The Government seeks technical assistance, in terms of capacity building for two projects in this area.

Capacity Building for Professionals at IED and Teachers at Key Schools (Male’ and Atolls):

Children with Special Needs (SEN) are scattered across all the schools in the Maldives. A lot of challenges are faced by schools in teaching children with SEN, especially those on the autistic spectrum and experience learning difficulties. To overcome such challenges, there is a need to build capacity at an overseas institute, preferably for a period of two weeks.

Through this project, the Government aims to develop a pool of about eight expert teachers who would visit schools and assist teachers, increase capacity at IED and in selected schools to cater for children with autism and those with learning difficulties, and increase awareness amongst teachers in catering to the needs of children with SEN.

Curriculum Based Assessment (CBA) for Children with SEN:

Codification and classification (diagnosis) of children with SEN is at an infancy stage in the Maldives. Most children who exhibit symptoms are not properly diagnosed, and therefore schools and teachers are faced with challenges in targeting planned interventions for these children.

Therefore, there is a need to train teachers and professionals at IED to do CBA, which deviates from labelling children and therefore is more inclusive in education delivery. Through this project, the Government aims to train professionals (about eight), to visit schools and do CBA and assist them in carrying out functional assessments of children with SEN and plan interventions, and plan proper interventions for children with SEN from an inclusive curriculum lens.

Most of children in the schools in this category are suspected. Due to this schools and teachers find it very challenging to plan interventions for these children. Hence, we need to train teacher and professionals at IED to do curriculum based assessment which deviated from labelling children and is more inclusive.