Education and Disability: Uganda and the World

Persons with disabilities (PWDs) are adversely affected by negative attitudes like stigma and prejudice (see Summary of findings of the Uganda Disability Review Part 1 of 2). Stigma and prejudice severely limit educational opportunities.  Moreover PWDs score significantly less across the board on all socioeconomic indicators: That is education, employment and social class (see Poverty and Disability in Uganda). In opposition to this an Overview of Poverty in Uganda and Poverty and Disability showed that small gains in education have had important benefits on reducing poverty. Moreover education is key to overcoming stigma and prejudice. Education then is a priority issue for PWDs  throughout the world.

The United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published the Education for all Global Monitoring Report in 2014. This report is a summary of what is known about the effects of disability upon education. It opens noting that stigma and discrimination related to disability, gender, wealth, language ethnicity and location are holding up progress towards education for all (EFA). The report continues:

Ensuring that all people have an equal chance of education, regardless of their circumstances, must be at the heart of new goals post-2015. No person should be denied access to good quality education because of factors such as disability.

The report notes that there is often a lack of data about disabilities, and where there is data it is not linked to educational outcomes. It gives the following information about disabilities worldwide:

• Globally 93 million children under the age of 15 (5.1% of the world's children) were living with moderate or severe disability. 13 million or 0.7% of the worlds children live with severe disabilities.
• About 80% of children with disabilities (CWDs) are in developing countries. The number of moderate or severely disabled children is comparatively higher in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The scale of disabilities is often under reported.

The following information is drawn selectively from the summary:

Children with disabilities are less likely to complete primary school

• In Malawi and the United Republic of Tanzania, having disabilities doubles the probability of children never having attended school, and in Burkina Faso it increases the risk of children being out of school by two and a half times. 

Having a parent with a disability can also affect a child’s chances of going to school 

• Children whose parents have disabilities often face tensions between schooling and care demands at home. Having a poor parent with a disability increases the likelihood of 7- to 16-year-olds never having been to school by twenty-five percentage points in the Philippines and thirteen points in Uganda – a reminder of how poverty, disability and education interact.

Those with disabilities are more likely to be illiterate 

• In Uganda in 2011, around 60% of young people with no identified impairment were literate, compared with 47% of those with physical or hearing impairments and 38% of those with mental impairments. 

• In the United Republic of Tanzania, a survey found that the literacy rate for people with a disability was 52%, compared with 75% for people without a disability 

Poverty is both a potential cause and a consequence of disability

• In several countries, the probability of being in poverty rises in households headed by people with disabilities. In Uganda, evidence from the 1990s found that the probability was as much as 60% higher. 

• Girls and women already facing gender barriers to education are also most likely to be affected by poverty. These disadvantages will be further compounded by disability when it comes to access to education. Better data and analysis is needed in order to address this inequality. 

• Those with disabilities are much less likely to be working. Other family members may also be out of work (or school) to care for them. Inadequate treatment, along with poor families’ inability to invest sufficiently in health and nutrition, reinforces the problems people with disabilities face.

• Very few young people in Kenya living with disabilities study beyond primary level. They face constraints in employment because of their low level of education, little or no adaptation of their workplaces, and limited expectations among families and employers.

• In Malawi and Swaziland, less than half of those aged 15 to 29 with disabilities had ever been to school, and employment rates among 15- to 29-year-olds were under 3% in Swaziland and 28% in Malawi.

• Kenya’s 2008 National Survey on Persons with Disabilities found that 3.6% of youth aged 15 to 24 had disabilities. In the week preceding the survey, only 8% had worked for pay, and 14% had worked on the family business. Over 50% had not worked.

• A pilot survey conducted in 2009 in five urban areas of Sierra Leone found that 69% of people living with disabilities had no income at all, and 28% were living in households with no income. Youth aged 15 to 25 with disabilities were 8.5 times less likely to work than those without disabilities

Different disabilities create very different education-related challenges

• In Uganda, dropout rates are lower among children with visual and physical impairments than among those with mental impairments 

• In Burkina Faso, children reported as deaf or mute, living with a mental impairment or blind were far less likely to be enrolled in school than those with a physical impairment. In 2006, just 10% of deaf or mute 7- to 12-year-olds were in school.

Reaching children with disabilities will require increased financing.

• Additional resources are needed to provide teachers with specialized training and children with specially designed learning materials to realize their potential. Families may also require additional financial support. One study in Bangladesh found that the parents of children with disabilities faced costs for aids, appliances and health care that were three times the average household budget for raising children

Education policies can counteract marginalization caused by disabilities:
1. Inclusive curriculum can help break down barriers faced by children with disabilities in the classroom.

• Integrating children with disabilities into the standard education system can break down the segregation that reinforces stereotypes. Moreover, special schools are often chronically underfunded and lack either skilled teaching staff or the equipment needed to deliver a good education. But integration is not a panacea. Children with severe disabilities may require highly specialized support.

• Research in Eastern Cape, one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, found that inclusive education produced significant gains, ranging from improved physical access to support for specialized teaching practices and increased admission of learners with disabilities. 

• In Ethiopia, with the support of the non-government organization Handicap International, a school for deaf students operates as both a special school and a resource centre, supporting education for deaf learners in other schools and the development of sign language.

2. Teachers need support to reach children with special needs:

• Some non-government organizations and governments, including those of Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania, have supported ‘itinerant teaching’ approaches, which enable specialized teachers, experienced in teaching children with disabilities, to reach a larger group of pupils in satellite schools, and support and train teachers.

3. Hiring more teachers with disabilities can reduce marginalisation of children in the classroom

• Teaching often fails to recruit enough people with disabilities. Mozambique has been running teacher education programmes for visually impaired primary school teachers for more than ten years. Communities have become familiar with their children being taught by visually impaired teachers, resulting in a positive change of attitude and helping create a more welcoming environment for teachers and students with disabilities.

4. Schools should be physically accessible for children with disabilities

• Many schools, particularly in remote rural areas or in slums, are physically inaccessible to some children with disabilities. In 2005, just 18% of India’s schools were accessible to children with disabilities in terms of facilities such as ramps, appropriately designed classrooms and toilets, and transport. 

5. Better monitoring of disabilities is necessary to assess the best way to address them

• A 2008 survey in the United Republic of Tanzania provided a detailed profile of impairments across the country. It found marked regional disparities and a higher incidence of disability in rural areas.

Breaking down educational barriers in Uganda

The above information is a summary of the situation in the world for CWDs. There is very little knowledge about the status of CWDs receiving education. The following newspaper report from 2015 by the National Council for Children in Uganda, Don’t deny children with disabilities quality education, summarizes the situation for CWDs in Uganda:

National statistics indicate that 80 per cent of childhood disability is a result of preventable causes, especially immunisable diseases and poor treatment of common illnesses. And 7 per cent of the total population of Uganda has a disability.
Basing on the current projected population of about 34 million Ugandans there would be about 2.5 million children living with a disability. Accordingly, the majority of these children living with disabilities (CWDs) live in rural areas often hidden away from society, abused and exploited!
During a routine monitoring exercise on the situation of children, National Council for Children (NCC) discovered that some parents have denied CWDs access to quality education, and protection at home. Leaders in the communities have not played their role in providing appropriate services for the rehabilitation of CWDs. Very few of the CWDs are able to access education within inclusive settings in regular schools while only about 10 per cent access education through special schools and annexes.
This, therefore, implies that the majority of CWDs stay home without any form of education! This type of situation, therefore, calls for urgent attention from the relevant duty bearers.
NCC further calls for scaling up interventions on children with disabilities. We also call for a tax-waiver on facilities for CWDs such as: the braille, the tri-cycles, the white – canes, information materials and logistics for sign language, among others.
The facilities are costly making it unaffordable to most parents to purchase for their children with disabilities.
Martin Kiiza, National Council for Children

Education and disability interact in a complex way. This issue is compounded by their being no one single approach to educating CWDs. Many problems are not clear because of lack of access to good data. However there are several findings that can have an effect:

• Policies of inclusive education are vital for counteracting the marginalization and segregation that CWDs experience. 
• It is vital that teachers working with special needs children get support in the field. 
• Employing more disabled teachers has important effects.
• School need to be more accessible.

Many challenges remain, for instance in Uganda more than 50% of young people with disabilities are illiterate, rising to more than 60% for those with mental impairments. Progress in providing education for CWDs is slow but the situation is always improving.