Special Needs

South Africa has major challenges in the field of education. Although the government schools in the black communities may be free of charge, the classes are overcrowded and the discrepancy between the level of proficiency that is expected of the students and the actual level of proficiency is enormous. This causes a struggle for each student to pass the state final exams. Children with learning problems or a mental disability completely fall by the wayside; individual teaching plans and attention in a classroom of 60 up to 100 students are nigh impossible. As they cannot keep up at school, these children regularly end up at home. And at home they often find themselves in an environment where little support can be offered, since their parents are poorly educated, or because they themselves also have a mental disability.