Disability, Poverty and Education

Nidhi Singal

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415824712
• eBook ISBN: 9781317850151
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is a succinct and distinctive presentation of current research addressing educational issues in relation to children and young people with disabilities in Southern contexts. Even though people with disabilities are disproportionately over-represented in the majority world, there is a lack of texts which bring together empirical insights highlighting the unique socio-economic and cultural realities of these contexts and the ways in which these have shaped developments in education. This book provides a comprehensive and critical overview of a range of issues, such as the dilemmas in conceptual translations, analysis of international aid and national policies, evaluation of various educational interventions, and issues interrogating the purpose of education.

Bringing together various research projects conducted in eight different countries, this book successfully captures a unique spread of cross-cultural issues. It was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Inclusive Education.

INTRODUCTION

Disability, poverty and education: implications for policies and practices

Growth will not, by itself guarantee that most people in a country have the chance to live lives of dignity and fulfilment. A healthy society is one that takes care of all its members, and gives them a chance to participate in decisions that affect their lives.

(Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, 2000)

Disability is a global issue. This rather simplistic statement subsumes within it a magnitude of complexities. Uneven economic and political development across the globe, alongside varied historical, social and cultural understandings of human difference, means that impairment and disability are understood and experienced very differently by people living in different societies. Equally significant are the variations within a society where the experience of being a person with disability is further convoluted when differing combinations of structural factors (such as caste, gender, religion, etc.) and life cycle factors (being young or elderly, household composition, etc.) are accounted for. Even though these structural factors and the various intersectionalities are significant and have a profound impact on the lives of people, there is a great deal of evidence which suggests that broad commonalities continue to mark the lives of people with disabilities, which is illustrated in the significant deprivation that people with disabilities face as a result of their status of being disabled.

Over the last decade or so there has been a growing realisation, and hence greater urgency, that humankind cannot meet its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals unless the rights and needs of people with disabilities are taken into account. The Disability, Poverty and Education symposium organised at the 10th UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development was an endeavour to bring many of these issues into mainstream debates on education. This special issue brings together some of the papers presented at this symposium with a particular focus on examining issues in the context of the Global South covering countries across the Asian and African continents.

Disability and poverty: cyclical and multi-dimensional association

DFID (2000, 1) notes that ‘disability is both a cause and consequence of poverty’. Growing evidence suggests that being poor dramatically increases the likelihood of being born with an impairment. Being poor also increases one’s probability of becoming impaired and then disabled. This is not really surprising as people living in poverty have limited access to basic health care, have insufficient and/or unhealthy food, poor sanitation facilities, and an increased risk and likelihood of living and working in hazardous conditions. The World Health Organisation (WHO 1999) estimates that more than 500 million people, or 7–10% of the world’s population, are disabled by impairments that are preventable or treatable. This observation is supported by a 2001 report ‘The Indian Child’ published by Child Relief and You (CRY), which lists factors such as communicable diseases, infections in early childhood, nutritional deficiencies and inadequate sanitation as being the most significant factors causing impairments. All these factors are preventable and treatable, but are most likely a reality for people living in poverty. Similarly, since people with disabilities are systematically excluded from basic health care services, political and legal processes, formal/informal education and employment, they are likely to have significantly reduced income-generating opportunities, thus leading to poverty. Therefore, people with disabilities are usually disproportionately found amongst the poorest of the poor. Elwan (1999) suggests that people with disabilities may account for as many as one in five of the world’s poorest. Yeo (2005,1) provides an even more disturbing picture, stating that, ‘50,000 people, including 10,000 disabled people, die every day as a result of extreme poverty’.

However, it would be naive to assume that as people and countries get richer the rates of disability will reduce. Rather there is evidence to suggest that, with economic development, there is an increase rather than a decrease in the proportion of a population with disabilities. This is largely due to factors such as increased survival rates from disabling accidents and disease, and increasing life expectancy (Elwan 1999). Therefore, even as national income grows, total incidence of disability may rise, and may even be greater than in poorer countries. Nonetheless, in all societies at any stage of development, the poorest sections of the population are at greatest risk of becoming disabled rather than richer ones. Thus, while disability is a development issue, it is not an issue only for developing countries.

An additional dimension in the relationship between disability and poverty is the greater likelihood of not only individuals with disabilities, but also their families continuing to remain in the ‘inequality trap’ (World Bank 2005). This intergenera-tional transfer of deprivation¹ is most stark in collective societies where there is a cascading impact of an individual’s disability on her/his family unit (Singal 2007). Research suggests that the average income is significantly lower for households with a disabled member, as they are more likely to have lower savings, higher debts, and lower levels of land and assets ownership (PRAXIS 1999).

Additionally, the indirect costs of disability in terms of the burden of care falling on family members, especially in developing economies with weak state provided welfare network, is also very significant as it takes valuable time away from earning daily wages and/or schooling. For instance, it has been reported that in Nicaragua family members spent on average 10 hours a day caring for a disabled family member, significantly impacting on their employment prospects and home production (World Bank 2005). Similarly, Hoogeveen (2004) noted a significant ‘education deficit’ in Ugandan households headed by a disabled person, as children in these households received less education. While this deficit could be attributed to children being pushed into adult carer roles, it could also be due to the reduced ability of the household to afford school fees because of the direct costs of disability.

Not only is there an increased likelihood of intergenerational transfer of economic deprivation but it is also likely to be the case that in managing their day-to-day survival poor families with a disabled member do not have as much time to build social networks and hence have fewer mechanisms of support and limited social capital. Furthermore, societal perceptions of stigma and fear associated with disability, which is commonly regarded as the result of a curse, past sins, etc., may further exclude families and reduce the number of relationships and networks that they can actually establish. Thus the costs incurred are not merely economic, but a range of associated costs in terms of unmet capabilities and forgone opportunities both at the level of the individual with disabilities and her/his family are evident.

Breaking the cycle of deprivation

Braunholtz (2007) notes that people living in chronic poverty have two important exit routes, namely high dependency on their own labour (in the absence of financial and material assets) and formal education, which improves the quality of their labour. When examining these routes in relation to people with disabilities, it is clear that neither of these routes is particularly viable. For example, people with disabilities are more likely to be prevented from becoming economically active, not because of the inherent quality of their condition, but more because of the discrimination and societal perceptions that they encounter related to their impairment. In India people with disabilities have lower employment rates than the general population and this rate actually fell from 42.7% in 1991 down to 37.6% in 2002, a period when the employment rate for the general population rose (World Bank 2009). A similar picture emerges across the developing economies where persons with disabilities are more likely to work in manual and lower-skilled occupations and less likely to work in managerial, professional and high-skilled occupations. This marginalisation in the labour force impacts on their earning potential.

The second route, focused on formal education, identified by Braunholtz is of particular relevance to the debates and discussions entailed in this special issue. Threaded across the collection of papers is a strong belief in the empowering and enabling role of education, which is supported by evidence collected from young people with disabilities living in India, in the paper by Singal et al. which is part of this special issue. A belief which is also evident in the crucial place accorded to education in all international declarations on development.

Indeed the role of education in preparing people with disabilities to lead a good quality of life, however defined, should not be underestimated. UNESCO (1996, 5) noted that education should serve a bigger purpose for children and young people,’… while education is an ongoing process of improving knowledge and skills, it is also – perhaps primarily – an exceptional means of bringing about personal development and building relationships among individuals, groups and nations’. This report elucidated the ‘four pillars of education’: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be, as a powerful framework for examining the continued role of education throughout an individual’s life. However, the exclusion of people with disabilities from and within the education system remains a significant concern. Children with disabilities face limited opportunities (due to lack of trained teachers, restrictive curriculum, physically inaccessible buildings, etc.) and negative perceptions (stigma, low expectations, etc.) about their inability to participate in the education system. This is captured not only in statistics highlighting their very low enrolment and progression rates (Filmer 2005), but also in a growing number of accounts illustrating their lack of engagement and participation within the school setting.

If education is the important determinant of individual’s income, health (and that of their children) and in shaping a person’s capacity to interact and communicate with others, inequality in education will contribute to inequality in all other important dimensions of well-being, and hence must be addressed. Another important dimension in this discussion is the ever growing concern with the nature of the educational provision provided to children and young people with disabilities. Here debates anchored in the area of ‘inclusive education’, widely known to the audience of this journal, not surprisingly, take centre stage. Inclusive education is rightly acknowledged by many as a global buzzword with little-shared understanding of what it entails, and how to achieve it. These dilemmas are reflected in many of the contribu-tions in this special issue.

The special issue takes a systemic view on education – across different levels, ranging from international aid and policy-making to developments in the classroom. Paul Lynch, Grimes et al. and Sulochini Pather in their papers provide rich insights into ways of enabling teachers to respond to increased diversity in their classrooms. They focus on working alongside teachers to illustrate how they can be supported, while also acknowledging the many challenges in the process. Each paper in its own right provides a novel perspective on the issue. Paul Lynch critically engages with the role of itinerant teachers (ITs) of children with visual impairment in Uganda, in supporting inclusive practices. Peter Grimes and colleagues celebrate the many successes and challenges in developing a national project aiming to support the inclusion of disabled students in Lao PDR. While Sulochini Pather’s research in a Black rural secondary school in South Africa where learners with disabilities were being included by default makes a strong case for understanding and sharing of such good practices amongst the wider teaching community.

Others have taken a macro perspective by focusing on fundamental issues entailed in the cultural and contextual conceptualisation of constructs, such as disability and inclusive education. Jane Anthony’s work in Ghana explores the many tensions in designing and implementing national educational policies for students with intellectual disabilities. She discusses the tensions in Ghanaian understandings of disability as shaped by cultural beliefs, norms and history, while also trying to account for the socio-political pressures to adhere to large-scale international movements such as Education for All (EFA). This issue also resonates in the paper by Maya Kalyanpur who critically examines the various tensions and dilemmas faced during her work in supporting the Ministry in Cambodia to develop an education system which is inclusive of children with disabilities. Susie Miles, using methodologically innovative tools, explores the various understandings of inclusive education, and implications for practice, amongst teachers in northern Zambia and Tanzania.

Others such as Nora Ellen Grace and Parul Bakshi, Philippa Lei and Juliette Myers, and Trani et al. discuss issues of disability and development in areas that are currently underexplored, issues which directly speak to the EFA commitment. For instance, Nora Ellen Grace and Parul Bakshi in a comprehensive review of findings from a global literature search on literacy of adults with disabilities in developing countries note the near absence of a focus on this group in international discourses and make a powerful case for their inclusion in both general and disability-specific adult literacy programmes. Philippa Lei and Juliette Myers analysis of the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) notes the lack of sustained and systematic action on part of the international community in addressing the educational needs of disabled children. In then-research Trani et al. note the oversight of humanitarian and development agencies working in countries affected by conflict in responding to the educational needs of children with disabilities. The authors argue that as a result these children risk not only missing out on educational opportunities, but are also excluded from critical child survival initiatives, thus increasing their vulnerability.

In putting together this special issue a strong endeavour was made to focus on empirical research and studies which acknowledged the need for a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced in including people with disabilities into the educational mainstream. However, in editing a special issue focusing only on ‘disability’ issues, I am conscious of the disparagement of some who might argue that doing so reinforces the separate nature of the field. Nonetheless, highlighting the very close nexus between disability, poverty and development, predominantly overlooked in policy and research, is essential if mainstream debates on development are to become disability aware. As educationists our constant endeavour should be to seek out mechanisms through which these associations can be truncated, without being apologetic about focusing on a particular dimension of marginalisation.

Through these papers and the discussions that they stimulate, the endeavour is to put in place foundations for a research agenda on disability in the Global S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• 1. Introduction: Disability, poverty and education: implications for policies and practices
• 2. Paradigm and paradox: Education for All and the inclusion of children with disabilities in Cambodia
• 3. Conceptualising disability in Ghana: implications for EFA and inclusive education
• 4. Exploring understandings of inclusion in schools in Zambia and Tanzania using reflective writing and photography
• 5. Evidence on inclusion and support for learners with disabilities in mainstream schools in South Africa: off the policy radar?
• 6. Inclusive educational practices in Uganda: evidencing practice of itinerant teachers who work with children with visual impairment in local mainstream schools
• 7. The Lao PDR Inclusive Education Project 1993-2009: reflections on the impact of a national project aiming to support the inclusion of disabled students
• 8. Illiteracy among adults with disabilities in the developing world: a review of the literature and a call for action
• 9. Making the grade? A review of donor commitment and action on inclusive education for disabled children
• 10. Disability, vulnerability and citizenship: to what extent is education a protective mechanism for children with disabilities in countries affected by conflict?
• 11. The enabling role of education in the lives of young people with disabilities in India: achieved and desired outcomes
• Index