Education and Disability in the Global South

New Perspectives from Africa and Asia

Nidhi Singal, Paul Lynch, Shruti Taneja Johansson, Nidhi Singal, Paul Lynch, Shruti Taneja Johansson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781474291217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Education and Disability in the Global South brings together new and established researchers from a variety of disciplines to explore the complexities and dilemmas encountered in providing education to children and young people with disabilities in countries in South Asia and Africa. Applying a range of methodological, theoretical and conceptual frameworks across different levels of education systems, from pre-school to higher education, the contributors examine not just the barriers but also the opportunities within the educational systems, in order to make strong policy recommendations. Together, the chapters offer a comprehensive overview of a range of issues, including a nuanced appreciation of the tensions between the local and global in relation to key developments in the field, critiquing a globalized notion of inclusive education, as well as proposing new methodological advancements in taking the research agenda forward. Empirical insights are captured not just from the perspectives of educators but also through engaging with children and young people with disabilities, who are uniquely powerful in providing insights for future developments.

1

Education of Children with Disabilities: Changing Landscape of New Opportunities and Challenges

Nidhi Singal (University of Cambridge), Shruti Taneja Johansson (University of Gothenburg) and Paul Lynch (University of Birmingham)

We resolve, between now and 2030, to end poverty and hunger everywhere; to combat inequalities within and among countries; to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies; to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls; and to ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources. We resolve also to create conditions for sustainable, inclusive and sustained economic growth, shared prosperity and decent work for all, taking into account different levels of national development and capacities. (United Nations, 2015, p. 4)

We live in an age of international promises. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an articulation of a global vision for both developed and developing economies for achieving sustainable development in its three dimensions – economic, social and environmental. It is an ambitious plan of action for ‘people, planet and prosperity’ (p. 3). It is a ‘pledge that no one will be left behind’ (p. 4), where there is a recognition that the ‘dignity of the human person is fundamental’ (p. 4) and the ‘endeavour [is] to reach the furthest behind first’ (p. 5).

The SDGs with their commitment to ‘leaving no one behind’ are also one of the strongest assertions of support aimed towards the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the global development agenda. Disability is referenced in various parts of the SDGs, specifically in goals related to education, growth and employment, inequality, accessibility of human settlements, as well as data collection and monitoring. This is clearly a welcome step and brings sharply into focus not only the current plight but also the promise of bringing disability into the international development agenda. Similar assertions emphasizing the rights of people with disabilities in development agendas are made in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD (United Nations, 2006). The UNCRPD is the eighth human rights convention enacted by the United Nations and the first one specifically directed towards persons with disabilities. It encapsulates both human rights and development (Winzer & Mazurek, 2017), wherein the rights dimension acknowledges the dignity, autonomy and worth of people with disabilities and enhances their visibility; the development aspect distils human rights into a set of plans designed to include person with disabilities in development processes and policies. While the impact of the SDGs on the lives of people with disabilities is yet to be seen, the landscape of disability is fast changing, resulting in new opportunities and challenges, particularly in Southern contexts.

There are around 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide (WHO, 2011), that is approximately 15 per cent of the world’s population. Among these, 93 million are children living with moderate or severe disability globally (UNICEF, 2013), of these 80 per cent live in Southern contexts (WHO, 2011). The high rates of developmental delay and disability in children in developing economies are a growing concern. Improved under-five mortality rates globally, better prenatal and antenatal services, and global vaccination programmes against debilitating diseases such as smallpox have contributed to life chances for all children. Rates of survival are increasing as more and more children survive due to better medical interventions and improved medical after-care and community-wide health practices to help prevent disability in children (Margolis et al., 2001). In spite of these changes, one in three children (200 million globally) fails to reach their full physical, cognitive, psychological and/or socio-emotional potential due to poverty, poor health and nutrition, insufficient care and stimulation, and other risk factors to early childhood development (Black et al., 2016). Rather, there is growing evidence to suggest that the proportion of children with disabilities may be increasing as under-five mortality has fallen in many Southern contexts (Scherzer et al., 2012). Additionally, there are also growing concerns about the impact of mental, neurological and substance use disorders which are affecting every community and age group across the globe. However, at present, we have no clear indication of the exact burden (epidemiology) of neurodevelopmental disorders in low- and middle-income settings as we are not able to clearly identify these disorders well, particularly when children are in the first few years of life (Mwaniki et al., 2012).

Why focus on disability?

Given that this book provides a collection of chapters focused on countries in the South, one could argue that an emphasis on disability is rather narrow, particularly given the whole host of other factors which determine the exclusion of individuals from participation in mainstream settings. Here gender, poverty and ethnicity have traditionally been the most well-acknowledged (and researched) markers of exclusion. If the vast number of journal articles and books published in international development on any one of these three factors is a measure of emphasis, then indeed the focus of our book is truly misplaced. However, what we would like to argue here is that of these different factors, the least focused on, disability is the most powerful dimension of exclusion. This is certainly the case in research focusing on education and disability.

A World Bank Report (2007), analysing data from various states in India, identified disability, rather than gender or poverty, as the most significant reason for children not being in school. Additionally, in an analysis of various national data sets, Filmer (2008) noted that the deficit associated with disability is clearly large compared with other sources of inequality, such as gender, rural residence or economic status. Thus, while disability is not a discrete category, when it intersects with other forms of disadvantage, such as gender, poverty and ethnicity, it results in multiple layers of disadvantages or a magnification of the risk of exclusion. Thus, it is not surprising that in recent years the link between poverty and disability is the most frequently cited in development debates.

Disability, poverty and other intersecting factors

There is increasing evidence showing a close link between poverty and disability with bidirectional cause and effect, wherein poverty causes disability and disability causes poverty (Braithwaite & Mont, 2009; Department for International Development, 2000; Eide & Ingstaad, 2013). Poverty may lead to disability through malnutrition, poor health care, and dangerous working or living conditions. Disability may lead to poverty through lost earnings, due to lack of employment or underemployment, and through the additional costs of living with disability, such as extra medical, housing and transport costs (WHO, 2011). People with disabilities are likely to experience multiple levels of poverty, increased care needs and other disability-related costs such as transportation and care support (Mitra et al., 2013; Mont & Nguyen, 2013) as well as lower educational attainment and poorer employment prospects (Groce et al., 2011, Mitra et al., 2013). Eide and Ingstad (2011) successfully capture the nuanced relationship between disability and poverty when they note that ‘the uniqueness of the disability perspective is that it has to do with poverty within poverty’ (p. 13). In countries and areas where people with disabilities are among the most vulnerable, they are often the first to die when sanitary and food conditions become critical, least likely to get care when transportation cannot be paid for, or last to get jobs when employment is scarce.

The scenario is further complicated when differing combinations of structural factors (such as caste, gender, religion), life cycle factors (being young or elderly, household composition) and other idiosyncratic factors (ill health, accidents) intersect leading to different life experiences. Studies on women with disabilities in rural areas of many countries in the Asia-Pacific region have found that more than 80 per cent have no independent means of livelihood and are totally dependent on others (UNESCAP, 2003). Similarly, Pal (2010) referring to the Indian contexts discusses how being a Dalit (someone from a lower caste) with a disability results in greater exclusion from mainstream processes.

The promise of education

Recent years have seen a significant increase in the focus on education of children and young people with disabilities, particularly in the global South. There is growing realization among the international community that in order to meet the new SDGs, particularly Goal 4, which ‘ensure[s] inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ (United Nations, 2015, p. 19), the inclusion of children with disabilities is vital. While the SDGs have resulted in a renewed focus on children with disabilities, this focus, one could argue, is the culmination of significant developments in the broader education systems and the growing belief in the promise of education. Drawing on research insights from interviews with parents of children with disabilities belonging to poor households in rural India, Singal (2016) notes the naturalness of schooling, which itself took on a more normalizing feature in parental accounts. Parents valued education of their child with disabilities for a range of both short- and long-term reasons and were willing to invest personal time and energy.

This focus on education of children with disabilities, one could argue, is the result of a ‘spill over’ effect from a larger discourse around the promise of education as a vehicle for social mobility across the globe, particularly in poverty contexts. De, Khera, Samson and Kumar (2011), taking the example of India, note how education has undergone a significant change since the 1990s. They identify increased awareness of the need for education and a desire for schooling among the poorest communities. Education has become a public issue of concern to voters, and media attention has begun to focus more on what goes on in schools and how the system can be extended and improved. The belief in education as a common good, which can deliver a better quality of life, is evident even among poor families, as clearly noted by Krishna (2004). Most people believe, and research suggests, that education brings an important set of benefits (Colclough, 2012). In more recent years, evidence supporting this to be case for persons with disabilities has also been presented and is discussed below.

Education (or the lack of it) and its impact on individuals’ and national progress

As often cited, the value of education is the increased ability to gain employment and earn a better living in the future; this is particularly the case for people with disabilities (UNICEF, 2013). In analysing twelve household surveys from different developing countries, Filmer (2008) found that while there was little evidence to suggest that children with disabilities are more likely to live in poorer households, this was not the case for adults with disabilities. Rather, this association between disability and poverty in adulthood is mediated by lower educational attainment, as each additional year of schooling for people with a disability reduced the probability of being in the two poorest quintiles by 2 to 5 per cent.

The fact that more years of schooling increased the probability of employment was also found by Lamichhane and Okubo’s (2014) study on the labour market in Nepal. Conducting their analysis across three disability types (physical, hearing and visual), they noted that the level of education was found to be the most crucial factor in determining participants’ employment status as full-time or part-time workers, significantly more than their age or type of impairment. Years of schooling were also found to be positively associated with better jobs. Their analysis showed that more than fourteen years of schooling increased the possibility of the individual being employed in professional, managerial or administrative work, while those with fewer than ten years of schooling were either unemployed or engaged in manual labour. In another chapter, Lamichhane (2015) indicates that educating children with sensory or physical impairments would lead to a 20 per cent wage increase in the context of Nepal. Similar results have been presented by Liao and Zhao (2013) in their research covering parts of rural and urban areas in China. Their calculations suggest that for each additional year of schooling, there is a 5 to 8 per cent wage increase for persons with disabilities.

In a study among youth and their families in low-income communities in India and Pakistan, Singal, Bhatti, Janjua and Sood (2012) noted that the young people and their families held strong views around the potential of education to lead to useful income-generating activities later in life. A similar view was voiced by youth with disabilities in Ghana, where education was perceived as essential to acquire the skills necessary for employment and an absence of schooling was likely to result in life of begging (Singal et al., 2015). While this belief in educations’ transformative power did not necessarily match the reality faced by these young people, education clearly impacted their aspirations for the future.

The lack of education, when linked to an individual’s ability to participate in the labour market, also raises important concerns in relation to the public costs. While the complex relationship between disability and poverty changes based on each country context (Mitra et al., 2011), making factors which contribute to economic losses (or gains) difficult to measure, nevertheless, examples exist which demonstrate significant fiscal losses. These losses arise from the exclusion of people with disabilities from education and the workforce, resulting in the loss of productivity, taxes and a decreased gross domestic product (Myers, Pinnock, & Suresh, 2016; Walton, 2012). In terms of costs to the economy, Morgon Banks and Polack (2014) estimate that in the Philippines exclusion from the workforce for people with unrepaired cleft lips and palates results in a tax revenue loss of approximately 9 million US dollars, while in Bangladesh, the low education of persons with disabilities and their subsequent exclusion from the workforce were estimated to cost 26 million US dollar deficit to the economy.

However, viewing the benefits of education merely in terms of future employment, though essential, is limiting. The work with young people with disabilities in India, Pakistan and Ghana significantly forefronted how better education (even when simply seen in terms of more years of schooling) contributed in general to a better life. Young people expressed increased independence, self-sufficiency, self-confidence, and feelings of being more accepted and respected within their communities. In most cases, they also showed greater awareness of their rights and the state benefits available to them (Singal et al., 2015, 2012), thus also becoming more engaged citizens.

Thus, not surprisingly, it is strongly argued in the literature that investing in the education of persons with disabilities, through disability inclusive development, is likely to lead to significant economic and other important social outcomes.

While most of the discussions have focused on formalized spaces of education, namely formal schooling, it cannot be emphasized enough that learning also happens in many different non-formal and informal spaces. However, given that lack of formal schooling is shown to clearly disadvantage people with disabilities in accessing mainstream opportunities such as employment, as noted in the studies referred above, in this book, our attention is specifically on formalized educational spaces, namely mainstream and, in some cases, special schools in Southern contexts. We also conceptualize education as of value throughout a person’s life course and are not restricted to debates solely focusing on primary years. Rather, the significance of early childhood development and education (as discussed in Lynch and Gladstone’s chapter) and the potential of higher education (as demonstrated in Howell’s chapter) are important to consider.

What we know and need to know?

Thus, while the promise of education for all, including those with disabilities, has been enshrined in international commitments and clear evidence of returns at various levels is evident, what remains unclear is how best this vision can be achieved in practice. While this is an issue facing all countries, both with more advanced education systems and with developing ones, we are particularly focused on countries in Africa and South Asia which are dealing with significant inequalities, magnified as a result of issues around poverty.

No discussion focusing on the education of children with disabilities can be conducted in isolation from the broader educatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• 1. Education of Children with Disabilities: Changing Landscape of New Opportunities and Challenges
• Part One: Framing the Debates
• Part Two: Situated Perspectives
• Index
• Imprint