Two days ago, the Kano team visited the Gobirawa Project primary school special needs section. We entered classes 4 and 5 which are in one classroom, separated by a gap.
We plan to come up with a conventional strategy for teaching Deaf children, so we went to the above school to have a session with the pupils. The session aimed to observe and identify the different learning needs of the pupils, which we would use to establish the right method by which a teacher should approach them.
Thanks to the session, we learned that most pupils in classes 4 and 5 have a learning disability – dyslexia. The children could not differentiate between capital and small letters. Some of them confuse b with d, n and u, n and h, and vice versa. Some of them can not finger-spell their names. Some just don't know anything. Yet these are children of classes 4 and 5! What have they been learning in the previous classes, please?
This is not just because there is no single employed teacher in the whole special needs section of Gobirawa Project Primary School; even in the Special Education schools that have teachers, the case is the same. Please go and see it for yourself. Due to the disarrangement of those schools, the difference is narrow.
No special education school in Kano has conventional teaching methods for Deaf children. They are special education schools but they barely utilize special educational approaches in their structures. They work just anyhow. Most of those deaf students in senior secondary can not list the eight parts of speech. Are the teachers even aware of this not talk of being concerned?
Children like these in the video shouldn't be in primary 5. But please visit Special Education schools like Kuka Bulukiya and see kids like them in JSS, and the teachers think there's nothing wrong there.
We urge the Kano State Ministry Of Education to urgently send teachers to Gobirawa Primary School's special needs section.
Abba Kabir Yusuf
Musa Abdullahi Sufi
Aliyu Dahiru Aliyu
Jaafar Jaafar
Fix Deaf Education Kano
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Improving Deaf Education in Kano state.
Leaving Deaf pupils under the care of hearing teachers is a big mistake.
Go and verify.
25/04/2024
People wonder why many deaf children and youths go to school yet, behave otherwise.
This is the Gobirawa Project Primary School located at Kurna Asabe. It is a regular school with a special needs section that has about 95 deaf children from primary one to six. The special needs section of the school which was given only two classrooms despite several vacant classrooms inside the school, has continued to face neglect from the school authority since the death of the only deaf teacher Mal. Bashir Iliyasu who died in 2020.
Before 2020, the section had about three deaf and two hearing teachers and the section was in good hands. However, in 2021, all five teachers were taken away and the section was left with no one to manage. Up till now, the special needs section of Gobirawa Project primary school has no single teacher despite continuous enrollment.
The hearing section of the school has several teachers and the hearing pupils are well-handled. Why not the special needs section? Are the deaf kids not meant to be educated too? Only two deaf ladies go to the school voluntarily to take care of the poor pupils and the school authority does not even consider giving them a token. Some days, the kids are left alone with no one to handle them.
The deaf pupils come to the school daily only to play and sit in class with no one to handle them. They were given sign language books each and expected to study by themselves. Yet, every year, the school gives the kids primary school certificates and sends them to JSS when the kids can not even spell A to Z correctly. This is how several Special Education schools in Kano graduate half-baked deaf pupils and students and send them forward.
Whether this is deliberate or not, this is a serious act of negligence against those poor deaf pupils that should be looked into. You can not admit kids into your school and leave them unattended simply because they are deaf.
Please look at the faces of these poor kids. These kids have futures and potential like other kids. But they can not realize their potential when there are no competent teachers to teach, train, guide, and support them. We call on the Kano State Ministry of Education to look into this as soon as possible. Deaf kids at Gobirawa Project primary school need immediate intervention.
Note: This is just one out of the several neglected special education schools in Kano.
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Kurna Asabe
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