‘Delivering’ education; maintaining inequality. The case of children with disabilities in Afghanistan

Abstract

Education for children with disabilities in Afghanistan, particularly disabled girls, continues to lag behind despite laudable efforts of the Ministry of Education to promote universal access for all. The opportunity for education constitutes not just a means of achieving learning outcomes but also a space for social interaction, individual development and psychosocial support, which are paramount in Conflict-Affected Fragile States (CAFS). However, many persisting barriers still need to be overcome in Afghanistan to allow education for all and change negative attitudes towards education of children with disabilities. In this paper we argue that viewing education as a basic commodity, which is the widespread practice in CAFS, is not conducive to expanding human freedoms and capabilities. More specifically, through analyses of a national survey, we demonstrate that despite considerable resources, increasing access to education in Afghanistan has maintained processes of marginalisation of the already excluded.

Home based intervention disability program

“…Consistent with literacy rates, significantly more males completed primary school than females in both case and control (19.2% to 8% in control; 25% to 5.6% in participants) ( Figure 20). These results confirm earlier findings that access to school has been and still is higher for male than female -especially lower for girls with disabilities-in Afghanistan despite the enormous effort done to promote education since 2001 (Bakhshi and Trani 2006;Trani, et al 2012).…”

Prioritising the Inclusion of Children and Young People with Disabilities in Post-conflict Education Reform

“…In addition, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states that "State parties should ensure that children with disabilities are not excluded from free and compulsory primary education or from secondary education on the basis of disability" (United Nations, 2006, Article 24). Recent studies have, however, shown that despite ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and introducing domestic policies pertaining to inclusive education, many post-conflict countries have failed to implement or monitor the progress of these policies (Kalyanpur, 2011;Trani et al, 2011Trani et al, , 2012.…”

“…Education reform is nearly always high on the post-conflict agenda and involves both national and international interests. Including children in educational programmes in conflict-affected countries can contribute to economic growth, improve health and well-being (including reducing infant mortality), and promote a more peaceful society of active citizens (Maier, 2010;Trani, Bakhshi, & Nandipati, 2012;Turmusami, 2003). Education can play a large part in reducing poverty and inequality by helping to increase the household income, particularly by improving access to education for people with disabilities.…”

“…It has been suggested that incorporating elements of inclusive education into the short training programmes would increase teachers' abilities to include a child with a disability in the classroom and should be the way forward (Pinnock & Hodgkin, 2010;Trani et al, 2012), although there has been minimal analysis of examples where this has worked in practice. Tesemma (2011) has gone further in his recommendations, stating that what is needed is the introduction of a post-conflict education system which has deconstructed the previous way of teaching and learning and replaced it with an environment in which all students are able to participate and learn through differentiated provision.…”

Education in times of conflict and the invisibility of disability: a focus on Iraq?

“…I have not included Psycinfo or Medline in Table 1 as none of the articles (75 and 38, respectively) were relevant. Only four of the 77 articles identified through the search were directly relevant to the focus of this article (Radoman, Nano, and Closs 2006;Tomlinson and Abdi 2003;Trani, Bakhshi, and Nandipati 2012;Trani et al 2011). While all literature searches are limited by the number of publications that can be identified and acquired within the strict time limits of a review, this search provided strong evidence that academic research on the inclusion of disabled children in education in the context of conflict and emergencies is virtually non-existent.…”