Access to schools and learning outcomes of children with disabilities in Pakistan: findings from a household survey in four administrative units

ABSTRACT

In Pakistan, children with disabilities face a two-fold disadvantage with respect to education - First, lack of access due to the country's heavily constrained education sector, and second, if they do access schools then the quality of education imparted is questionable. In this paper, we investigate the access to education and learning performance of children with disabilities in four administrative units of Pakistan-Islamabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Merged Region and Punjab. We use household data from the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of 2018, which included questions on disability status of children aged 3 to 16 years, their enrolment in school, and their performance of reading and arithmetic. Broadly, our findings indicate that children with mild disability are more likely to enrol in schools compared to children without disabilities. On the other hand, children with severe disability are less likely to access schools, when compared to their counterparts with no disabilities. In terms of type of school (government, private, religious) access, there are regional differences. In terms of learning outcomes of children with disabilities, we see a small gap between children with and without disability. This paper underscores policyconsiderations for children with disabilities based on the severity of disability faced.

KEYWORDS:

• Children with disabilities
• school enrolment
• learning outcomes

Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous referees, colleagues and support staff at ERUDITE, and participants at various seminars for helpful comments and constructive suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Before schools shuttered their doors as a result of the global pandemic related to the spread of COVID 19 virus, four in five school-age children (3–17 years old) was enrolled in school. However, it is to be kept in mind that children in schools were not necessarily learning, with 617 million children and adolescents worldwide failing to reach minimum proficiency levels in reading and arithmetic (UNICEF 2020).

2 It is estimated that the world economy suffers losses roughly 3–7% of global GDP due to the exclusion of people with disabilities from the world work market. In its annual meeting 2019 in Davos, the world economic forum stressed on the plight of people with disabilities that, ‘there is a need to build a more inclusive society that must include the estimated 1 billion people in the world living with a disability’.

3 The World Health Organisation in 2011 highlighted the lack of data and evidence on people with disabilities in several sectors, including education that hinders a comprehensive plan for understanding their issues and taking action.

4 According to the 1998 census only 2.5% and according to the 2017 census only 0.48% of the population had disability in Pakistan (Arsh and Darain 2019). In the KPK and KPK newly merged districts, this number is estimated to be 10% of the population with disability which comes to roughly 100,000 persons. There is a possibility that this number is under-estimated due to the stigma associated with disability and a reluctance in reporting.

5 For details, see https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/washington_group/index.htm?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fnchs%2Fwashington_group.htm.

6 The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are located in the North West region of Pakistan on the Durand line with Afghanistan. These were previously governed under colonial law of frontier crime regulation (Cyan et al. 2017; Yousaf 2019).

7 Children in Pakistan are engaged in the worst forms of child labour, including in commercial sexual exploitation and domestic work, each sometimes as a result of human trafficking (Bureau of International Labor Affairs 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Neha B. Upadhayay

Neha B. Upadhayay is a researcher and instructor at the Université Paris Est, Créteil and affiliated with the research unit ERUDITE.

Qahraman Kakar

Qahraman Kakar is a researcher at Université Gustave Eiffel and affiliated with the research unit ERUDITE.