#Costing Equity: The case for disability-responsive education financing

Achieving equitable lifelong learning opportunities for all

Agenda 2030 aims to leave no one behind, Goal 4 of the SDGs is focussed on education. Goal 4 advocates the provision of equitable lifelong learning opportunities for all. 
Inclusive education is CBM’s primary goal towards building an inclusive society. Child friendly inclusive education offers quality formal and non-formal learning opportunities for every child within a mainstream system that adapts to the needs of all learners, especially when started early through early childhood development education (ECDE) provision. In order to achieve this goal significant changes need to be made to legislation, policy, financing, planning and implementation, following a twin-track approach of balancing system-level change with specific support for learners with disabilities. Exclusion from education has a large impact on the individual and the country when persons with disabilities are not educated.

Global funding for education is declining with governments and donors not prioritising education investment (Education Commission Report, 2016). When allocated, it is not tracked efficiently neither is the data disaggregated according to gender, age and disability. The same applies to humanitarian aid for education.

CBM works with partners, members of the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC) as well as UN bodies, Global Campaign for Education (GCE) and others to advocate for inclusive education for all, including learners with disabilities. One result of such collaboration is the IDDC research entitled: '#Costing Equity: The case for disability responsive education financing’  which representatives of UNICEF, UNESCO, the Education Finance Commission, IDDC, Disabled Persons Organisations, permanent representatives to the UN of Austria and Finland launch today, 17th October 2016, at the UN General Assembly.
 

CBM’s involvement in the report

Sian Tesni, CBM Senior Advisor for Education and co-coordinator of the IDDC Inclusive Education Task Group (IE TG) is part of the advisory team and the report Steering Committee. “This report is a collective wake-up call to all of us about the urgency of the situation and how desperately we need to join together to share knowledge, best practice, and resources as well as build capacity, collect data, document and research different models of practice to start to make things better,” explains Sian Tesni. CBM will also support the dissemination of the report.
 

#Costing Equity: findings and recommendations in brief

Findings:

• An estimated 65 million primary and lower secondary school aged children in low-middle-income-countries have disabilities, half of whom are out of school (Education Commission, 2016).
• Many more miss out on ECDE.
• Disability is strongly associated with poor primary school completion in Latin America, Asia and Africa (Mitra et al., 2013).
• Cultural barriers keep children with disabilities out of school, as do systemic and pedagogical barriers (untrained teachers, inaccessible school infrastructure and materials).
• Girls, young women and persons with particular impairments, including intellectual disabilities, face the most severe educational inequities (LeFanu, 2014; Trani et al., 2011)’ (cited in #Costing Equity brief report).

The report surveyed 9 leading bilateral and multilateral education donors in respect of their approach to disability-inclusive education.

Report conclusions in brief

Inclusive education needs:

• Governments and donors to urgently prioritise education for children with disabilities.
• Billions of dollars of income from the world’s poorest countries is being lost through lack of schooling and employment for huge numbers of persons with disabilities.
• Funding, data and expertise among both national governments and global donors—even including long-standing supporters of these issues.
• Global Partnership for Education (GPE) to develop a new financing window or facility for disability-inclusive education to grow additional financing and ensure that donor resources are better targeted to disability-inclusive education- providing technical support to countries, innovation grants as well as large-scale evidence generation.