Republic of Ghana's Policy on Inclusive Education and Definitions of Disability

The WorldReport onDisability addresses the education of students with disabilities and recommends that institutional transformation is needed to facilitate inclusive education. The success of inclusive education depends largely on a country's commitment to adopting appropriate legislation, developing policies, and providing adequate funding for implementation. The Republic of Ghana's policies include children with nonsevere special education needs in mainstream schools. The authors examine the definition of disability employed in Ghana's policies to assess whether students with intellectual and developmental disabilities are eligible to benefit from these provisions. Ghanaian government and relevant disability-based organizations' documents related to disability and education were identified and examined as to how the policies support inclusion. The definitions were reviewed via the use of a biomedical or social perspective of disability. Of seven policy documents reviewed, three defined disability and the definitions reflected the biomedical perspective of disability. In the absence of definitions of disability in the majority of the Ghanaian policy documents reviewed, it is difficult to determine which children and with what types of disability will qualify to benefit from their provisions.