Car­ol Quash

If Shinel­ly James could have her way, there would be in­clu­sion in ed­u­ca­tion at schools in T&T—from the pre-school to sec­ondary lev­el.

James, the head of the Sixth Form de­part­ment at Bish­op Anstey Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE), un­der­stands the lev­el of com­mit­ment that true in­clu­sion re­quires, as it is part of BATCE’s pol­i­cy and prac­tice. In fact, the school was re­cent­ly fea­tured in Daniel So­bel’s book, Top 50 In­clu­sive Schools in the World.

James told WE she is will­ing to put in the work to ex­tend that op­por­tu­ni­ty to the na­tion’s oth­er stu­dents.

“To have a res­i­dent unit in each school which con­sists of more than one guid­ance coun­sel­lor—de­pend­ing on how many stu­dents are in that school—a so­cial work­er, and a psy­chol­o­gist trained to do what we call the in­di­vid­ual learn­ing plan,” she said, de­scrib­ing a frame­work she be­lieves can trans­form the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and give each child a chance for holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.

James is a mem­ber of the T&T-based Caribbean Vi­sion­ary Ed­u­ca­tors, a group formed in 2019 com­pris­ing pro­fes­sion­al ed­u­ca­tors com­mit­ted to ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment through the cre­ation, shar­ing, and dis­course of in­dige­nous Caribbean-fo­cused ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources and ser­vices to sup­port ed­u­ca­tors and learn­ers around the world.

She is al­ways look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn more about in­clu­sion in ed­u­ca­tion, and in Oc­to­ber, she at­tend­ed the World In­clu­sion Con­gress in Al­maty, Kaza­khstan. There, over 5,000 peo­ple from more than 100 coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ed in in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties that col­lec­tive­ly pro­duced an in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment called the Al­maty De­c­la­ra­tion. The con­fer­ence was or­gan­ised by the In­ter­na­tion­al Fo­rums of In­clu­sion Prac­ti­tion­ers.

“The Al­maty De­c­la­ra­tion is an im­por­tant step in pro­mot­ing in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion, en­sur­ing equal ac­cess and qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion for all, re­gard­less of dif­fer­ences,” James ex­plained.

She sees in­clu­sion in ed­u­ca­tion as an ac­tive com­mit­ment that goes be­yond school im­prove­ment plans and re­quires con­tin­u­al train­ing.

“So you have to look at train­ing your teach­ers, be­cause part of in­clu­sion is how they de­liv­er in­di­vid­ual learn­ing. How do we treat with our own per­son­al bias? Be­cause my per­son­al bias can im­pact how I look at a par­tic­u­lar stu­dent, or how I in­clude them, or how I make them feel em­pow­ered.”

But, she said, con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to avail­able re­sources, with­out which even the grand­est plans can­not be im­ple­ment­ed. When ad­dress­ing bul­ly­ing, for ex­am­ple, pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures—not just sus­pen­sions—may re­quire spe­cialised re­sources.

“So it comes down to how you treat with the whole man­age­ment of your school—your stu­dents, your teach­ers, your par­ents. It’s an on­go­ing process.”

And be­cause learn­ing is not one-size-fits-all—there are so many fac­tors that can af­fect a child’s ex­pe­ri­ence—James be­lieves in­clu­sion in ed­u­ca­tion is need­ed more than ever.

“For ex­am­ple, in one of the ses­sions I at­tend­ed, a psy­chol­o­gist spoke about a teacher com­plain­ing about a stu­dent dis­rupt­ing the class, specif­i­cal­ly be­fore break time and be­fore lunch. An eval­u­a­tion showed that the child was di­a­bet­ic and be­came dis­rup­tive when her in­sulin lev­el dropped,” she said, high­light­ing the need for at least one med­ical prac­ti­tion­er on each school com­pound.

She out­lined oth­er fac­tors—phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties, learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, ex­cep­tion­al stu­dents who are bored in class—all of which can af­fect how a stu­dent learns.

“So you know, when you have a class of 30-some­thing stu­dents, where is the sup­port for you to do that sort of in­di­vid­ual at­ten­tion? What we need is some­thing called an in­di­vid­ual learn­ing plan, and that re­quires sup­port from home, school, com­mu­ni­ties, and min­istries.”

She said the best place to start im­ple­ment­ing in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion pol­i­cy is at the pre-school lev­el be­cause, by then, many par­ents are al­ready aware of some of the learn­ing chal­lenges their chil­dren face. With a prop­er sup­port sys­tem in place, teach­ers can tweak les­son plans for stu­dents who learn dif­fer­ent­ly and de­ter­mine whether a child will need as­sis­tive tech­nol­o­gy.

“For ex­am­ple, there is soft­ware on the iPad for autis­tic and non-ver­bal chil­dren… So the teacher can de­liv­er the same les­son, and the stu­dents who need as­sis­tive tech­nol­o­gy can use the tablet to com­mu­ni­cate. Then, for stu­dents who are blind, there is a type of glass­es that has a cam­era and it reads for them. So they can still be en­gaged in a nor­mal class­room set­ting even though they can’t see.”

She said in­clu­sion al­so ap­plies to stu­dents who come from homes af­fect­ed by trau­ma, pover­ty, and do­mes­tic is­sues.

“I’m a par­ent. I know when I go home, I am ex­haust­ed, but be­cause I know the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion and I’ve seen ed­u­ca­tion work for me, I will ded­i­cate time to do home­work with my chil­dren.

“But what about the par­ent who is com­ing home when the child is falling asleep be­cause they’re work­ing a shift job; who them­selves may on­ly have up to a pri­ma­ry-school ed­u­ca­tion? One who does not un­der­stand the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion be­cause it didn’t work for them? One who is not mo­ti­vat­ed to sit with their child and say, ‘Well, let me look over what you did to­day’? This is the re­al­i­ty.”

James said this is where ed­u­ca­tion­al re­form comes in—un­der­stand­ing the re­al is­sues and do­ing some­thing to ad­dress them. And if that foun­da­tion­al in­ter­ven­tion is made at the pre-school lev­el, im­ple­ment­ing in­clu­sion strate­gies at high­er lev­els will be much eas­i­er. She added that da­ta con­sis­tent­ly shows that one com­mon fac­tor among high-per­form­ing schools is the in­volve­ment and sup­port of par­ents.

“So if it is we want to see our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem re­form, get par­ents in­volved; get the com­mu­ni­ty in­volved.”

James be­lieves the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem should be pro­duc­ing not on­ly aca­d­e­mics but al­so pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens who can think crit­i­cal­ly to solve the coun­try’s re­al is­sues.

“Not just to get them the car or job they want. Our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem needs to cre­ate a greater love for coun­try. We need to un­der­stand what it means to be a Trinida­di­an; that when we take a po­si­tion of lead­er­ship, it is a sa­cred op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

She ad­mits, though, that as pas­sion­ate as she is about im­prov­ing the sys­tem, she can­not do it alone.

“Pas­sion alone does not change things. You need col­lec­tive agree­ments, you need to col­lab­o­rate, you need sup­port. But I am will­ing to start,” she said, be­cause every­thing is tied to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and her vi­sion for T&T.

She not­ed that in 1994, in Spain, the Sala­man­ca State­ment—a pol­i­cy for in­clu­sion of stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with dis­abil­i­ties—al­lowed more stu­dents to have ac­cess to an ed­u­ca­tion.

“Now, look­ing at where we are, in­clu­sion is more than just for stu­dents with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties. We al­so have stu­dents with neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty, and we are see­ing the preva­lence of stu­dents with autism and dyslex­ia. How do we pre­pare our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to re­al­ly be able to sup­port all learn­ers?”

She is con­vinced the next step is ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic, which she be­lieves can be a for­mi­da­ble al­ly in build­ing on the ex­ist­ing in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion pol­i­cy—a key com­po­nent of the na­tion­al in­clu­sion pol­i­cy.

“You know, it’s al­ways good to re­vis­it, to look at the pol­i­cy, to see, okay, how is the pol­i­cy do­ing? What amend­ments need to be made now, in 2025?”