The Committee may wish to request in the List of Issues: Information regarding measures to implement and maintain the sexual offenders register in to ensure the safety of children with disabilities. Information on measures taken to curb levels of abuse of persons with disabilities in society as a whole. ARTICLE 24: Education Inclusive education Achieving the goal of inclusive education is a particularly challenging task in the South African context. On one hand, government is faced with transforming the former apartheid education structures which were built on the segregation of schools on the basis of race. This segregation extended to children with disabilities where schools for white learners with disabilities were well-funded, whereas support services for learners with disabilities who attended non-white schools were uncommon. On the other hand, the South African government must address the current issues in the education system relating to the quality of education and the barriers to learning caused by a number of related factors, including poverty, language differences, inflexible curricula, inaccessible environments, and inadequate support services. From the perspective of children with disabilities, the South African education system continues to maintain an exclusionary education system. The segregated nature of the education system is to an extent the result of the apartheid structure but also to an extent as a result of the conceptualization of Education White Paper 6 on Special Needs Education (WP6) of a 3 tier system, and the inherent poor implementation of WP6. In attempting to develop an inclusive education system by 2021, WP6 takes the approach of creating a system which will include a range of different institutions where learners requiring a low level of support attend ordinary schools, those needing moderate support attend a full service school, and learners needing a high or intensive level of support attend special schools. This contradicts the principles highlighted in the UN CRPD Committees general comment 4 and the recent WPRPD which determine that Persons
The failure to provide learning material to every learner in an appropriate format places learners with special needs at a serious disadvantage, and constitutes a violation of the right to a basic education. The Commission has also noted ongoing concerns raised by multiple stakeholders, including schools and civil society organisations, around the delay in the provision of appropriate materials. The Committee may wish to request in the List of Issues: Information on measures being taken to improve access to LTSM. ARTICLE 27: Work and employment Section 9(c) of PEPUDA prohibits discrimination in the form of ‘failing to eliminate obstacles that unfairly limit or restrict persons with disabilities from enjoying equal opportunities or failing to take steps to reasonably accommodate the needs of such persons’. However, persons with disabilities face disproportionately high levels of unemployment, are employed in low status jobs, or receive lower than average remuneration. Furthermore, massive earning disparities exist by geographical location in that persons with disabilities in urban areas generally have higher earnings compared to those in rural areas. This is attributed to limited access to employment opportunities in rural areas as well as only having access to low-paying and unskilled jobs. In terms of the WPRPD, the employment equity and work opportunity targets for persons with disabilities should increase to at least 7 percent by the year 2030.And while current employment equity statistics cast doubt on the prospects of meeting this target, engagements with employers in South Africa suggest that the concept of disability is not adequately understood – from the perspectives of identifying people with disabilities, understanding what constitutes a disability, how and when to accommodate persons with disabilities, and the general legal provisions governing the employment of persons with disabilities. This could potentially mean that people with disabilities are not being identified and hence not accommodated and or reported on. It is estimated that on average, eight in ten persons with disabilities are unemployed, ‘making discrimination in terms of the denial of employment opportunities one of the most daunting challenges