Written by: EnCompass Staff

We’re glad to announce two additions to USAID-supported research and reporting on inclusive education in Sub-Saharan Africa. USAID’s Office of Education has just posted a literature review and a mapping report on Education Links, featuring contributions from EnCompass’ team for USAID Data and Evidence for Education Programs activity, known as DEEP. These new resources join a growing collection of research and tools for disability-inclusive education on Education Links, USAID’s knowledge-sharing platform for education.

Are We Fulfilling Our Promises? Inclusive Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

The first of the new resources, Are we fulfilling our promises? discusses the state of disability-inclusive education, blending globally relevant observations with specific examples from across Sub-Saharan Africa. Interwoven among the report’s five sections are visualizations of the data:

• Section 1 is a description of inclusive, integrated, and segregated schooling for children with disabilities.
• Section 2 reviews declarations, laws, policies, and funding allocations through which Sub-Saharan African countries prioritize or recognize inclusive education.
• Section 3 reviews data on school access, including school attendance and school completion of learners with disabilities, as well as the barriers to enrollment and retention.
• Section 4 reviews the “school experience” for learners with disabilities, including how their experience is affected by the instructional accommodations, accessibility of facilities, and bullying and violence.
• Section 5 reviews USAID initiatives to support inclusive education in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The review closes with a discussion of conclusions related to policies, finance, barriers, and data, and donor support for disability-inclusive education.

Tracking Inclusion: Data Sources on Inclusive Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

The second new resource is a disability data mapping report that reviews available data sources regarding disability status and inclusive education across Sub-Saharan Africa. This mapping report is one part of USAID and DEEP’s efforts to generate and support high-quality data that allows countries, donors, and education decision makers to assess the need for interventions, design policies, and evaluate their impact.

The report reviews available data sources regarding disability status and inclusive education across Sub-Saharan Africa, including data from censuses, surveys, and education management information systems. It then discusses issues that make it difficult to use and analyze disability data—namely, challenges in comparability, sample size, sampling frame, and data availability. An annex shares data tables with information on school attendance, out-of-school rates, school completion, mean years of school, and literacy rates for learners with disabilities across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Importantly, the mapping report provides a set of conclusions and recommendations—many of which speak to DEEP’s overall objectives, such as supporting standards to improve the quality of data and harmonizing data collection approaches—to strengthen country and global capacity to analyze and use these data appropriately to determine policies and program investments or changes.

Leave No One Behind

Realizing the vision of leaving no one behind—essential to USAID’s goals for education and to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals—means full inclusion of people with disabilities in development efforts. We invite you to join the DEEP team, USAID, and Sub-Saharan African education leaders in continuing to better understand what is needed for teaching and learning that are truly inclusive, and to enact those needs through our shared programming efforts.

Please share your stories with @EnCompass_World and @USAIDEducation on Twitter, or in the comments below.

Photo: Inclusive Education in Sub-Saharan Africa by Deepti Samant Raja/World Bank, via USAID in Africa (U.S. Government Works)