Deaf Education in Kenya

The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) in their policy Guideline stipulates that the main goal of educating deaf children is to give them the same possibilities of participating in the society in adult life as other people have and not actually to be the same. Indeed this is also in line with the KNAD’s mandates however, in their years of existence has realized that in order to achieve this expectation a lot need to be done with education and capacity on policy reform advocacy.
In the Kenya National Survey for people with disabilities not much information is being emphasized on the current education status of people with disabilities case by case. It is likely that the deaf people are the most less educated among all people with disabilities considering their poor communicative domains with teachers, competency of teachers to sign is very low, confusion whether to use Kenyan Sign Language as a language of instruction in the education of deaf children that effectively provide access to curriculum content, lack of appropriate inspection of deaf education and poor monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. As a result Deaf education in Kenya has not live up to its original expectation as the graduates have continued to lag behind their people with disabilities counterparts in all academic achievements. This can be seen through the recently released 2008 Examination results. The number of Deaf Candidate who took KCSE increased to 80 compared to the past years, but all deaf schools performed below required standards compared to other children with disabilities.