Teachers’ attitude towards inclusion of children with learning difficulties in public primary schools in Gatundu North district Kiambu county.

Abstract

Education has been considered to be a human right as stipulated in Article 26 of Universal declaration of Human Rights. The Government of Kenya has made primary education free to all children regardless of one’s Special Needs. There is a wide gap between specialized training programmes and the number of children who require such programmes. In addition, segregating learners with learning difficulties has since 1960 lost its popularity and inclusion has since then been slowly accepted as a mode of helping children with learning difficulties to exploit their potential. The statement of the problem was that out of the total population of 750,000 children with special needs who had reached school going age, only 25,885 were enrolled in education programmes, this indicate that special education has not been mainstreamed in all education sub sectors and programmes. Financing of education is a major challenge because the government spends 0.2% of the total education budget on special education which is inadequate. This affect the quality of education offered to children with learning needs who require more personalized attention and in general affect the success of inclusion programmes. The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ attitude towards inclusion of children with learning difficulties in Gatundu North District in Kiambu County . The study’s objectives were to ; Determine the prevalence of learning difficulties in Children in public Primary schools in Gatundu North District; Find out the levels of success of inclusion in public Primary Schools in Gatundu North District and to establish teachers attitude towards inclusion of Children with learning difficulties in Public Primary Schools. The study will be of significant to Curriculum developers for Curriculum development of an inclusive syllabus. The study employed motivational hygiene theory by Herzerberg. The study used survey as the research design. The target population was 55 public primary schools and a total of 531 teachers. A sample of 54 teachers was randomly selected and was given questionnaires to fill and 10 principals were interviewed. A total sample size of 64 respondents was involved in the study. Research instruments were administered to the representative sample drawn. The instruments were presented to a team of experts in the area of Education Planning, Management and Administration from the School of Education of Mount Kenya University for face and content validation. A correlation coefficient of about 0.7 was considered high enough to judge reliability of the instrument. Piloting of the instruments was done in one public school two weeks before the main study. Data collection was done after permission was sought from the Ministry of Education, The District Education Officer was informed and consultation was done on a convenient time for principals and teachers. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics which entailed use of mean, frequency distribution and total percentage tabulation; Graphs and charts were used to enhance presentation of results. Out of the respondents 94.4 percent understood the meaning of learning difficulties. Among the respondents, 92.6 percent favoured special need education among teachers. To establish teachers’ attitude towards inclusion of children with learning difficulties 51.4 percent of the respondents gave remedial work while 14.8 percent never gave remedial work. Out of the respondents 87 percent improvised teaching and learning resources. The analysis showed that children with learning difficulties were present in most public institutions. Teachers’ attitude towards inclusion was found to be positive. The study recommended that teachers be given more training to be able to handle children with learning difficulties. More teachers should be recruited to enable them give learners with learning difficulties more attention. More funds should also be given to schools to enable them buy teaching resources necessary to make inclusive education more successfu