Children with Disabilities

According to the World Report on Disability approximately 1 billion people in the world are living with a disability with at least 1 in 10 being children and 80% living in developing countries. Education is one of the most effective ways to break the cycle of discrimination and poverty that these children and their families often face.

9-year old Devilal, who has severe visual impairment, does his homework with his friends

9-year old Devilal can see very little
but he still has fun doing his homework with his friends
© Nana Akyaa Boakye-Boaten

Children with disabilities are often marginalized from society and remain invisible to the mainstream population and education officials. In most developing countries there is little relevant data to identify the number of disabled children. There are also no effective policies to address their needs and provide them access to a quality education. More »

THE CHALLENGE

Out of the 61 million children not in school, about 24 million experience some form of disability.
90% of children with disabilities do not attend school in developing countries. (UNESCO)
Children with disabilities are more likely to drop out of school than any other vulnerable groups even in countries with high primary school enrolment rates.
Poverty, malnutrition, poor health, illiteracy, and lack of access to proper sanitary conditions or clean water aggravate the consequences of existing disabilities.
Disabilities may include learning, speech, physical, cognitive, sensory disabilities or emotional difficulties.
Too little data is collected about children with disabilities, making appropriate interventions impossible.

OUR RESPONSE

As part of GPE's strategy to reach out to out-of-school children, we

work with governments to promote inclusive education policies to ensure that all children, especially children with disabilities, can attend school, learn, and complete their schooling.
help developing country partners design data collection instruments and programs to take stock of the number of disabled children and elaborate relevant education programs to integrate them into school.
Collect better quality data on children with disabilities, especially disaggregated data that explain the different disabilities and impairments as well as the level of severity. This is imperative for effective planning and design of inclusion policies, programs and interventions.

WHO ARE THE CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES?

The international community finds it sometimes difficult to agree on a definition for “disability”. GPE provides the following three categories of children with disabilities:

Children with disabilities enrolled in school but excluded from learning because the curriculum has not been adapted to their needs or teachers do not have the capacity or time to make the needed adaptations, and/or they do not have access to assistive devices necessary for their learning needs.
Example: Children with low vision are unable to see the board without eye glasses.
More »

RESULTS

Inclusive Education in Cambodia

In 2010, the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport undertook a study, supported by GPE, to gather data on children with disabilities and out-of-school children between 2 and 17 years of age. More »

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Last Modified: March 18, 2013