‘We need to educate the education system’

Despite the huge gap in the country’s education system to accommodate visually impaired students, Adrienne Murray excelled in her final matric exams.

Adrienne, from the Pioneer School in Worcester, which caters for children with visual impairments, achieved four distinctions. She was honoured by Premier Alan Winde this week along with other matriculants at the National Senior Certificate awards.

Adrienne was diagnosed with a medical condition, retinoblastoma, at 23 months old, which led to her losing her vision in 2017.

“I had health challenges last year, but I am glad all this has passed and I am looking forward to the future. Initially, I wanted to study veterinary studies, but I was not accepted. I guess universities are not ready for blind vets. So now I will be doing animal science,” said Adrienne.

She said although there has been improvement in terms of tolerance and education of the blind, there's a lot that needs to be improved.

“When it comes to technology for the blind, there has been some improvement. We can now use specially designed laptops to send emails, go to the internet and so on. However, my parents had to fight a lot because the school was not offering pure maths and physical science for blind students. I guess they didn’t have the capacity for that, but I was eventually allowed to do those studies,” said Adrienne.

Chief executive officer at the Cape Town Society for the Blind Judith Coetzee said there’s still a huge gap in the country’s education system to accommodate visually impaired students, especially at mainstream schools.

“In mainstream schools, I don’t think they have the capacity to accommodate kids with visual impairment. Many times these kids are overlooked because teachers don’t have a knowledge of how to teach them. We need to educate the education system,” she said.

Coetzee said the Western Cape doesn’t have enough schools that can accommodate visually impaired children as the province has only two of these, in Worcester and Athlone.

“There are some mainstream schools that accommodate them, but I don’t think there are enough schools, there’s a big gap. The government needs to engage with organisations that can help in providing this type of education. They need to start teaching the teachers, starting at ground level, and identify children with low vision so they can be provided with the assistance they need,” said Coetzee.

Western Cape Education MEC David Maynier said the province has the best offering for learners who have disabilities in South Africa.

“The Western Cape has made significant priorities over the years and we plan to allocate more resources to school when it comes to disabilities and we are proud to witness achievements despite barriers,” said Maynier.

Addressing the ceremony, Maynier said despite the challenges faced by the country over the past years such as Covid-19, the province’s pass rate increased to 81.4% while at the same time achieving a retention rate of nearly 70%, resulting in 49 102 candidates passing their matric exams.