While the Labour and Nationalist parties are trying to outdo each other in promising different versions of the same thing, free tablet PCs to all students sounds like a heavenly proposal for many. But given some cautious thought and consideration a number of issues are inevitably elicited.

The range of disabilities that needs to be addressed goes beyond the use of tablet PCs

Although such resources are indeed a useful tool for a number of students with disability, yet, the range of disabilities that needs to be addressed goes beyond the use of tablet PCs. For the majority of students with disability, there has long been the need of basic, less extravagant, resources that the Government has ignored.

Tablet PCs themselves do not necessarily target the quality of education of all students. Students with disability in mainstream schools still require tangible resources that aim to motivate and stimulate their learning development. As many learning support assistants, teachers, inclusion coordinators, senior management team members and parents know, students in mainstream school who have more severe forms of disability require resources targeted for their needs. Such resources need to be tangible in order to target these students’ educational needs.

Not to mention an ultimately important resource: space. Students with disability are crammed up in classrooms where their wheelchairs or buggies cannot even be wheeled around.

Space is needed for the students with physical disability to have that required change in position. Adequate space is needed for changing and toileting facilities, where students with such requirements are assisted in the safest and most dignified of ways.

Moreover, there is an unaddressed need for equipment and human resources that allow LSAs helping students with such requirements to perform these duties.

The Nationalist Party has claimed that it has built a school every year over the last five years. But how many years do we need to wait till each school has the appropriate resources to accommodate students with disability in all the mainstream schools in Malta and Gozo?

As many of those working in schools know, school buildings are freezing cold in winter and students with physical disability are being carried up and down flights of steps because there is no elevator or because this does not work, as in the case of the primary schools of San Ġwann and Sliema, where the lift has been out of order for the past 12 years.

The inclusion of students with disability in mainstream schools has come a long way but there are still many issues that need to be addressed.

Human resources in schools, such as inclusion coordinators, whose role is to support and monitor LSAs in providing quality education to students with disability, are too thinly spread. Not to mention the service of replacement LSAs whose service is required when another LSA is on sick leave.

So far, students who have a one-to-one LSA supporting them are advised to remain home on numerous occasions as the school would not be able to provide them with the required help. Will their parents be able to claim sick leave allowance when their children are kept home because of these circumstances?

Now let’s assume students with disability will be making good use of these tablet PCs. Obviously, these students require different resources that specifically target their education, such as specialised ICT software that would need to be bought and installed on the tablets used by such students.

I am assuming that the Government has already thought of a way of making this a sustainable expense. However, I’m perplexed by the fact that, currently, tens of students with disability who require specific ICT software to be installed on their classroom or resource room PC are still waiting for it. Having started the second scholastic semester many are those without access to such programmes either because their former ones were wiped out when the PCs were formatted this summer or because they are still waiting for the long assessment process so that the even longer process of having this software installed finally commences. Hopefully, once every one has a tablet PC this process will become a speedy one!

On the other hand, if, as the PN is proposing, everyone in primary and secondary has a tablet PC, what happens to those students with disability who leave the school settings to start their life in the adult training centres? Is their equipment removed? What if it has been used as a communication tool and is an integral part of their life? Has anybody given this any thought?

And, finally, one last matter, which is a dilemma for many whose children have outgrown the schooling age.

The country has invested greatly in the education and inclusion of students with disability but not enough in their adulthood needs. Personal assistants are still today a rarity because of the costs associated with this service. Thus, people with disability who want to live away from their family home or whose family can no longer care for them cannot rely on such a service, which is nowadays widely used throughout Europe.

This lack of resource means that such people run the risk of being institutionalised – in homes for the elderly, mental hospitals or in institutions for people with disability – rather than living autonomously and independently in the community.

Angele Deguara is Alternattiva Demokratika’s spokeswoman on social policy and civil rights.