Educating children with disabilities is a good investment. A World Bank paper notes that it reduces welfare costs and future dependence. It reduces current dependence and frees other household members from caring responsibilities, allowing them to increase employment or other productive activities. It also increases children’ s potential productivity and wealth creation which will in turn help to alleviate poverty. A CIRJE study on Nepal estimates that rate of returns of investment to education among persons with disabilities varies between 19 and 32 per cent.
Children with disabilities have lower educational attainment than other children which leads to lower economic status. Neufeldt, cited in a World Bank literature review entitled Poverty and Disability, found they are more likely to leave school earlier with fewer qualifications. A World Bank paper, Disability, poverty and schooling in developing countries, argues that the schooling gap between children with and without disabilities starts at Grade 1 and then widens throughout schooling.
According to a RECOUP Working Paper, one of the important exit routes out of poverty is identified as formal education, especially where it improves the quality of labour, but due to discrimination and stigmatisation, the chances to access education and employment are very restricted for people with disabilities. This means that the disabled poor are likely to remain poor, as are their children.
Education can reduce discrimination against children with disabilities and tackle poverty. Education, particularly inclusive education, is able to reduce discrimination through enabling children with and without disabilities to grow up together. Education gives children with disabilities skills to allow them to become positive role models and join the employment market, thereby helping to prevent poverty.
The best way to improve eduation for children with disabilities is to improve the education sector as a whole. In countries where teachers are untrained, working with large class sizes and few resources in structurally unsafe classrooms, pragmatic context-specific and costeffective decisions are necessary.
3. What are the barriers to educating children with disabilities?
Perceived barriers to educating children with disabilities may be physical, social or financial. Some barriers identified by A RESULTS UK survey, Unicef and The Atlas Alliance include the following:
Policy and system factors
• Discriminatory policy actually segregates children with disabilities and prevents them from attending school or professional training, including teaching
• No specific policy on disability or education of children with disabilities
• Policy is dated and inappropriate or based on a medical approach to disability
• Reasonable policy is in place but not implemented, poor resource allocations to education for the disabled
• Limited training of teachers in working with children with disabilities, no incentives for teachers to do so
• Poor identification and screening services
• Poor school support services, limited or no resources for schools
Social and community factors
• According to UNESCO“ The greatest barriers to inclusion are caused by society not by medical impairments”
• Social stigma and negative parental attitudes to disability which may arise out of religious and cultural beliefs e. g. disability may be seen as punishment
• Parental resistance to inclusive education for special groups
• Normal barriers such as cost of uniforms, transport etc apply equally or more to disabled children, particularly the poor
School factors
• Low school budgets resulting in a lack of appropriate facilities, inaccessible school buildings, high pupil to teacher ratios, limited support for children with disabilities
• Teachers have inadequate training in inclusive methodologies and can not deal with the range of children with disabilities.
• Limited awareness of disability among teachers and school staff
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