This document discusses barriers to inclusive education. It identifies several types of barriers: [1] attitudinal barriers, which involve negative attitudes towards disability; [2] systemic barriers, such as overcrowded classrooms, lack of trained teachers, and insufficient funding, which are created by deficiencies within the education system; [3] structural barriers related to inadequate school infrastructure and facilities that are not accessible to students with disabilities. The document also notes barriers such as inappropriate curricula, untrained teachers, inadequate funding, poor organization of the education system, and policies that can hinder inclusive education. Overcoming these obstacles requires understanding the issues and working to eliminate factors that prevent true inclusion.

1. By
Farhana Khatoon
M.Ed Second Year
2020-2022

2. What is inclusive education?
 Inclusive education is educating all students in age-appropriate general education classes in their neighborhood schools,
with high-quality instruction, interventions, and supports to succeed in the core curriculum.
 Inclusive schools have a collaborative and respectful school culture where students with disabilities are presumed to be
competent, develop positive social relationships with peers, and are fully participating school community members.
 When schools move toward changing their culture and instructional practices to fully include every student in their
community, collaborative teaming of professionals leads to improved instructional practice.
 With increased collaboration, overlapping, and sharing of roles and responsibilities replacing role isolation, change is
essential.
 As such, inclusion is a change process rather than an event.
 The process involves fundamental changes in the work-lives of teachers, with a significant impact on their identity.
Both principals and teachers will be challenged to monitor student progress and teacher satisfaction as they continue
to make adjustments as necessary.

3. WHAT IS BARRIER?
 A barrier to learning is anything that stands in the way of a child being able to
learn effectively.
 A learner may experience one or more barriers to learning throughout his or
her education.
 A child with a disability will experience that disability as an intrinsic barrier
to learning and will require varying levels of support to accommodate their
disability in order to reach their full academic potential.
 Barriers to learning are not limited to intrinsic barriers. They can also be
societal/environmental barriers. For example extreme poverty, abuse or
neglect will all act as barriers to a child’s learning.

4. CAUSES FOR BARRIERS
 Diversity of learners: Children differ with regards to their home, ability, motivation, personal
characteristics which become a obstacle to success in academics, attitude, interest and commitment.
 Teacher’s ability: Identifying a child with different need is a skill that a teacher has to be equipped
but specific training is not given. Hence teachers find it difficult and implementation is not
achieved.
 Infrastructure: The space and arrangement of classroom is essential factors to help inclusive
education. Location from noise, rooms with proper ventilation, space inside and outside of the
classroom.
 Availability of resource : The teacher is not equipped with the skill of making use of the variety of
learning materials. Teachers find it difficult to tackle the diverse learning need in the classroom
without proper materials.
 Evaluation system : Our evaluation system is so rigid and sometimes the child is not assessed
correctly. It is important to evaluate the learner keeping in mind his/her abilities and difficulties.

8. 1. ATTITUDINAL BARRIERS

9. 2. SYSTEMIC BARRIERS
Systemic barriers to learning are barriers created by the education system itself. Most
often children with disabilities bear the most severe consequences of an inadequate,
under resourced education system. Some of these Systemic barriers which impact on
education of children with disabilities include:
 Overcrowding in classrooms
 Inappropriate language of learning and teaching
 Long waiting lists at special schools
 Insufficient training of educators to manage diversity in their classrooms
 Lack of funds for assistive devices
 Lack of teaching assistants
 Long delays in assessment of learners

10. 2. SYSTEMIC BARRIERS
No incentive in the form of weighting or increased subsidy for
mainstream schools or ECD Centres who include children with
disabilities.
 Inadequate facilities for children with disabilities in schools ie
physical access for children in wheelchairs, teaching material in
braille, etc.
 For Deaf children the barrier is access to a natural language.
Educators of Deaf children need to be fluent Sign Language.
They should also be able to study as a learning area.

11. 3. STRUCTURAL BARRIERS
 These barriers relate to elements such as the design of a building’s stairs or doorways, the layout of rooms, or the
width of halls and sidewalks.
 Sidewalks and doorways that is too narrow for a wheelchair, scooter, or walker.
 Desks that is too high for a person who is using a wheelchair, or other mobility device.
 Poor lighting that makes it difficult to see for a person with low vision or a person who lip-reads.
 Doorknobs that is difficult to grasp for a person with arthritis.
 The lack of wheelchair ramps in school building
 Lift facility, washrooms design for disabled, public transportation accessible for disabled etc needs to be address.
 The different room such as library, laboratory, toilet, and canteen may not be easily accessible. The door staircase,
passageways are not developed/ build for the requirement for children with disability.
 As an educator, you may not have the ability to make adjustments to the physical environment of your classroom.

12. 4. INAPPROPRIATE CURRICULUM

13. 5. UNTRAINED TEACHERS

14. 6. INADEQUATE FUNDING

15. 7. POOR ORGANIZATION OF THE
EDUCATION SYSTEM

16. 7. POLICIES AS BARRIERS

17. These obstacles in inclusive education consist of a short list of
factors that can affect students with disabilities in a general education
classroom. Only a profound understanding of these factors and relevant
issues that hinder inclusion, and the elimination of them will make true
inclusion a reality for all children to learn together.

18. Thank You!