A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF HEAD TEACHER’S ROLE FOR INCLUSION OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEED IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS OF BANGLADESH

Special Education

The Government of Bangladesh is placing great emphasis on ensuring an education to all marginalized including the children with special needs by initiating a range of policies and strategies. The Head Teachers as the critical player in implementing Government policies at school level are generally not fulfilling their expected role. It is intended to explore how the role of Head Teachers regarding the inclusion of special needs children is currently perceived and how it can be further developed. It is significant to know how and why the role of Head Teachers is undermined and ineffective for the successful inclusion of children with special needs. The study is a small-scale qualitative research project. Data was collected through interviews, FGD and documents review. Three key questions guided the whole study. Participants included six Head Teachers, three Assistant Teachers and three local education officials working in a district were interviewed. Additionally, along with some important relevant documents were reviewed. An FGD with the parents of special needs children was also conducted. It was found that despite various challenges most of the Head Teachers have positive attitudes towards the special needs children but unsure how to deal with the challenges effectively. Generally, inclusion of special needs children is being perceived as being one of physical access of physically disabled children to school. Limited understanding of the inclusion and special needs issues along with limited resources and their underdeveloped leadership role are the major hurdles that need to be addressed. More focused specialised training, enhanced funding from the Government and most importantly employing a distributed approach of leadership that includes and involves all stakeholders are considered by the study as being critical to moving practice forward.

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