Supporting deaf learners in Nepal via Sustainable Development Goal 4: Inclusive and equitable quality education in sign languages

Abstract

Purpose

To highlight the World Federation of the Deaf’s (WFD) development of inclusive education policies for deaf learners as part of the community of people with communication disability. These policies were developed alongside and included baseline data collection regarding deaf education in Nepal.

Result

The commentary will report on sustainable partnership practices, the development of governmental accountability measurements, and data gathered during fieldwork in Nepal to provide evidence regarding deaf people’s access to inclusive and equitable quality education in sign language.

Conclusion

The recommendations from this project focus on enhanced access, policy, and training to ensure a free education in sign language for all deaf learners and their families in low-income countries using Nepal as a model. Existing bilingual settings in sign languages should be considered as part of a national inclusive education system, and this is in keeping with the views of deaf organisations in Nepal. Free education in sign language for all deaf learners and their families is an integral and wholly attainable part of inclusive education systems. This commentary focuses on good health and well-being (SDG 3), quality education (SDG 4), peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16) and partnerships for the goals (SDG 17).

Keywords:

• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• good health and well-being (SDG 3)
• quality education (SDG 4)
• peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16)
• partnerships for the goals (SDG 17)
• communication disability
• deaf learners
• sign languages
• inclusive education
• Nepal

Introduction

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a global framework for achieving peace and prosperity for all countries (United Nations, 2015). In addition to improving education, health, and environmental measures, the SDGs are linked to low-income countries, such as Nepal, becoming middle-income countries by the year 2030 (Cosic et al., 2017). This commentary highlights the World Federation of the Deaf’s (WFD) development of inclusive education policies for deaf learners in a process aligned with peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16), and partnerships for the goals (SDG 17), with coalition building across broad geographical areas, including cross-disability organisations and government accountability indicators. These policies were developed alongside and include baseline data collection regarding deaf education in Nepal (Snoddon, 2019).

Funded by the International Disability Alliance (IDA), the objective of the data collection project was to orient the implementation of quality education (SDG 4) in compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, United Nations, 2006), to ensure inclusive and equitable education in sign language for deaf learners. The report was intended to be used as a model on data collection on education through the medium of sign language and become an advocacy tool for national associations of the deaf in low-income countries using Nepal as a model. The project also sought to orient the implementation of good health and well-being (SDG 3) to support deaf people as part of the community of people with communication disability. Sign languages play a critical role in deaf people’s health and well-being (Kushalnagar et al., 2020; Murray et al., 2020). In this paper, “deaf” refers to all deaf persons (see Kusters et al., 2017).

From the perspective of the WFD, the implementation of quality education (SDG 4) to provide education through the medium of sign language has not been sufficiently understood or documented. The commentary will report on sustainable partnerships for the goals (SDG 17), the development of governmental accountability measurements as part of peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16), and data gathered during fieldwork in Nepal in March and April 2019 (Snoddon, 2019) to provide evidence regarding deaf people’s access to inclusive and equitable quality education in sign language. The recommendations generated from this project focus on enhanced access, policy, and training to ensure a free education in sign language for all deaf learners and their families in low-income countries.

Inclusive education and deaf learners

With regard to inclusive quality education (SDG 4), there is a history of misaligned goals between deaf communities and disability communities, and misunderstandings among policy makers. This is due in part to a lack of clarity surrounding the interpretation of inclusive education. A definition for inclusive education is not provided in the CRPD (United Nations, 2006), and inclusion theorists and organisations of persons with disabilities have sometimes differed from deaf advocacy organisations in terms of defining inclusion. Policy-makers’ interpretations of inclusive education as children with disabilities’ placement in a regular school have resulted in fewer deaf children acquiring a national sign language (see Goico, 2019; Snoddon, 2020), which means one or more of the sign languages used by deaf communities that are part of the linguistic ecology of a country. Lack of access to sign language hinders children’s access to the school curriculum and hence their educational achievement (National Deaf Children’s Society, 2021). In addition, deaf children in mainstream settings are frequently isolated from deaf peers and adults (Kermit, 2019).

Tensions between differing views of inclusion were reflected in the drafting of the 1994 Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education and the CRPD negotiation process (Snoddon & Murray, 2019; Murray et al., 2020). The Salamanca Statement proposed a policy shift from special education to inclusive education models. In section 21, the Statement calls on educational policies to take full account of individual differences and situations and for provisions to be made for all deaf persons to have access to education in their national sign language. The Salamanca Statement also declares in the same section that education for deaf and deafblind learners may be more suitably provided in deaf schools or congregated programs. Section 21 was added to the Salamanca Statement after lobbying by the WFD in cooperation with Swedish and Danish government and deaf advocacy organisations (Snoddon & Murray, 2019). Like the CRPD, the Salamanca Statement directly addresses the special circumstances of deaf learners who benefit from bilingual education where a national sign language is a language of instruction and study.

However, unlike the Salamanca Statement, the CRPD avoids making direct reference to issues regarding school placement. Instead, the CRPD emphasises inclusion principles and includes a sensory exception to the principle of so-called full inclusion in regular schools (Arnardóttir, 2011; Murray et al., 2018). Article 24(3) grants special status to deaf, deafblind, and blind children; this is a result of an alliance during the CRPD negotiation process between the WFD, World Blind Union, and the World Federation of the Deaf Blind (Murray et al., 2020). Article 24(3)(b) calls on governments to facilitate “the learning of sign languages and the promotion of the linguistic identity of the deaf community.” In addition, Article 24(3)(c) states that governments are to ensure that education for children with sensory disabilities “is delivered in the most appropriate languages and modes and means of communication … and in environments that maximize academic and social development.” Article 24(4) further states that governments “shall take appropriate measures to employ with teachers … qualified in sign language and/or Braille.” The fact that such an alliance was needed highlights the dominance of normative and assimilationist concepts of inclusion as placement instead of as full and equal participation in education and communities. The provisions of the CRPD and of “quality education” (SDG 4) are affirmed and further explicated by the WFD’s Position Paper on the Language Rights of Deaf Children and Position Paper on Inclusive Education (World Federation of the Deaf, 2016, 2018).

Building a cross-disability consensus on SDG 4

The WFD is a founding member of the IDA, a coalition of global and regional organisations of peoples with disabilities. In 2018, the IDA undertook an Education Flagship Initiative with the aim of ensuring SDG implementation among different stakeholders from a CRPD perspective, with the goal of bringing the views of organisations of persons with disabilities to the forefront (International Disability Alliance, 2020). The second author participated in this Flagship as WFD President. The WFD saw this as a space in which the WFD could come to a common understanding of inclusive education alongside other organisations of peoples with disabilities.

Many of the same issues that arose in the Salamanca Statement and CRPD negotiation processes emerged during the Flagship. The discussion among the Flagship Task Team member organisations was understandably difficult, since it involved fundamental principles for several organisations (International Disability Alliance, 2020, p. 10). As a means of working through different perspectives, the Task Team agreed on a key principle: the advocacy of any one organisation or disability constituency should not impact the work of any other constituency. Following this principle, each organisation had to look at its core principles on inclusive education for their constituency, and how these overlapped, if at all, with others.

This core principles helped highlight the main areas of concern between different organisations. Research has validated deaf advocacy organisations’ longstanding position that deaf learners learn best in their national sign languages and with each other (Kushalnagar et al., 2020; Murray et al., 2020). If organisations of people with disabilities and their families advocate for policies in which inclusive education is defined as placing the learner with disabilities in regular classrooms, can this negatively impact deaf learners? Can the need for congregated settings in national sign languages for deaf learners have a negative policy impact on other learners with disabilities who want inclusion in regular classrooms? These were key questions to be addressed before the Task Team could move forward.

The Task Team agreed that “[i]nclusion is not a placement, but rather an experience” (International Disability Alliance, 2020, p. 35). The IDA member organisations represented on the Task Team (the WFD, the World Blind Union, Inclusion International, and the International Federation of the Hard of Hearing) agreed existing special education provisions and settings do not offer a holistic learning experience for any learner with a disability. The WFD has long held that deaf schools should not be classified as special education settings (Kauppinen & Jokinen, 2014). Deaf learners do not need special education, but they do need educational settings where their national sign languages are used throughout, from teaching to informal interactions with other students and adults as part of the national educational system (World Federation of the Deaf, 2016, 2018).

Following this, the second key point of consensus emerged that special education settings should be phased out. Importantly, from the WFD’s perspective, this did not include congregated educational settings for deaf learners. Existing bilingual settings in sign languages should be considered as part of a national inclusive education system. The IDA’s report further notes that other congregated settings for deaf learners “that currently do not use sign language-based education and/or do not follow the government curriculum are supported to become inclusive bilingual sign language schools” (International Disability Alliance, 2020, p. 12). This is an important reinforcement of the “standstill principle” which states that governments should not dismantle existing institutions and structures in place but should rather build from them towards CRPD compliance (Murray et al., 2018; Murray et al., 2020).

In 2020, the IDA Flagship’s consensus position on inclusive education was affirmed by the IDA Board as a whole (International Disability Alliance, 2020, p. 11). This marks an important milestone in the inclusive education debate, with major stakeholder organisations of peoples with disabilities and their families coming together in a clear consensus on what is necessary to achieve inclusive education under SDG 4.

Lessons from Nepal

The WFD’s work on the Flagship, and the resulting IDA Global Report, offers a consensus position on quality education (SDG 4) for learners with disabilities. The WFD’s review of SDG implementation in Nepal further illustrates the key roles of partnerships for the goals (SDG 17) in the attainment of SDG 4. The WFD’s project collected baseline data from several districts in spring 2019 (with support from the National Federation of the Deaf Nepal, or NDFN). Based on these data and international policy and practices, several recommendations were made to orient the implementation of SDG 4 (Snoddon, 2019). In Nepal, many deaf children attend self-contained resource classes in mainstream schools where they are taught by a single hearing teacher who may not be proficient in Nepali Sign Language (NSL). However, there is a network of deaf schools across Nepal where NSL is the language of instruction and deaf teachers are employed. Snoddon (2019) reported that while many deaf children in Nepal, especially in rural areas, do not attend school, there are approximately 21 deaf schools and 174 resource classes in Nepal. The network of village and district deaf associations that is joined together by the NDFN as an umbrella organisation also provides NSL classes and other support to deaf individuals across the lifespan. Thus, as the project recommendations indicate, there is an existing ecology of deaf schools, deaf teachers, and deaf associations that should be supported and utilised in the effort to achieve SDG 4. This support should come in the form of a clear policy regarding inclusive education for deaf learners through the medium of sign language and in an alternate model of training and licensure for teachers of NSL-medium education for deaf children.

The IDA Flagship report’s conclusion that sign language-medium education is part of inclusive education is in concordance with the views of deaf associations in Nepal (Snoddon, 2019). Deaf learners’ right to inclusive and equitable quality education also necessitates the provision of NSL-medium early childhood development programs, NSL classes and services for parents, and adult literacy classes for deaf learners. Deaf learners also need access to university studies, including provision of qualified NSL interpreters, and this will in turn enhance provision of teacher training and research in NSL-medium education. Greater support for deaf teachers will aid in the provision of NSL-medium education and classes across Nepal and ensure the implementation of SDG 4.

Summary and conclusion

This paper has outlined key debates around inclusive education for deaf learners over a period of several decades and stressed the continuing problem of resolving the issue of educational settings for learners with disabilities contra deaf learners. The IDA Flagship’s recommendation to governments on inclusive bilingual sign language schools forms an important component of peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16), pushing governments towards sustainable and inclusive institutions with respect to education for all. Existing educational and deaf community networks in Nepal illustrate partnerships for the goals (SDG 17) in showing how quality education (SDG 4) can be implemented in a developing country through scaling up existing deaf community resources in collaboration with other stakeholders. Through its coalition work with the IDA, the WFD was able to translate deaf community knowledge and lived experience into an international consensus among organisations of peoples with disabilities. The IDA Flagship Report, existing WFD policies, and the case of Nepal show free education in national sign languages for all deaf learners and their families is an integral and wholly attainable part of SDG 4 implementation for all countries.

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).