Disabled people’s inclusion in education: a global perspective

Abstract

This article describes my embodied experience as a disabled academic on a recent academic visit to Armenia. I was led to reflect on interesting contrasts and parallels between the Armenian and British systems, in relation to disabled staff, students and the inclusion of children in the education system. This article begins by contextualising the reasons for and nature of my visit to Yerevan, Armenia. The article then draws on differences and similarities I observed and experienced in such areas as physical access, attitudes, participation in education and the opportunities for disabled students and staff to contribute to academic activities. The article concludes by highlighting some valuable lessons learned from this insightful trip.

Keywords:

• Access
• education
• barriers
• Armenia
• parents

Introduction

Originally from Iran with an Armenian background, I have been living in the United Kingdom for over 20 years. During my postgraduate research years, I became interested in the ‘Armenian Association for the Disabled’ – Pyunic – and made contacts with the organisation. Founded after the disastrous earthquake in Armenia in 1988, the mission of this non-governmental charitable organisation is the integration of disabled people into society through physical, social and psychological rehabilitation as well as the creation of income-generating business, assistance with disabled people’s health and educational issues, protection of their rights and development of national disability sports.

In September 2016, on a family holiday in Yerevan, I visited Pyunic and talked to the programme manager Ruzanna Sargsyan and one of her colleagues. They were both very welcoming and encouraged me to return to Yerevan the following year to share with the organisation, in the form of workshops, my experiences of studying in Britain and the findings of my PhD research on inclusive education.

On my return, for funding the next trip, I contacted the British Council (BC) Armenia with whom I had made contacts in my previous visits. I presented the breakdown of the proposed budget. They agreed to pay for the flight tickets; however, they could not contribute towards the accommodation cost. Although I was pleased that the BC promised to partially fund my trip considering their own financial limitations, not having funds to cover my accommodation cost and also full personal assistant support worried me. With so few hours of personal assistant support in a new physical environment, just like when I moved to Leeds in the United Kingdom, I did not feel confident living independently let alone travelling around the city and working. I contemplated taking with me one of my personal assistants, who are funded through the English social care direct payment scheme. I soon decided against this because I was not able to cover their travel and accommodation expenses. This is regularly the case in the United Kingdom when any disabled academic chooses to travel to a conference, as often the costs are doubled or even trebled.

The only solution left was to ask my parents if they would be willing to rearrange their annual trip to Yerevan to coincide with my stay. As I hoped, they were more than happy to do so. My parents also offered to support me in my daily living. Although on the surface this arrangement was ideal, the decision brought on some deep-rooted tensions for me. While I was delighted to have the opportunity to see my parents and was most grateful to them for rearranging their plans, the memories of my independence being eroded during my previous visits came flooding back. Every time when visiting my parents in Iran, they become my main ‘carers’ by default, a situation which I have come to accept with all its emotional entanglements. I am not alone in this, and it is a situation that affects most families with disabled members across the world. However, I felt this time the situation was very different. Surely as an independent academic, I needed to receive the appropriate support to exercise my full independence and present myself and my workshops with confidence and clarity; would having my parents as my ‘carers’ defeat this objective?

I was also feeling uncomfortable with taking over my parents’ annual holiday, when I felt they needed to relax and spend time with their friends. To exacerbate all this, by the time the BC booked my flight tickets, there was very little reasonably priced accessible rented accommodation left in Yerevan, since September is a popular month for tourists, with Armenian Independence Day and the annual jazz festival. Similar to the United Kingdom, in Armenia most residential accommodations lack accessibility features and my parents had no choice but to rent a relatively expensive apartment in central Yerevan at their own expense.

Access and inclusion

The seminar series started with a lecture in the State Pedagogic University, Yerevan, for about 75 students and staff. I was confronted with the first access barrier when entering the university building – there were six steps and no ramps. Furthermore, to access the lecture hall we had to climb up four flights of steps, and then take a lift down to two more flights of steps. All of the steps and flooring had a shiny and slippery surface, which was a risk hazard even for a non-disabled person. The lecture hall had a very narrow aisle and it was impossible for my father to guide me walking by my side. These structural barriers clearly made the university building inaccessible, and thus I was not surprised when I was told that apart from only a few students with sensory impairments over the years, historically the State Pedagogic University has not been in a position to accommodate disabled students with other impairments. This is a situation not too dissimilar to some older British university buildings, especially ‘listed’ ones where the buildings are considered to be of heritage value, with inaccessible rooms (Newman and Conway 2017).

The lecture covered two western models of disability, approaches to disabled children/students’ education in the United Kingdom, British disability legislation concerned with education and how, despite rhetoric, achieving full inclusion in the higher education sector remains an unattainable dream for most disabled students. I then opened the discussion on the topic of inclusive solutions to aid inclusion in universities. This stimulated some fascinating discussions, especially in relation to the models of disability and how disabled people were perceived during the Soviet Union control of Armenia, in contrast with their somewhat improved social status since Armenia gained independence in 1991. Students also talked about the disablism that their disabled friends had encountered in the Armenian education system. By the same token, they were shocked by information from the results of the Trailblazers Higher Education Report (2013), which reported that out of 100 British universities, 90% said their university had to make adjustments to improve access to lectures. The students were surprised, considering the United Kingdom is perceived as a developed and technologically advanced country.

Next, 30 interested teachers from the inclusive teams within different schools in Yerevan attended my workshop. Their experiences varied across the board but they were all critical of the ways some disabled children were excluded from the school environment and their friends. Although some teachers felt that schools should accommodate all children regardless of their impairments, others were wary and argued that children with severe learning difficulties should be placed in separate classrooms within the same schools as their friends. When I pointed to the general principles of inclusive education, almost all of the teachers were confident that the principles were being practised in their schools. Nevertheless, they could not unanimously agree to the practice of relocation of the skills, care and expertise to the mainstream, and a commitment to redeploy existing resources, or obtaining additional facilities. Sadly, despite the views of the teachers, segregated schools still exist throughout Armenia, similar to the United Kingdom. On this account, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2017 was concerned at the increased number of disabled children being sent to separate ‘special’ schools, and the United Kingdom’s reluctance to develop more inclusive education for disabled children (Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education 2017).

Parents’ positions and emotions

I also delivered a workshop for a group of 30 mothers. They shared with me the schooling experiences of their disabled children. While their stories had turned most of them into feisty parents, ready to fight for their children’s equal rights to education, for two mothers this had the reverse effect. One of them broke down in tears when talking about the discriminatory attitude of the teachers towards her child, and expressed her frustration and sadness with the approach the school had taken towards her son in excluding him from his classmates. Likewise in the United Kingdom, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (2011) inquiry received evidence from a number of parents, who felt that their disabled children had been excluded from school, were left feeling marginalised and unsupported, and were often subjected to bullying. My mother was present in this workshop and at this point she offered to share her own challenges and experiences of my schooling in Iran with the hope of giving encouragement and motivation to the group. Once the mothers bonded over their stories, I felt it was necessary to talk about some of the inclusive education principles, including peer support, consultation with families, inclusive learning and teaching, and supporting teaching staff. I thought that they as parents could pressure the schools to adopt these principles. I felt this workshop ended with a renewed feeling of hope.

My position as an independent academic

My 10-day academic visit to Yerevan was a successful and fulfilling trip. The love and commitment to inclusion I witnessed from parents, disabled activists, disability organisations, academics and the general members of public was heart-warming and refreshing. I feel that I took away and learned so much more than I could have ever given. That said, the trip was not without problems. In the end I remained financially dependent on my parents during my stay, since the BC only paid for my flight tickets. Outside the workshops, my parents were my sole source of support, a situation which I was trying to avoid. I did not wish to trouble my ageing parents with my daily living needs to the extent that I did. Having lived away for over two decades, my parents are often unsure of my abilities to live independently and at times it was awkward to assert this while in a professional environment.

As an independent researcher, I believe these challenges may have been overcome or at least reduced if I was supported by an academic institution or if I was in receipt of ‘Access to Work’, and not forced to fight for all the reasonable adjustments and support on my own, using private funds for expenses that most academics may take for granted. Presenting the work in an academic language in Armenian was problematic for me and English was not necessarily accessible to the participants. Pyunic representatives, who were present at all the events, kindly supported me with translating technical phrases and academic concepts. Therefore, I encountered language barriers, cultural differences in understanding and responding to disability, in addition to some physical barriers.

I have learned some valuable lessons for repeating this experience and, to my delight, I have been invited back next year to deliver a new set of workshops and collaborate on a new project with Pyunic. I am very much looking forward to this exciting opportunity, and have started making preparations for the trip, including receiving Armenian language tuition! As ever, funding will be an issue but I will do my best.