When the story was aired, there were many discussions, especially on social media, around the alternatives that parents with such children had.
Many parents with special needs children said that they had hired ‘shadow teachers’ to help their children in regular academic set-ups.
Araka Elinet, a lecturer in the Autism Department at the Kenya Institute of Special Education (KISE), says that children with special needs require extra monitoring to fully utilise their capabilities in an academic set-up.
Extra monitoring means extra cost.
In the case of autistic children, an ideal key component of the child’s learning, Elinet points out, would be a shadow teacher.