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Delbee lives in Sükhbaatar, Mongolia. She has hydrocephalus, a chronic neurological condition that affects her mobility and concentration. At times, she experiences fatigue, headaches and difficulty sustaining attention in class, which can make learning and participation more challenging. She visits a school that has benefited from the Enabling Equity to Advance Learning project, which includes inclusive education, school feeding and blended learning.

Delbee’s teacher has a Bachelor in inclusive education, other teachers have benefited from in-service training. Delbee’s parents have participated in training to support Delbee’s learning. Additionally, blended learning, which initially emerged as a priority for the Ministry of Education and Science during the COVID-19 pandemic, is now a permanent feature of the curriculum, helping the school to offer more flexible and responsive approaches to teaching.

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Inclusion International published tools for driving inclusive education. Inclusion International is the network of people with intellectual disabilities and their families. To support the families in the Inclusion International network, they developed two toolkits, available in English, French, Spanish, and Swahili. One toolkit is about strengthening family advocacy, the second toolkit is about strengthening local family-based advocacy. The toolkits aim to help families and local organisations and partners that collaborate with them.

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UNICEF has published its new Digital Education Strategy. The purpose of the new Digital Education Strategy is to dramatically accelerate results for learning and the global impact of UNICEF’s work on learning gains and skills acquisition. To achieve major global progress, all the digital education work of UNICEF will move to a focus on improving learning outcomes through evidence-based approaches, in alignment with UNICEF’s education strategy – Every Child Learns. It will have a particular focus on bridging digital divides, including gender, disability and linguistic digital divides, and on children both in and out of school. Multiple transformative shifts are required to address these challenges and close the learning and skills gap. It is imperative to implement innovative and cost-effective approaches to expand access to quality education and ensure equitable learning opportunities.

Download and read the strategy.

This blog describes how funding used for a resource room in a school has led to practical changes. The room is used for guidance and counselling, it also helps students who need additional assistance. It is where 14 students with hearing impairments receive daily sign language instruction, and 23 students with intellectual disabilities benefit from tailored teaching adapted to their pace and needs.

For many refugee students, the resource room provides additional language support as they adjust to learning in Kinyarwanda, English and French. Building on these results, the government plans to expand the model by constructing resource rooms in more than 1,500 schools across the country.

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A group of researches under the University of Cambridge UK’s Cambridge Network for Disability and Education Research used soundscapes to better understand experiences of teachers with disabilities and their journey to school in India. It recorded teachers’ negotiating prices for transport, walking with a cane, negotiating obstacles on the way.

“These recordings reveal a sobering reality that pedagogical labour is compounded by the physical struggle of the commute for these teachers. While interviews focused on teachers’ classroom practice, the soundscapes exposed the other half of the struggle – the gruelling negotiation of simply reaching school.”

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Post-Covid, the challenge in India is achieving an equal access to education for all, where the word ‘access’ seems a heightened concern. Looking at the previous statistics from the country, it is noted that the digital access in terms of a device (computer/laptop), teacher (who is proficient of taking an online class), and digitally-prepared individual (a student with digital preparedness) was only 9 per cent. With only four years to reach the 2030 Agenda, it is an uphill challenge to meet the SDG 4 goals with regards to quality education in India. The pandemic has further worsened the progress towards quality education. The pandemic highlighted significant socio-economic and gender disparities that influenced access to and quality of education. These disparities were more pronounced in economically-weaker sections and among female students, affecting their ability to participate in and benefit from digital education.

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