EnglishPAL Network
Launched in March 2016, the Education Equity Research Initiative aims to inform policy and programming on effective ways of strengthening equity in and through education systems. In collaboration with experts and practitioners, the initiative builds on existing research and analytical efforts to create a comprehensive, shared understanding of the causes and effects of inequity in education, as well as successful strategies to increase equality in learning outcomes for all children. For governments and international actors to better address the vital, underlying questions of an equity agenda, such as: Who is being left behind, both in terms of access and learning? How do contextual factors, such as state fragility or education financing, shape access and learning outcomes for different groups of children? And, how are programmatic interventions and policy initiatives improving or exacerbating existing disparities? More and better data is needed.
Over the past year, representatives from the People’s Action for Learning Network (PAL Network) have actively participated in two of the four Equity Initiative workstreams: Measurement and Metrics, and Learning and Retention. In June 2017 the initiative launched a new Task Team on Disability. The objective of the Task Team is to improve the availability and quality of data on the prevalence, access and achievement of children with disabilities in education.
Improving data on children with disabilities
A critical barrier to improving access and learning of children with disabilities is the lack of data allowing better understanding of the number and types of reported disabilities. In the absence of accurate and timely data, interventions and policy solutions for children with disabilities are unable to adequately respond to the scale and complexity of the situation. According to the 2016 UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) Assessment of Readiness to monitor progress towards achieving SDG4 targets, only 19% of the 121 surveyed countries reported having data on the disability status of children. In practice, this means millions of children with disabilities are left out of education sector plans due to poor data collection and a lack of knowledge on how to include them in education planning and implementation.
Evidence from the PAL Network demonstrates that learning inequalities begin from a young age, primarily driven by disparities in wealth. When wealth disparities interact with other forms of disadvantage such as gender, where a child lives and whether they have a disability, inherited and multiple disadvantage exacerbate inequalities in learning outcomes. In addition, children with disabilities face far greater barriers than other children in accessing school. Availability of data that tracks learning outcomes for those who make it to school, and monitors their learning progress throughout the school cycle, is far more limited.
Evidence from the PAL Network
For the past three years, ASER Pakistan have been working with the University of Cambridge to pilot the regular household-based, citizen-led survey on learning with additional questions capturing the prevalence and status of children with disabilities across Pakistan. In 2014 ASER Pakistan piloted this tool in 11 districts of Pakistan, scaling up to cover all 36 districts of Punjab in 2015 and adding a further 26 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2016. The household survey tool captured seven key questions on disability, health and functioning – focusing on assessing a child’s sight, hearing, mobility, self-care, speech and memory. Questions which captured the child’s use of any assistive aids such as spectacles, hearing and mobility aids etc, were also included. Additional questions were included in the school observation questionnaire to quantify whether schools were aware of the presence of children with disabilities in their settings and also whether they have any kind of specific facilities for children with disabilities (such as ramps, modified teaching and learning materials). Findings from all 9 districts indicated that there is a significant incidence of reported disability across the different competencies. During the pilot study, almost 8% of sampled children reported difficulties in seeing ranging from mild to significant. The incidence of hearing, mobility, speech and memory were reported to be 5% amongst sampled children. A significantly large number of surveyed children also report using aids to assist their functioning. Further information can be found in ASER Pakistan’s Annual Report.
In Kenya, it is estimated that only one in six disabled children attend school. According to Uwezo Kenya, special units catering for children with disabilities exist in only 2% of the 4,377 schools surveyed in 2014. Of these schools, 56% reported having at least one child enrolled with a disability. Only 3% of surveyed schools had adequate and appropriate sanitation facilities for children with disabilities.
In Uganda, key findings from the 2015 Uwezo Annual Learning Assessment Report, found that 3.5% of all children aged 6-16 years who were assessed had less than normal visual acuity in both eyes (2.5%) or one eye (1.0%). While many of these cases may have been ones of common myopia, such children are placed at a disadvantage if they do not receive, or cannot afford, sight tests and appropriate vision aids.
The PAL Network look forward to working with the Disability Task Team to review and further improve existing measurement tools, explore new tools or adaptations of existing tools, and propose recommendations for further work. PAL Network aim to improve and expand the generation of data on the prevalence, access and achievement of children with disabilities through the analysis of our own data and others’; and to conduct further case studies and pilot studies to identify and address the needs of children with disabilities.