Fund the Degree:  Let 30 Inclusive Education Students Complete Their Training

Thirty students at Villa College are training to become inclusive education teachers — the kind of teachers Maldivian schools do not have enough of. We travel from islands across the country to Malé for block classes, balancing jobs and families, because we know what happens when a child with a disability sits in a classroom where no one is trained to teach them. They fall behind. They drop out. They are failed by a system that promised them better. 

The Government funded our Diploma in Teaching Primary and Special Educational Needs. That diploma gave us the foundation — awareness of disability, understanding of learning diversity, and basic inclusive practice. But a diploma is not enough to deliver quality inclusive education. The competencies that schools actually need — designing adapted assessments, differentiating curriculum for diverse learners, mentoring fellow teachers, shaping school-wide inclusion policy — are degree-level skills. Without them, we enter classrooms under-equipped for the job the country needs us to do.

Quality education is not just about access. It is about what happens after a child walks through the door. Are they learning? Is the teaching adapted to how they learn? Is there a trained professional in the school who can make that happen? Right now, most schools in the Maldives cannot answer yes.

 We are asking the Government to extend funding to cover the Bachelor's degree in Teaching Primary and Special Educational Needs for this cohort. This is not a new programme or a new cost. It is completing an investment already made — in us, in the children we will teach, and in the promise of inclusive education that the Maldives has committed to nationally and under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Stopping the funding here leaves 30 trained professionals halfway to where the education system needs them to be. Extending it produces 30 qualified inclusive education leaders ready to serve schools across the Maldives.

Sign this petition if you believe every child in the Maldives deserves a teacher trained to teach them properly — and that the professionals willing to become those teachers deserve the chance to finish their training.