Challenges to inclusive education for girls with disabilities in Tigray

Ensuring inclusive education is crucial not only for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and contributing to global GDP, but also for upholding education as a fundamental human right and an indispensable means for realizing other human rights. In Ethiopia, enrollment rates for learners with disabilities remain alarmingly low. This issue is particularly pronounced in Tigray, a region severely impacted by a war that disproportionately impacted people with disabilities, school infrastructure, and educational materials and assistive technologies like hearing aids and computers with screen readers.

Over the past 5 months as an Echidna Global Scholar, I have undertaken research to understand the barriers and supports affecting access, learning, and participation for girls with disabilities living in high-poverty communities within post-conflict Tigray. The findings of the research help identify gaps in current policies and provide actionable insights to enhance the effective implementation of inclusive education policies.

Multiple barriers create a continuum of education exclusion

Girls with disabilities in Tigray experience exclusion across a continuum that goes from the complete denial of access to limited participation and learning.

Total exclusion of girls with disabilities from schooling

On this end of the continuum, girls are locked in their homes and/or are prevented from going to school. My research shows that this is due to stigma, extreme poverty, and/or physical barriers. Teachers, directors, and students reported that many girls with disabilities are forced to spend their lives hidden behind doors because of fear of community criticism, as disability is still considered a “curse,” and parents keep girls away from the eyes of the community so they will not bring “shame” to the family. Respondents and participants revealed that fear of sexual violence, rape, or forced marriage—especially prevalent in contexts of high poverty and conflict—is also reported to lead families to isolate girls with disabilities for their own “protection.”

In Tigray, particularly in hard-to-reach areas characterized by extreme poverty, families are unable to afford necessities like food for their daughters with disabilities. In these cases, the costs of uniforms, educational materials, and school fees keep girls with disabilities out of school.

Many girls with disabilities are further denied access to education due to inaccessible school facilities and the physical challenges they face in commuting to and from school. For students living far from schools, the journey is fraught with obstacles like gorges, cliffs, valleys, ditches, and rocky terrain. This is particularly pronounced for those traveling on foot due to the lack of transportation services. Construction work along school routes often creates additional hazards. These changes in the landscape can cause girls to sustain injuries, increasing the risk of additional disabilities or even life-threatening harm.

In school but excluded from full participation in educational spaces and activities

Girls with disabilities who are present in school are often told—through words or actions—that they cannot or should not participate in school activities. They report being excluded from school activities on the basis of the belief that they are “inferior” to nondisabled students. A key informant from the civil society sector shared that some teachers treat girls with disabilities as objects of sympathy, which they feel results in unequal treatment, lowered expectations, and fewer opportunities for meaningful participation. A school director also described how teachers suggest segregation instead of inclusion, generalizing that girls with disabilities “lack” necessary skills and abilities.

Additionally, girls with disabilities often face prejudice and discrimination from their peers in school environments. This mistreatment was described by parents and girls as frequently including physical abuse, insults, social exclusion, theft of educational materials, and discouragement. These acts of bias and discrimination may come from fellow students, even other girls with disabilities, leaving them feeling discouraged and demoralized. The research revealed that discriminatory and demoralizing attitudes toward students with disabilities also persist among some parents of students without disabilities, who might refuse, for example, to allow their children to study alongside students with disabilities.

In school but excluded from meaningful learning

The girls and teachers included in this study stated that lack of support from the educational bureau and school administrators was a key barrier to meaningful learning, even when girls were in schools. Girls with disabilities reported that school administrators refused to provide accommodations that could significantly improve their learning experience, like allowing additional time for note-taking, providing tutorial classes, moving students with disabilities from the back to the front of the class, or relocating classrooms from upper floors to ground-level rooms. Such refusals reflect an ongoing lack of commitment to creating an inclusive and supportive learning environment at the government and school leadership levels.

In addition, we found that inadequate learning materials, insufficient teacher training, and limited budget allocation impeded learning for these girls. Many girls and teachers reported that the lack of inclusive learning materials, such as Braille and sign language interpreters, severely limited girls’ ability to engage in learning activities. The shortage of teachers trained in inclusive education was also considered a significant pedagogical barrier. Teachers who participated in the research revealed that in Tigray, there are very few teachers with special education training; most schools in this study lacked such trained professionals altogether. Even when trained teachers were available, they were often assigned to teach nondisabled students, leaving them with limited time and resources to support girls with disabilities. Whether trained in special education or not, school directors admitted that most teachers lacked the time and skills to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

Lastly, the government budget does not support inclusive education for girls with disabilities. The current monthly budget allocated for both boys and girls with disabilities is only 14 Birr (approximately $0.11) per student with disabilities. This amount is insufficient to provide the types of supports that would guarantee provision of assistive technologies and paid readers. The shortage of funding also inhibits schools’ capacity to make facilities accessible for girls with physical disabilities and to provide supplementary aids and services for girls with intellectual disabilities. Research respondents, including key informants from the educational bureau, confirmed that the budgets allocated by the federal, regional, and district-level governments are inadequate to make education truly inclusive for girls with disabilities in the region.

Recommendations

Despite the aforementioned barriers, there are insufficient efforts to improve inclusive education from parents, community, students, teachers, school administration, and government. Hence, ensuring access to education for girls with disabilities by eliminating physical, societal, and economic barriers to schooling is necessary by specifically taking the following steps:

• Increase public awareness and combat stigma by promoting community engagement.
• Address poverty and economic barriers by providing financial support for schools and girls.
• Provide safe learning environments that ensure schools are safe for girls with disabilities.
• Strengthen teacher training.

These measures would ensure adequate legal and policy frameworks for inclusion of girls with disabilities.

Photo source: GPE/Kelley Lynch via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0