Let us start with the biggest issue in education for all stakeholders: cost. Almost every issue canvassed, discussed or debated comes down to matters closely related to cost. We can also expand the meaning of cost to include all resources such as time, money, human resources, space, equipment and infrastructure. To add to this debate, there is always a significant discussion of who bears what cost, how much of it and why.

In many cases, whatever comes of the cost debate or the attendant discussions, the final figures are divided up among student populations of several hundred per school. Whether apparent or not, this significantly reduces the unit cost per student for every teacher, equipment or infrastructure employed to deliver education services. We can surmise that the students enjoy positive economies of scale.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for learners with accessibility issues such as those with learning difficulties, physical disabilities and other social or psychological challenges. Information from the Kenya Institute of the Blind website, for instance, estimates about 750,000 learners who are visually impaired and 100,000 being legally blind. It is also estimated that approximately 5% of all learners have hearing impairment in the country.

Because these learners are distributed across the country, each school will enroll a small number of them. The government policy is that all schools should provide and facilitate learning for all learners enrolled in an integrated manner.  The main challenge here, under the traditional learning setup, then becomes the lack of economies of scale earlier demonstrated.

However, e-learning and blended learning, leveraging on emerging digital technology can help the education systems beat the scale challenge. In a country where we have hundreds of thousands of learners with various learning difficulties, available digital platforms can help bring those students under one virtual roof. By bringing all these learners together digitally, we dramatically reduce the cost of delivering education per student.

For instance, it would be a tall order to post deaf instructors to all schools that have deaf students for all subjects and all classes. Nonetheless, these instructors can be facilitated to log in via a pre-set schedule onto a learning platform where the students can follow.  The more the students are enrolled into the platforms, the lower the cost per student and the higher the likelihood that all subjects will be covered.

Access to school will then mean provision of the special smartphones, computers and devices needed for the learners to participate in the special classes. It will also mean that the learners go through normal childhood socialization in school while attending carefully crafted lessons within the same school. When they are all under one roof, it is possible to have full classes by students joining from across the country. This alone, could bring down the unit cost of delivering special needs education while getting the best out of it.

Of course, I hear the voice at the back of my head questioning whether we have the infrastructure to pull this off. I respond by stating that every child has the right to basic education. This is enshrined right in our well-established constitution. Secondly, almost all the infrastructure needed would be a multi-use installation, thus reducing the direct cost of providing special education. A school that connects to the Internet in this arrangement would use the same Internet access for many other functions. Thus, the connection to the Internet would be couched in a bigger budget, not just the special needs education one.

Kenya is probably one of the best-connected countries in Africa and those areas without commercially viable connections will get access through the Universal Service Fund. We therefore have a base to build on. Our innovators are also highly skilled and talented. They will be able to develop the necessary technologies to assist in this one-roof concept when they get the right prompts from the education sector.

Whereas today this article might seem far-fetched, it is the realization that accessibility issues suffer from a unique cost challenge that helps us to start pushing the proverbial envelope. We must seek to serve all the people affected in a high-density fashion so that we can bring down the unit costs in other areas.

Digital platforms that leverage the Internet do this very well. Combined virtual classes for learners with identified challenges would mean concentrated costs for distributed benefits. If the classes can hold forty students as usual, then the cost per teacher per learner would be normal. If the teachers can teach from wherever they are stationed then we would not have increased logistical costs.

If learners can access these devices at the schools nearest to them then they would not miss out on normal growing up by physically going to far-off specialized schools. Where the schools invest in the associated equipment and connectivity, then these would mean fewer expenses over the long-term with most of it being used for multiple functions. Overall, blended learning and e-learning would deliver education to learners with accessibility issues in a cost structure that compares favorably to that of normal learning while giving out quality that out-matches that by traditional education.

Mr. Waithaka is the CEO Elimu Holdings Ltd.