Bibliographies : Save the Children (UK) : Towards Inclusion: SCF UK's Experience in Integrated Education - Contents

Towards Inclusion: SCF UK's Experience in Integrated Education

Case Study - Thailand
Integrated Education Programme 1989-95

1. Situation of Education for Children with Special Needs prior to the start of SCF's IE Programme in 1989
Since 1952, Special Education in Thailand has primarily been the responsibility of the Special Education Division (SpEd) within the Department of General Education. It therefore has considerable experience in running its own 14 segregated special schools (primarily for hearing impaired children and some with mental disabilities or visual impairment, VI) and supervising and supporting 6 NGO run special schools.

Primary Education (PEd) began some experimentation in IE in 1982, but this remained at the level of small-scale training and experimenting in implementation, but with few mechanisms for monitoring and support, or budget (£20/school/year). After initial training, teachers were largely left to solve their own problems. There was only one person in the country with full-time responsibility for IE and being within the Research and Development Department had no authority to monitor. It is therefore not surprising that the programme's impact was slight.

Responsibility for training Special Education Teachers came under a third division, the Teacher Training Division. In 1989, one Bangkok college trained approximately 20 Special Education Teachers, but there was no component on special needs in the general teacher training courses.

In 1980 government policy changed to require all children to enrol in primary education - apart from disabled children whose parents had requested and exemption! In practice this clause was used to exclude children with disabilities, so although the policy of integration existed since 1980, by 1993 only 1,293 children were integrated into 52 regular schools (116 children with visual impairments, 295 with hearing impairments and 882 children with mental disabilities).

2. SCF Thailand's Starting of IE Projects/Activities
SCF Thailand's IE programme developed from its earlier work in the field of disability - support in the 1980's for various institutions: Pakkret Home for Crippled Children, Day Care Centres for Children with Mental Disabilities in Bangkok and Chiangrai, a Unit for Hearing Impaired Children in a Bangkok slum school.

Initially, integration activities developed as an extension of work in the Din Daeng Day Care Centre for children with mental disabilities which was run by Rajanukul Hospital. Hoping to reduce the number of children on their waiting list the hospital gained permission in 1989 to set up a special class within a nearby primary school run by the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA), with support from SCF. This set out to progressively integrate children with mental disabilities into regular classes, starting with lunch and play, moving to sports, music and art and for some more academic lessons. The reasons for this starting point were:

(1) Close relationships with Rajanukul Hospital and partnership in their work with children with mental disabilities.

(2) Having failed to identify anyone interested in IE within PEd, it was thought that BMA might be more open to looking at different and more inclusive ways of working.

(3) It was also felt that conducting training and demonstrating the positive effects of IE in Bangkok would be more accessible to and therefore have more influence on policy makers.

At the same time IE was becoming an element of the Chiangrai CBR project initiated in 1988, as individual teachers were encouraged to accept individual children into their classes with support from the CBR team.

3. Development of SCF's IE Programme and Strategy
As children from all disability groups were SCF's IE target group, we were keen to extend activities to include visually impaired children.

A Thai NGO, the Christian Foundation for the Blind in Thailand (CFBT), had been running its Centre for visually impaired children in North East of Thailand since 1978. From its inception as a residential special school, it had developed a wide range of services, training in daily living skills as well as more academic subjects, a Material Resource Centre producing Braille texts, and by 1991 had started to integrate some children into government schools, travelling daily from the Centre.

From 1991-1994, a CFBT/SCF project returned 54 students from the Centre to their home communities, studying at local primary and secondary schools. Initial training was also provided for teachers, administrators and parents and ongoing support given by Itinerant Teachers who paid regular visits, staying overnight with the families.

As students progressed normally through the school, the project was clearly successful, but key questions remained as to the time of preparation, the high costs of support, the ownership of the project and other sustainability issues.

Another strand to the IE strategy had been our involvement in the introduction of the UNESCO Resource Pack 'Special Needs in the Classroom' by UNESCO Resource persons to 20 participants from 3 Teacher Training Colleges (TTC) in Bangkok in 1993. SCF financed the translation and printing of this pack into Thai. But unfortunately there has been very little follow-up to this training from the TTCs. In a country with an experienced and entrenched Special Education establishment, there are many conflicting interests and some may not be so keen to co-operate with integration as this could be seen as acting against their 'professionalism'.

Working with the TTC and the Provincial Primary Education Office (PPEO) in Chiangmai, we were able to assist in the training of 24 primary school teachers. However, disagreements between the TTC and PPEO on follow-up support and supervision meant that it became necessary to choose one or other as a future partner. Clearly as PPEO have the primary responsibility for 'Education for All', we continued to work with them on training teachers and developing suitable mechanisms of support. We are now in the process of producing with them a school-based video on working with children with mental disabilities.

While by 1991, the Rajanukul Hospital project was successful in achieving a degree of integration and extended to a second school, most children made only limited progress in regular classes - they were returned to the special class whenever problems arose. Class teachers felt that the special education teacher was better trained, had more experience, and was paid additionally to deal with such problems.

Despite the production of a video explaining the project's concept and successes, policy makers remained unconvinced of its suitability as a model. Owing to the high cost of specialist teachers and support, this model was non-replicable and consequently not appropriate for the majority of children with disabilities who were living in the rural areas. For them the only options were the local primary school or staying at home. Consequently SCF support for this 'special class' model was judged to be inappropriate for wider replication, and financial assistance was ended in 1994.

However the Hospital team has since become key resource persons in training Ministry of Education (MoE) teachers in aspects of working with children with mental disabilities - a much more suitable role for Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) staff.

Throughout this period links had been developing with the Office of the National Primary Education Commission (ONPEC). Assistance was given with their training programme for classroom teachers, and linking them to MoPH and NGO experience.

In 1994 a review of the CFBT project was conducted. The findings highlighted the need to transfer ownership to ONPEC and following the production of a project video and after one year's lobbying, a new project document was signed by ONPEC with CFBT and SCF providing technical and financial support, to concretise this initiative in 4 provinces. Special Education Liaisons were to sit in each PPEO and coordinate IE activities, training, awareness raising and develop methods of support to teachers and students. While visually impaired children are the initial target group, it is expected that whatever mechanisms are put in place will later be able to be expanded to include other disability groups.

Recently SCF has run training for teachers from all schools in the cluster where our CBR project operates in North Thailand. The teachers initiated the training and are looking at ways to support each other at a cluster level, rather than through vertical supervisory structures.

Over time, our partners have changed from MoPH and NGOs to concentrating on working primarily with PEd. Our attempts at cooperation with both SpEd and TTC have largely floundered as they hit the brick wall of 'professionalism'.

We have been using our various initiatives at cluster/provincial/national levels to mutually support each other - feeding experience into the national policy debate relating to the National Special Education Plan, and the related components of the next 5 year Plan, 1997-2001.

4. Situation of Education for Children with Special Needs Now
Since the passing of the Disability Act in 1991, disability has increasingly been seen as a Rights issue, of which Education is a major component. In March 1995, the government passed a National Special Education Plan which aims to develop educational services to children with disabilities by involving all concerned departments of the MoE (rather than SpEd alone). However, the related budget increases are still awaited. Until then, ONPEC continues with only one person working full-time on IE issues. Its on-the-ground implementation remains limited, and NGO activities remain few and isolated. But most are optimistic that these budget increases will materialise and that they will focus more on the IE components of the SpEd Plan rather than the request from SpEd for 12 new special schools. This will allow ONP EC to spread its limited training to all provinces, but the challenges will still remain to find appropriate mechanisms of preparation, training and support for students, parents, teachers and administrator, ways to ensure the provision of teaching and learning aids, investigate future roles of SpEd (Resource Centres rather than special schools) and the inclusion in TTC curriculum of elements on IE.

With its detailed and lengthy in-country and regional experience and contacts, SCF is in a good position to make an important contribution.

5. With the Benefit of Hindsight, Where Would We Have Started
Our early activities in collaboration with MoPH and NGO special schools, while giving us an understanding of the problems, clouded the fact that we would need to feed all experience to PEd - they were the long-term target. We therefore got confused in the convoluted interdepartmental and interministry complications between BMA/SpEd/PEd/TTC/MoPH, etc.

Encouraging the MoPH to play unsuitable roles, BMA to be innovative, and TTC to implement pilot projects in primary schools all ended up as cul-de-sacs.

We should have spent more effort in developing PEd at national, provincial and local levels, identifying individuals or even clusters within the system who were motivated to try IE (we have identified and worked with some from our CBR projects) and also identifying higher MoE policy makers.

Collaboration with UNESCO should have concentrated on using their 'profile' to influence senior Ministerial policy makers who alone could insist an interdepartmental cooperation. Once they were closely associated with a TTC initiative, they could not be `impartial brokers'.

More thought should have been given to working with pre-primary classes. However this is complicated in Thailand by the fact that they are run by many departments of MoE (General Education, Religious Affairs, Teacher Education, Primary Education) and other ministries (Health, Department of Public Welfare, Border Patrol Police) as well as NGOs. PEd only became interested in 1992 in a response to dropping rolls as family sizes reduced throughout the 1980's - it was a strategy to fill classes and employ teachers.

6. Key Factors Slowing/Aiding IE Initiatives in Thailand

A. Attitudes and Philosophy

• Many teachers and administrators are not interested in children with special needs (not seen as their job).
• Teaching methods tend to concentrate on learning by rote within large classes.
• Children are not seen as individuals with differing needs.
• There is a growing understanding that children with special needs should be included in an 'Education for All' approach.
• Positive images provided by successful persons with disabilities can play an important role in encouraging parents and teachers to accept children with special needs.

B. Internal MoE Structures

Cross Departmental Cooperation:

• In a large and complex government bureaucracy such as Thailand, the fact that education for children with disabilities falls under the responsibility of three different departments/divisions of the MoE (Teacher Training, Primary, Special Education) creates conside rable tensions and rivalries.
• The presence of a well established Special Education Department, while potentially being a valuable resource, has in practice served to work against increasing the profile of IE activities in other departments.
• One of the major roles played by SCF has therefore been to try and build bridges between these departments, and also with the NGOs and MoH staff most involved in this work, however, too close a relationship with one department can cause problems with others.

Clarity of Policy Guidelines:

• Clear written guidelines from the MoE are required on the possibilities to adapt curriculum and promote children not passing all subjects. It needs to be clarified that having a lower pass rate due to slow learners will not affect teacher's and administrator's promotion opportunities. Otherwise these are used as excuses for the exclusion of children with special needs.
• A clear preference for integration needs to be expressed, continuing major investments in special schools only confuse.

The UNESCO Project:

• Was initially implemented with the Teacher Training Department, and Primary Education were consequently not keen to collaborate.
• Young teachers are not in a strong position to influence change in schools.

C. MoE Relations with Other Ministries and NGOs

Project Ownership:

• Initially projects were implemented through local interested NGOs and MoPH, in order to demonstrate the suitability of this approach, and attract the notice of policy makers. This meant that the MoE in no way `owned' the projects.
• IE projects are often initially dependent on a few personally motivated individuals who, if working for government, remain susceptible to rotation. It is therefore important that project activities are institutionalised as soon as possible within the MoE structure.

Relation to CBR:

• While IE has increasingly been a major component of our CBR work, we found that MoE were not keen to cooperate with what was (hopefully incorrectly) perceived as a MoH dominated way of working. We therefore split IE into a separate project focus trusting that eventually their interests will merge as MoE perceive the importance of early identification and intervention and MoPH of education leading to job opportunities.

Use of Project Review:

• The review of the CFBT project, conducted with the participation of local, provincial and national representatives of primary and special education, focused attention widely on learning from project experience.
• A video was useful in persuading policy makers and administrators of the real possibilities to implement IE initiatives.

Role of Networks:

• Networks of GOs and NGOs can encourage real exchanges of experience (as opposed to rhetoric) between GOs, NGOs and DPOs.
• In Thailand, a Disabled Children's Network has also been important in promoting awareness on wider disability issues.

Technical Resources:

• For visually impaired children integration cannot proceed faster than the availability of the necessary Braille and other materials.
• To be available nationally, these must be financed by government although possibly produced by NGOs.

7. Future Foci for Project Development
The next stage will be to use our support to various projects in order to investigate the following areas:

A. Preparation and Training

• Methods to prepare children for integration, either in their communities (most) or in specialist 'bridging' schools (for visually impaired and hearing impaired children); such schools need to keep these children for a minimum of time.
• Methods to raise the awareness on disability issues of communities, school administrators, all teachers and school children.
• More detailed training for classroom or resource teachers, and their relationship to existing training courses offered.
• Ways to include a component on children with special needs in the pre-service training of all teachers.
• Ways to encourage parents to counter any initial rejection of their children by school administrators via CBR initiatives and the forming of Associations of Parents.

B. Support and Supervision

• Methods to support students and teachers in overcoming teaching problems and other obstacles in the schools, preparation for examinations etc. This could be by district or provincial supervisors, special education teachers, cluster resource teachers etc.
• Methods to capitalise on the Special Education resources and experience in the province, and assist transforming their schools into resource centres with a major training component.
• Methods to help parents and families reinforce at home the academic and social skills learnt by their children at school.
• Ideas for developing, producing or acquiring appropriate teaching and learning materials.

C. Sustainability Issues

• Methods of improving the cooperation between the three MoE departments; PrEd, SpEd, TTC.
• Ways to encourage GOs, NGOs and DPOs to work together capitalising on their different and often complimentary strengths and creating mechanisms and opportunities for this exchange to take place.
• Ways to speed up the 'ownership's' IE amongst teachers.
• Relationship to broader school improvement movements, effective schools etc.
• Methods to evaluate IE programmes, involvement of children with disabilities.

Bibliographies : Save the Children (UK) : Towards Inclusion: SCF UK's Experience in Integrated Education - Contents

17/10/1997