Inclusive education : perceptions of special and regular/"normal"schools'management teams in North-West Province

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to determine the perceptions of Schools Management Teams' (SMTs) of special and regular/"normal" schools in the North-West Province. A questionnaire with four-lickert scale questions was used. Also included in the questionnaire were open-ended questions. One of such questions was a combination of time category and the respondents perception of how long it would take for inclusive education to be in full operation in South Africa. Some open-ended questions mainly consisted of listing challenges faced by principals in both special and regular/ "normal" school. The questionnaire was administered to 120 (n = 120) members of the school management teams (SMTs). Out of the total sample size, 30 (n = 30) were drawn from 10 special schools and 90 (n = 90) were drawn from 30 regular/"normal" schools. A total of 90 (75% of the total sample) usable questionnaires were returned. Respondents were asked to express their perceptions on inclusive education by strongly agreeing, agreeing, disagreeing and strongly disagreeing to various issues. Data was analysed statistically by use of SPSS-programme. Frequency distributions, percentages, means and standard deviations were computed. To determine whether perceptions of the two groups of respondents differed significantly, Chi-Square tests were computed. Cross tabulation was done to detect relationships of the two groups of respondents. The findings revealed that respondents perceived positively to a number of aspects of inclusive education. For example, they perceived that strengthening District-based support services; transforming all aspects of the education system; training SMTs and educators; including learners with mild to moderately disabled learners in mainstream classes according to the nature of disability; and strengthening special schools by turning them into resource centres as part of inclusive education planning, all these should be for the success of inclusive education. The results also showed that there were some issues in which the two groups of respondents (SMTs of special and regular/"normal" schools) differed significantly, such as: normal schools are of the opinion that learners with moderate handicaps should be included in the mainstream classes. The challenges that faced inclusive education included lack of both physical and financial resources. It was concluded that the success of inclusive education will depend on a number of factors. The most pressing one being financial assistance for further research, support services, awareness campaigns and changing infrastructure of existing buildings to fit diversity in learners. Furthermore, putting in place District-based support services to enhance the move towards inclusive education and the need for more research on perceptions of both administrators (SMTs) and educators of special and regular/"normal" schools on different variables of inclusive education are recommended.