Paper short abstract:

Our study reports findings for children with disabilities from an educational intervention in 207 rural schools of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The intervention consisted in improving social accountability and inclusion of all children in the learning process through a participatory intervention.

Paper long abstract:

According to the latest report from UNICEF, the number of children with disabilities has reached 240 million globally. Afghanistan is among the least developed nations in the world despite two decades of massive international assistance. Children living in conflict-affected fragile states, such as Afghanistan, are less likely to enrol in and attend school, especially those with disabilities. Children with disabilities who can attend school still face enormous barriers, such as poor quality teaching, transportation and security concerns on the way, access to water and sanitation, and overcrowded classrooms. Additionally, in Afghanistan, cultural beliefs foster discrimination of children with disabilities. Studies have documented the importance of parents' involvement, specifically parent-teacher collaboration, to improve learning outcomes. Our project aimed to strengthen teachers' accountability and communities' engagement in education through participatory interventions and inclusive education training. This study reports learning outcomes of children with disabilities.

A Randomized control trial was conducted to measure the impact of a participatory child centered intervention on students learning skills. Multistage randomized sampling methods were used to select 106 intervention schools in three provinces of Afghanistan and two of Pakistan. Analysis of change was used to examine the impact implementing action ideas, and an inclusive education training on the academic and nonacademic outcomes of children. We compared life skills, self-efficacy, and resilience as well as language, math, and general knowledge scores at points in time.

Among the 2570 children recruited at baseline, 492 were identified with a disability, mostly with learning disabilities and fewer with mobility and sensory disabilities. At endline, only 126 children were still in schools. We found that our interventions did not significantly impact children with disabilities’ learning outcomes but overall children with disabilities who stayed in schools improved learning outcomes more than children without disabilities. Staying in school helps children with disabilities catch up.

Our study reveals the challenges of keeping children with disabilities in schools in a conflict setting. However, our data also shows that inclusive education does help to improve the academic and nonacademic skills of children with disabilities and narrow the performance gaps with those without disabilities. With education enrolment of children without disabilities improving around the globe, it is now critical to pay more attention to marginalized children, particularly those with disabilities, and to ensure that education delivered to them is of equal quality to the education received by other children.