Hickswell Douglas

Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Scores of children in our nation's schools are suffering from learning disabilities and, as a result, are underperforming.

Speaking at a Gleaner Editors' Forum last week, Education Officer Hickswell Douglas said there were some 6,500 children now in special education institutions, but several others remained unidentified in regular schools. Douglas, who is visually impaired, is attached to the Special Education Unit in the Ministry of Education.

Other specialists in the field say a significant number of these unidentified children are girls who are being overshadowed by a more obvious group of hyperactive boys.

"In a school such as ours, you have two times as many boys as girls," reports the principal of the Randolph Lopez School of Hope in St. Andrew, Christine Rodriguez. "But yet, research shows that intellectual disability is not gender biased. You have as many boys as girls who are intellectually disabled," Rodriguez notes. She argues that in comparison to girls, it is boys who have behavioural problems who are usually referred. "Girls sit quietly, so nobody notices them; (they) will go through school and nobody notices that they have an intellectual disability," adds Rodriguez.

She says the situation is serious and needs immediate address: "We are in a serious dilemma because we have a lot of children in Jamaica who are learning disabled - and those children are average and above average intelligence."

Rodriguez believes many of those children should be in a regular school and not in a segregated one. But the regular school system, she laments, does not allow those children to get the attention they need.