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Charities warn that disability is biggest barrier to education

Sightsavers International and World Vision are today warning the government that disability is the biggest barrier to an education for children in the developing world. More significant than gender, wealth or rural/urban residence, work on disability needs to be prioritised if 40 million children are going to have a chance of an education.

This week is the Global Campaign for Education’s Action Week and the charities, both members of the campaign, are supporting the campaign’s call for more teachers and for increased action to be taken to create better teachers – teachers who are given the training and support they need to teach every child, including disabled children. 
 
Support for education, such as announced by the Chancellor Gordon Brown recently, must urgently take account of disability issues. The charities are calling on the UK government to develop, and provide the resources to implement, a detailed strategy for bringing disabled children in developing countries into education. Without such a strategy the targets of getting every child into school by 2015 will not be met.

More than a third of the 115 million children who are unable to go to school in the developing world are disabled. Only 2% of all disabled children receive an education. Ironically these children are most at risk of social exclusion and exploitation; for them the risk of spiralling further into poverty is even greater.

“In developing countries children with a disability have little or no chance of an education. These children have a right to an education and at the moment the government is looking at embarrassingly low marks for their efforts to change this,” says Caroline Harper, Chief Executive of Sightsavers International.

“The UK government can no longer ignore the most marginalised in society,” says World Vision’s child rights policy adviser, Philippa Lei. “By failing to address this issue, we are denying millions of children their right to an education – one of the most important factors in ensuring a different life for those in poverty.”

This year sees the finalisation of the UN International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which highlights the rights of disabled people to education. Given renewed international efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education and Education For All, this is a crucial moment.

 

Contact: Michelle Akande from Sightsavers on 01444 446686 or 07775 928253 or Anna Ridout at World Vision on 01908 244421 or 07725 372867

Notes to editors:

1. The GCE is a coalition of NGOs, which promotes education as a basic human right and mobilizes public pressure on governments and the international community to fulfill their promises to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people, in particular for children, women and all disadvantaged, deprived sections of society.

2. Each year the GCE has a Global Action Week, which launches a campaign to help realise the above. This year’s campaign ‘My Friend Needs A Teacher’ highlights the urgent need for 15 million more teachers (www.sendmyfriend.org).

3. The Global Action Week, which commences on April 24th – April 30th kick starts the campaign, which will run through to July.

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