Equal Right, Equal Opportunity: Education and Disability

In most low- and middle-income countries, children with disabilities are more likely to be out of school than any other group of children; even if they do attend school, children living with disabilities are often more likely to drop out and leave school early. In some countries, having a disability can more than double the chance of a child not being in school, compared to their non-disabled peers. It is, therefore, unsurprising that in many countries children with disabilities make up the vast majority of those out of school. For those children with disabilities who actually manage to enter classrooms, the quality and form of schooling received – often in segregated schools – can act to powerfully compound exclusion from the mainstream and confirm pre-existing societal notions about disability. The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) must become a champion of more inclusive education for children with disabilities. This should include ensuring sufficient expertise within the country support teams; the production of guidelines that could help improve inclusion, including guidelines to support improved data collection; and the mainstreaming of inclusive education perspectives into assessment processes.