15 Sep 2020

A special education unit at Motetshwane Primary School in Serowe has soldiered on, despite a number of challenges.

In an interview on September 14, the school head, Mr Ontiretse Kenaope, said while the school still needed more assistance, some stakeholders particularly those from the business community were always willing to lend a helping hand.

Mr Kenaope said it was the goodwill of the different sections of the community that often ensured that any gaps that remained after the district council had discharged its mandate in providing for the unit were closed.

“We have some stakeholders who are always a phone call away and are forever willing to go an extra mile to meet our needs. Some of them do not wait for us to call but at times they come to identify our needs and how they can help,” he said. 

He cited Builders’ World Serowe as one such loyal supporter of the school’ special education unit. 

He said they recently donated masks to the unit to help ensure that learners with disabilities also complied with COVID-19 protocols.

He said the store last year also sponsored a learner from the school for the Special Olympic World Games in the United Arab Emirates.

The school head also commended the Serowe District Health Management Team (DHMT) for its donation of wash basins in June, saying the fact that the basins were mounted at the special education classroom block made compliance to the protocol on hand hygiene a lot easier for learners with disabilities.

Mr Kenaope stated that while meeting needs of the school was the responsibility of the district council, it was worth noting that the local authority could not, due to competing priorities, meet every single need, hence it was important that other stakeholders came on board to help where they could.

“Our needs lie with the council but it is worth noting that since COVID-19 struck, government coffers have gone down, therefore we count on the goodwill of stakeholders to meet government half-way,” he said.

As for challenges faced by the unit, Mr Kenaope cited the shortage of classrooms, pointing out that presently the unit had only four classrooms, two of which had been taken from the mainstream school and therefore not entirely suitable for learners with disabilities.

He said the numbers of learners with disabilities had grown over the years resulting in the two classrooms fit-for-use by special education learners being constrained to accommodate them. 

The school head also decried the negative perceptions about people living with disability by some in the community.

He said it was disappointing that to date, there were still people who discriminated against those living with disability despite the ongoing calls for society to fully embrace them.

Moreover, Mr Kenaope decried the lack of interest in the children’s welfare by parents of learners at Motetshwane Primary School’s special education unit.

“We have tried to bring their parents on board but to no avail. In 2017 we formed a Parents Teachers Association (PTA) committee specific to the unit with the hope that they would take an active interest in what happens in the unit but it still did not help much,” he stated. ends