Inclusive education

Several of our programmes have specific workstreams on inclusive education. In Rwanda, an important element of our Building Learning Foundations (BLF) programme is its focus on inclusive education, seeking to improve learning outcomes for children with special education needs and disabilities. To best support these children, their teachers and their parents, BLF has recruited a cohort of national volunteer Special Needs Education Coordinators (SNECOs) to play a central coordination and implementation role at the district level, make regular school and community visits and support teacher training and development. They work with selected ‘focal teachers’ in schools to lead in-school assessments to ensure that children with additional needs are appropriately identified and assessed and receive tailored support.

Meanwhile, as a result of our TARGET programme in Ethiopia, there has been a marked improvement in social inclusion practices in schools we have worked with, reported by both school leaders and student data. The latter shows growing social acceptance of marginalised groups, such as children with disabilities, in mainstream schools. Intervention schools also showed greater gains than control schools in treating boys and girls equally.

Outside of our programmes, our research teams are also prioritising matters of inclusion in their research, often making special consideration for marginalised groups or learners with disabilities in their research methodologies and findings.