People with Disabilities In Nigeria: Educational Challenges as perceived by the Experts

People with disabilities (PWD) could best be described as those due to one impairment/handicapping condition or the other could not function optimally in virtually every aspect of human endeavours especially academic tasks unless special modalities are put in place to thwart  the negative effects of the disabilities in them. The paper therefore focused on the educational challenges confronting people with disabilities as ranked by educational experts selected using random sampling technique from four establishments namely Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), FCT College of Education, and University of Abuja, all in the FCT, Abuja. Descriptive research design was adopted in which a rating scale for the educational challenges facing people with disabilities was used to elicit information on the subject matter in which 50 respondents were asked to rank in order of priority 10 already  identified  educational challenges with 10 and 1 highest and lowest points respectively. Results showed that misappropriation/embezzlement of funds for special needs education, inadequacy of knowledge of special needs education among the regular school teachers, lack of appropriate learning facilities, poor learning environment and dearth of special needs education in the regular schools were ranked as the 1st,2nd,3rd,4th & 5th  biggest challenges respectively, while non availability of psycho-educational assessment units in the regular schools, lack of adequate statistics, lack of thorough supervision, classroom congestion/ overcrowding and lack of proper collaboration between the school and parents were ranked as 6th,7th,8th,9th and 10th  challenges to attend to respectively. It is recommended that government and other stakeholders should prioritize the efforts at overcoming those ranked as the biggest challenges facing the education of people with disabilities before moving on to those ranked as the smallest.