Giving every child an equal opportunity to education

Temurmalik Sultanov is passionate about one thing: “Every child can take on new information; every child deserves the opportunity to do so,” he says.

And he proudly lives this philosophy as a teacher at the Learning Center of IT for Hearing Impaired Children, a specialized residential school for children with hearing impairments, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The need for inclusive education

In Uzbekistan, a country with over 22,000 people registered with deafness and hearing loss, fewer than 50 young people are enrolled in special colleges for children with hearing disabilities.

But this is not unique: before the pandemic, in low- and middle-income countries, over 50 per cent of children with disabilities did not attend school. With ongoing lockdowns and school closures, this number has increased moving us further away from achieving key development goals of universal education (SDG4).

The Learning Centre, which opened in November 2021, is part of the Uzbekistan’s efforts to address these gaps and help children with disabilities to receive quality digital education through the provision of accessible ICTs.

“The classroom is not all that typical,” says Temurmalik.

The classrooms were equipped with specialized equipment to enhance the auditory experience for children with hearing impairments.

In addition to the necessary equipment to teach web technologies such as laptops, interactive smart boards and projectors, students were provided personal headphones with volume control to enable them to listen to the lesson at a volume comfortable for them.

A group of 24 students aged 13 to 19 years old used this equipment in three groups: graphic design using Photoshop and Corel Draw; the basics of computer literacy and web technologies, including courses on Microsoft Office and Scratch language programming; and coding using HTML and CSS.

Temurmalik taught eight students in web technology basics and coding, first learning how to use Microsoft Office tools including Word, Excel and PowerPoint, then moving on to learn how to create webpages using HTML and CSS.

“When we started with [Microsoft] Office, there were students who created tables in Word and presentations easily but struggled when we moved to HTML and CSS. Some really did not want to and wanted to give up. We told them to stick with it and said once they get it, it will be easier. After, they told us we were right to urge them on despite their struggles,” he said.

The course was completed in March. At the end of the course, the students were tasked with creating a single page on various topics, including creating an online-course registration form and creating a blog.

But the students’ enthusiasm was clear: “after the holidays, they immediately started asking if the Learning Centre would continue.”

Luckily for them, the classes will begin again in September.

Life after school

So, what’s next for Temurmalik’s students? “For the Learning Centre programme, we took children from the 6th and 7th grades … At that age, children do not usually think about life after the 11th grade!” he joked.

Temurmalik acknowledges that for children with disabilities, finding job opportunities remains difficult.

But the training programme has given him – and his students – hope that they will find decent jobs when they graduate.

“They have the potential and, importantly, the time before the 10th and 11th grades to really master HTML, CSS and a couple of programming languages for web technologies. Then, when they finish school, they could already work in front-end or back-end web development. So, I told the children this idea and they agreed with me,” he said. “This is why they want to continue.”

And this has been a life-changing experience for Temurmalik, too; “how I see education has also changed,” he said.