In 2019, Kyrgyzstan ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. One of its items is equal access to education, regardless of disabilities and abilities. However, it is on paper only.
Tamara Tsoi and Nazgul Tolopbergenova raise daughters with hearing impairments. At the age of five, both had cochlear implant surgeries to have an opportunity to hear. It is quite late for such children. The age plays a very important role for cochlear implant surgery.
For example, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and many other states have a legally adopted state programme, which prescribes screening for every national of the country at birth. If it identifies a deaf child, he/she would be automatically placed under the state programme, which performs free of charge implant surgery of both ears to the child under 2.
In case of such early implantation, rehabilitation is very easy and the child can speak well by the time of enrolment in school. In most cases, such children attend regular classes and do not need any individual curriculum. In Kyrgyzstan, parents learning about hearing issues in their children have to raise big amounts, which are unaffordable to them sometimes, for surgery. It takes them several years.
According to Tamara Tsoi, psychological-medical-pedagogical (PMPK) board specialists used to tell children with hearing impairments, who had implants, that they would not be able to attend regular classes and used to refer them to special schools. Alivia was also referred to boarding school No. 21 for hearing-impaired and deafened children, although the girl can hear everything after the surgery. The reason was that she had spent her first five years of life in silence and did not have time to learn the sufficient amount of words and to speak fluently.
Aidina, daughter of Nazgul Tolopbergenova, was also referred to the special school for hearing-impaired and deafened children by the PMPK. But parents have managed to transfer her to regular school.
“We saw how she progressed. Every day Aidina learned a new word and started to speak more. It was a great achievement for us! But, unfortunately, our daughter could not make friends in the new school, and teachers failed to find a way to her. She had had a hard time and once she just refused to go to school. Now, our daughter attends special school again, where she communicates with teachers and classmates by gestures. But we don’t use gestures at home, and try to speak to her as an ordinary child,” Tolopbergenova said.
Seven years ago, mothers of girls established partents group and later public foundation “Ukkum Kelet” (“I want to hear”). Families in the foundation help each other, share information about surgeries and rehabilitation, provide psychological aid. There are about 500 hearing-impaired children in Kyrgyzstan. Their parents struggle to provide them with education in regular schools, and to become full-fledged citizens in the future, who can be of benefit to the state and provide themselves. Now it is recommended to send children with disabilities to correctional classes in regular schools. However, this option is far from perfect.
“Correctional classes, in our opinion, do not meet the inclusive education standards. Children with various impairments study in such classes altogether and there is no individual approach to them. If a child has hearing impairment, they have no additional classes with a speech therapist, no special classes,” Tamara Tsoi said.
Also, according to mothers, another significant drawback of correctional classes is that they get disbanded after grade 4. Children with special needs must improve their knowledge during four years to study in a regular class afterwards. Those who failed to do it attend special schools. Moreover, children get used to their groups, and when find themselves in a new environment, with new classmates, they have to make friends again and catch up with their peers.
Parents of children with hearing impairments have had recourse to the ministry of education and science many times. In 2022, they were offered to make a pilot project. The specialised class should have been opened on September 15 in school No. 75 in Bishkek. But all allowances for teachers were removed in autumn and they tacitly refused to work with children with disabilities.
“We have addressed the cabinet of ministers, the presidential office many times. We were supported by some deputies and Edil Baisalov issued an order that such class is necessary. Afterwards, they said that the class would be opened next year. But we were afraid of the change of chiefs in ministries and agencies and that we would have to go through all the stages once again. We have agreed to start study in any quarter just to have the inclusive class opened this academic year,” Tsoi said.
In early February 2023, due to the efforts of parents, an inclusive class was opened for five children with the cochlear implant in the regular school No. 103 of Bishkek, where they could study along with ordinary first graders. Tamara transferred her daughter from the special school to school No. 103. Children there study under the regular curriculum and have extra classes in speech and hearing development after school.
Now the foundation wants to have inclusive classes open in the south of the country. They also want to share this experience with schools in other districts of Bishkek in future.
Mothers are tutors, while ramps are in dreams
According to the ministry of labour, social welfare and migration, there are 205 thousand persons with disabilities in Kyrgyzstan, including 36 thousand children under 18.
Inclusive education is a form of education for persons with disabilities who have special conditions created for them: redeveloped classrooms, new teaching methodologies, customised curriculum, revised methods of evaluation. Inclusion must be differentiated from integration, when children with special educational needs attend regular schools and adapt to the educational system that remains unchanged. Inclusive education is flexible, it takes into account all children and adults without exception and changes according to their needs.
The validity period of the governmental decree on development of inclusive education in Kyrgyzstan for 2019-2023 expires this year. Has everything outlined in this important document been implemented? For example, according to the concept, an educational organisation must create an inclusive environment to involve every child in the educational process. So far, the inclusive class for children with the cochlear implant was opened only in one school across the country.
Local governments jointly with the public health and social protection bodies must provide aids, when necessary, to ensure quality learning – a wheelchair, audio-visual aids, organisation of comfortable physical space in class and school.
However, the basic problem of inclusive education – creation of the barrier free environment – remains unsolved. Even in the capital, not all schools are equipped with ramps or lifts, so that students in wheelchairs could get to classrooms without hindrance. Not to speak of visual information available for hearing-impaired persons or educational materials and individual programmes for various groups of disability. And mother usually acts as a tutor and accompanies the student everywhere.
First steps
Kyrgyzstan is taking steps in the field of inclusive education, and they are not very significant yet. According to the ministry of education and science, 4,085 children of school age and 2,316 children of pre-school age, who have various impairments, study in 475 educational facilities.
In 2022, 20 schools of the country introduced the position of teaching assistant and implement curriculum customised for children with special educational needs. Now, 56 schools are taking part in the pilot project.
The minimum standard of school education availability has been developed to include requirements to material and technical base and educational resources, which will allow creating optimal conditions for teaching and upbringing of children of school age with disabilities.
According to the latest data of Ministry of Education and Science, the number of children studying individually (at home) under the curriculum is 2,848 in the republic.
Besides, the country has 15 public specialised kindergartens for children with various needs. 12 in Bishkek and 3 in the regions. The total number of children studying in specialised pre-school educational facilities amount to 1,700.
2,316 pre-schoolers with various special needs attend 120 preschool educational facilities.
Two classes for autistic children were also opened in special school No. 34 of Bishkek. With the technical support of international and non-governmental organisations, 4 resource centres of inclusive education have been opened and are successfully functioning in the four regions of the country on the base of public schools of general education. 69 children with moderate and severe developmental disorders attend these centres.
According to the ministry of education and health, special programmes for different categories of children with disabilities have been developed for students with intellectual development disorders for their elementary general education based on inclusive approach.
Seinep Dyikanbaeva, programme manager and lawyer of the public association of parents of children with disabilities “ARDI”, feels sure that all well regarded inclusive projects in schools and kindergartens are functioning only due to continuing efforts of parents, who do their best to not let their kids be beyond education.
Seinep has cerebral palsy and she knows first-hand which difficulties are experienced by children with developmental needs in schools of general education. She went to school in mid-90s and always tried to study well and showed particular zeal. Back then, she knew she was studying not for herself, but that other children with special needs, who would be attending regular schools, would be evaluated based on her successes.
According to her, the main problem is in the psychological-medical-pedagogical board, which tests children with special needs and gives recommendations whether they can attend regular school or not. Moreover, the approach to all children is the same, regardless of disability forms.
“Even an adult who finds oneself in an unfamiliar environment, where he/she should take a test, and his/her future would be decided, will feel at a loss. What can we expect of children with disabilities?” Dyikanbaeva said.
According to her, PMPK is advisory in nature, but school administrations often take the board’s opinion as mandatory. When a child has an obvious disability, teachers get scared immediately. If a child has Down’s syndrome or autism, parents can hardly prove that the child is teachable. Parents either hire a tutor for school or accompany their child to classes.
Barriers since kindergarten days
Until 2021, every year 100 grant-based places at universities used to be allocated for orphans and graduates with disability categories 1 and 2. In academic year 2021-22, there were 288 grant-based places. This academic year, 88 students were enrolled to grant-based places out of persons with disabilities and orphans.
According to Seinep Dyikanbaeva, persons with disabilities find it harder to get a job and become independent because children with disabilities get excluded from the educational system from the very beginning, since kindergarten days. In Bishkek, parents can send their children to private kindergartens, but in regions, it is a serious problem as there are not enough specialised kindergartens there. Moreover, not every parent can afford to pay for private kindergartens.
“The educational system of Kyrgyzstan is generally inaccessible to persons with disabilities, beginning from preschool facilities to higher educational institutions. Persons with disabilities experience big problems and all kinds of obstacles. Say, infrastructure. They cannot use public transport to get to their place of study. One of my colleagues said once that inclusive approach is not just about modifying curricula, but it is about making study hours compatible with special needs of children,” Dyikanbaeva said.
According to her, many children with disabilities cannot attend schools because they were not taught in kindergartens. Moreover, many schools are not equipped for children with disabilities, they have no special conditions and special programmes for various categories of disability, which deprives them of the right to a good school education. It might be the reason why persons with disabilities cannot enrol in universities and there are very few persons with disabilities among students.
She also said that the educational system itself must be made inclusive so that every student and teacher matters and everything is done for their quality work and learning. According to her, good and working laws are of utmost importance for inclusive education, as well as funding and a staff of specialists. The first step is to improve and prolong the governmental order on development of inclusive education dated 2019.
According to the ministry of education and science, 200 coaches in inclusive education of children of preschool and school age and 2,315 teachers and tutors have been trained in all regions. But, according to experts, this is not enough. Seinep Dyikanbaeva believes that an entire analytical department must be assigned to deal with inclusive education issues. This is an entire significant area, which cannot be coped with by one specialist of the ministry.
“Teachers who take refresher courses on working with children with special needs could come to our centre to practise and work with our real children, or to other centres, which educate such children, and learn about difficulties and ways to solve them in practice. I wonder where they practice. Not a single teacher has visited our centre during the time of our work, although our doors are always open,” she said.