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Leaving no one behind in education - A focus on children with disabilities

ADEREMI-IGE, Toyin
KAPUSCINKI DEVELOPMENT LECTURES
November 2020

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This lecture by Dr. Toyin Aderemi-Ige shed light on the educational situation of children with disabilities in low and middle income countries, highlighting how the interaction of multiple discriminatory factors (like gender and disability) results in increased exclusion. The 2030 Agenda sets the commitment to “leave no one behind” and its Sustainable Development Goal 4 calls to ensure inclusive and quality education for all. However, 10 years away from the 2030 deadline, children with disabilities are still significantly excluded from education and, consequently, from life’s opportunities.

 

The event was moderated by Dr. Harlan Koff of the Luxembourg University.

The lecture was followed by a panel discussion with:

  • Catherine Léglu, Vice-rector for Academic Affairs, University of Luxembourg
  • Julia McGeown, Global Education Specialist, Handicap International
  • Graham Lang, Chief of Education at Education Cannot Wait

Ensuring the right to quality inclusive education for persons with disabilities: From commitment to action

UNESCO
November 2020

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The international symposium "Ensuring the right to quality inclusive education for persons with disabilities: From commitment to action", co-organized by UNESCO, the Leonard Cheshire, and the Ministry of Education of Portugal brought together a wide range of stakeholders across the globe to discuss progress, successes achieved and challenges to ensure full participation and access to quality learning opportunities for all learners.

The symposium aims were to:

  • review persisting, as well as new challenges, due to the COVID-19 pandemic that are hindering the fulfilment of the right to inclusive education for learners with disabilities.
  • facilitate the exchange of experiences on factors influencing successful inclusive policies and practices for learners with disabilities and strengthen dialogue and cooperation amongst stakeholders at policy and practice levels.
  • explore how the inclusion of learners with disabilities in inclusive settings can be more effectively addressed by governments with regards to the commitments of Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the CRPD General Comment 4 on article 24, and Sustainable Development 4 SDG 4, to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

The programme included:

Opening session - Accelerating efforts towards inclusive education for learners with disabilities. (Video recording: English - French - Spanish)

Session 1 - From legislation to inclusive practices: Re-designing policy frameworks, funding and monitoring arrangements across sectors for inclusive education for learners with disabilities. (Video recording: English - French - Spanish)

Session 2 - Revisiting the teaching and learning process to ensure access and participation of learners with disabilities.

Session 3 - Moving towards inclusive and safe learning environments, including by addressing violence and bullying against learners with disabilities.
 

Closing session - Rebuilding a Stronger Global Disability Inclusive Education System post COVID-19. (Video recording: English - French - Spanish)

Inclusion and education: All means all. Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report 2020

GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT TEAM
June 2020

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The 2020 GEM Report assesses progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) on education and its ten targets, as well as other related education targets in the SDG agenda. The Report also addresses inclusion in education, drawing attention to all those excluded from education, because of background or ability. The Report is motivated by the explicit reference to inclusion in the 2015 Incheon Declaration, and the call to ensure an inclusive and equitable quality education in the formulation of SDG 4, the global goal for education. It reminds us that, no matter what argument may be built to the contrary, we have a moral imperative to ensure every child has a right to an appropriate education of high quality.

The Report also explores the challenges holding us back from achieving this vision and demonstrates concrete policy examples from countries managing to tackle them with success. These include differing understandings of the word inclusion, lack of teacher support, absence of data on those excluded from education, inappropriate infrastructure, persistence of parallel systems and special schools, lack of political will and community support, untargeted finance, uncoordinated governance, multiple but inconsistent laws, and policies that are not being followed through.

Global education monitoring report, 2020, Latin America and the Caribbean: inclusion and education: all means all

GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT TEAM
LABORATORY OF EDUCATION RESEARCH AND INNOVATION FOR LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN (SUMMA)
UNESCO OFFICE SANTIAGO AND REGIONAL BUREAU FOR EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN (OREALC/UNESCO)
2020

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This regional report on inclusion and education in Latin America and the Caribbean offers a deep dive into the core challenges and key solutions for greater inclusion, in a region characterized for having the largest and most challenging socio-economic inequalities in the world.

In the framework of this report, 29 in-depth case studies from the region covering 8 dimensions of exclusion were prepared. The Report covers access to education of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and Haitians in Dominican Republic; remoteness in Suriname and Brazil; disability in Nicaragua; girls in Peru and boys in Jamaica; sexual orientation in Mexico and Chile; and youth incarceration in Uruguay. It also explores how the Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed and deepened the disparities that already existed in education.

Chapter 2 analyses the role of legal tools in supporting the development of inclusive education. Chapter 3 addresses governance and finance. Chapter 4 discusses the politically complicated issue of how curricula and learning materials are adapted to the principles of inclusive education. Chapter 5 looks at ways teachers can support the case for inclusion, considers their needs, and examines how well governments help them prepare to meet the inclusion challenge.  Chapter 6 examines school-level factors. Chapter 7 examines communities’ crucial role in achieving inclusive education. After these chapters addressing the main inclusion challenges, Chapter 8 looks at them all through the lens of COVID-19. 

Embracing diversity : toolkit for creating inclusive, learning-friendly environments

SHAEFFER, Sheldon
et al
2009

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This updated toolkit consists of 10 booklets each containing tools and activities for self-study to start creating an inclusive, learning-friendly environment (ILFE). Some activities ask readers to reflect on what their school is doing now in terms of creating on ILFE, others guide readers in improving their skills as teachers in diverse classrooms.
The toolkit includes three specialist booklets focusing on including learners with disabilities, positive discipline, and teaching large classes.
The toolkit aims to assist teachers to acknowledge the diverse range of backgrounds amongst students and to build on the strengths of the children. It can be adjusted to the specific needs of each school, classroom and child and should not be read as a 'recipe book'.
The booklets are easy to read and contain tables, illustrations, checklists and examples to illustrate the application of inclusive schools.
Specialized booklet 1: Positive discipline in the inclusive, learning-friendly classroom : a guide for teachers and teacher educators
Specialized booklet 2: Practical tips for teaching large classes: a teacher's guide
Specialized booklet 3: Teaching children with disabilities in inclusive settings
Inrtoduction
Booklet 1: Becoming an inclusive, learning-friendly environment (ILFE)
Booklet 2: Working with families and communities to create an ILFE
Booklet 3: Getting all children in school and learning
Booklet 4: Creating inclusive, learning-friendly classrooms
Booklet 5: Managing inclusive, learning-friendly classrooms
Booklet 6: Creating a healthy and protective ILFE

Advocacy for change : lessons from Guatemala, Brazil, and USA

LEON, Rosario
Ed
2009

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This resource summarises a systematization of advocacy experiences related to the status of youth (in Guatemala), the right to education (in Brazil) and farming (in the United States). The systematizations allowed the actors involved to consider the evolution of the experiences and to identify lessons and insights for future interventions. The Guatemala systematization product was documented in writing and film, the US experience in writing, and the Brazil experience in film

Young voices : young people’s views of inclusive education

LEWIS, Ingrid
2007

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This short film and accompanying booklet students with and without disabilities who have participated in the Young Voices activities, provide their personal perspectives of inclusive education. The schools were partners in inclusive education projects with the Atlas Alliance
This resource would be useful for people interested in inclusive education issues in Eastern Africa

Ideas for working with girls : materials on violence against women, rights, health & sexuality, advocacy and much more...

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S TRIBUNE CENTRE (IWTC)
WOMEN INK
2006

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This CD-ROM contains a resource collection of games, training manuals, workshop guides etc. for teachers, trainers and development workers who are working for and with girls. It includes interactive and participatory training guides and resources on rights, empowerment, violence against women and girls, HIV/AIDS, sexuality and reproductive health and leadership development

Disability, inclusion and development : key information resources

SOURCE INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION SUPPORT CENTRE
December 2005

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This directory of information resources pulls together over 300 of the most practical and useful books, reports, videos, CD-ROMs and websites on disability. It is aimed at organisations working with disabled people in developing countries. Organised thematically, It covers a wide range of issues including human rights, gender, poverty and mainstreaming, as well as planning and management of disability programmes and service delivery relating to children, community-based rehabilitation, mental health and HIV and AIDS. The directory provides a quick reference listing of information resources with clear abstracts and details of distributors and websites, while the CD-ROM contains many published and un-published full-text documents, as well as links to websites for those who can access the Internet. The index of publishers and distributors will be especially useful to resource centres and information services which collect and manage information on disability and development

Learning from difference : understanding community initiatives to improve access to education

EENET
August 2004

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This CD-ROM holds guidelines for an action research project carried out by teachers in Zambia and Tanzania and external facilitators. The guidelines are aimed at people who want to adapt the process for their own communities, and are supplemented with videoclips and links to further information and useful examples. The aim of the research was to encourage teachers to articulate their experience in inclusive education by developing written accounts that could be shared with other countries of the South. The accounts, guides and examples are useful training materials and serve as a stimulus for further reflection

Accessible digital textbooks for all

UNICEF

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UNICEF and its partners are driving an innovative solution called Accessible Digital Textbooks for All, to make textbooks available, affordable and accessible for children with disabilities in all contexts. By adding specific features to digital formats and following Universal Design for Learning principles, textbooks can be made accessible to students who are blind or have low vision, to those who are deaf or hard of hearing, and to those who have intellectual, developmental or learning disabilities, among others. The initiative brings writers, publishers, teachers, organizations of persons with disabilities, technologists and ministry of education representatives together to develop the guidelines needed to produce textbooks in accessible digital formats. They jointly set standards for features like narration, sign language, interactivity and the audio description of images.

 

UNICEF is currently piloting the Accessible Digital Textbooks for All Initiative in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay throughout 2019, 2020 and into 2021. The goal of the pilots is to test and validate the process of creating quality accessible digital textbooks with the ministries of education and different stakeholders using curriculum-based content, and to measure the learning outcomes for children with and without disabilities using them.

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