The Ghana Education Service (GES) with support from the World Bank and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has launched a training manual for teachers to enable them teach students with disabilities and special needs.

This forms part of the Service’s inclusive education agenda to integrate special students together with other students in regular schools to ensure holistic education and development of all children.

Dr Kwabena Bempah Tandoh, Deputy Director-General of the GES in charge of Quality and Access, at the launch, said the manual would help teachers, especially those in regular schools, to be trained in how to teach children with special needs and disabilities.

“The training manual has explored philosophies and best practices around the world on inclusive education and how teachers can be trained,” he said

Dr Tandoh said the Service was also advocating for universal design approaches to be adopted in educational facilities and training for the disabled and special students to be integrated into mainstream regular education.

He indicated that the government through its inclusive education agenda planned to meet the Sustainable Development Goal Four target, where all children were able to be educated without barriers.

Dr Tandoh said they had begun screening students in schools to know their “special” needs for stakeholders to factor in their trainings.

Professor Emmanuel Kofi Gyimah, Lead Consultant for the development of the training manual, said the manual was in two parts, a theory and a practical training part.

He said the theory part was on definitions and explanations of inclusive education concepts, whereas the practical aspect focused on how teachers could teach and make the classroom inclusive.

He explained that inclusive education involved the “mixing” of special students and others together in a learning environment.

Professor Gyimah said it took them two years to develop the manual, saying, it comprised situational analysis and surveys from stakeholders, including parents, children and teachers.

The Government of Ghana in 2015 launched the Inclusive Education Policy, which defined the strategic path of the Government for the education of all children with special educational needs.