Moving Towards Disability Inclusion

LUSAKA - Zambia has a robust vocational skills training system, with more than 300 institutions. However, persons with disabilities are largely excluded from training on an equal basis with other students. When training for them is provided, it is often in segregated classes and below the level offered in general TVET centres.

Negative attitudes and public perceptions about persons with disabilities, combined with physical barriers and a lack of adapted curricula and training materials, present obstacles to the access of people with disabilities to training opportunities available to the general population.

According to the Government of Zambia’s Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Authority (TEVETA), some 33,600 students attend vocational training. However, no up-to-date information is available on vocational education and training of students with disabilities.

Today, Zambia is moving away from the system of separate special schools to a more inclusive approach of mainstream education and vocational training services. The change has been stimulated by the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) and the enactment of the Disability Act, 2012 which states that the education system at all levels must offer equal opportunities to all and be free from discrimination.

Rights and Opportunities

International labour standards such as the ILO Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (Disabled Persons) Convention, 1983 (No. 159) and ILO Discrimination (Employment and Occupation Convention, 1958 (No. 111), both ratified by Zambia, in addition to national policies and initiatives, are also key in ensuring that persons with disabilities enjoy the same rights as others.

Inclusive vocational training involves addressing and responding to the diverse learning and cultural needs of learners and removing barriers to education through accommodation and provision of appropriate structures and curriculum that is relevant and enables the learner to achieve maximum benefit from attendance at school.

Since 2012, the ILO’s project Promoting rights and opportunities for people with disabilities in employment through legislation (PROPEL) has been collaborating with the Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training and Early Education (MESVTEE) to provide improved access to mainstream skills development programmes to young men and women with disabilities.

Five institutions are participating under a pilot inclusive vocational training initiative: four mainstream colleges including Mansa Trades Training Institute Kaoma Trades Training Institute, Lusaka Technical and Business College, Luanshya Technical and Business College, and National Vocational Rehabilitation Centre, which previously catered only to students with disabilities.

In the nearly three years since the pilot programme began, the number of students with disabilities enrolled in the four mainstream colleges has increased slowly and has improved further in 2015 due to increased marketing and community outreach. The ILO-Irish Aid initiative is in line with Zambia’s national TEVET policy on increasing access to skills training to reflect labour market demand.