the ages of 5-14. This is 24.8% of the population with disability (Bureau of Statistics, 1998). This data is more than 17 years old now and can be used only as a rough gauge to determine of the current scenario in Pakistan as a thorough search has revealed that current statistics dealing with this group is non-existent. It can be assumed that this percentage would have increased in tandem with the increase in population throughout the world in the last 17 years. The point here is that, with the increase in numbers of special needs children, people have become increasingly aware that all children have the right to education. Therefore, more schools for special needs children were opened up and today increasingly, people have become aware of mainstreaming.It is a fact that special children (either physically or mentally disabled) face many problems in life. Adults, in special needs children's environments, whether they are parents or teachers, play an extremely important part in the physical and mental health of such children. At times, a team of specialists such as occupational therapists, speech therapists and aid teachers are required to help a special child to grow and develop. School is an important part of each child's growth, and it is a God-given right that every special child receives an equal opportunity to education as with all the other children their age. This research will look into the schools in Karachi (Pakistan) which offer the opportunity of mainstream education to special children and attempts to uncover teachers' opinions about mainstreaming in Karachi. The three main aspects that will be looked into are 1) the teachers' opinions about whether mainstreaming is beneficial; 2) integrated classroom management; and 3) general classroom teachers' perceived ability to teach special children. …