Inclusive Education Initiative Newsletter #5

Transforming Education for Children with Disabilities

August, 2020 | Issue #5

Dear Inclusive Education Initiative (IEI) Disability-Inclusive Education Community of Practice Members,

We hope this issue of our newsletter finds you healthy and well. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have wide-reaching impacts across the globe and many schools are still closed, many learners continue learning from their homes while other schools are beginning to reopen. New protocols are in place to keep learners and their teachers safe; however, there is a lingering fear of what might result from bringing students back together in the classroom given the uncertainty of the virus.

The IEI has been working hard to address the educational, social needs, barriers and issues for children with disabilities during COVID-19 and has recently published an issues paper, “Pivoting to Inclusion: Leveraging Lessons from the COVID-19 Crisis for Learners with Disabilities”. We held a Global Seminar on Tuesday, July 28^th amongst World Bank global directors, UNESCO GEMR colleagues, technical experts from Nepal and Kenya, and representation from Organizations of Persons with Disabilities.
We wanted to take the chance with this newsletter to provide you with all the materials linked to this issues paper including links to the paper and the global seminar as well as materials referenced during the event. As usual, we also include links to upcoming webinars and events, recent publications, and blog posts all focused on disability-inclusive education.

If you have any questions about the issues paper or any of the materials shared here, you can either email us at iei@worldbank.org or join our LinkedIn Group and post questions directly there. We welcome your feedback, questions, and own work that will encourage further discussion.

With best wishes,
The Inclusive Education Initiative Team

IN FOCUS

The IEI team has developed an Issues Paper, “Pivoting to Inclusion: Leveraging Lessons from the COVID-19 Crisis for Learners with Disabilities” a resource for governments, implementation agencies, and multilateral agencies that provides guidance as education delivery is rethought and planned in response to COVID-19 and as schools reopen. The Issues Paper focuses on the following objectives:

Addressing education, social needs, barriers, and issues for learners with disabilities at a global, regional, and country-level during the COVID-19 crisis.
Recommending practices for education and social inclusion, and reasonable accommodations utilizing the twin track approach and principles of Universal Design for Learning.
Influencing education and social policy, planning, and response for persons with disabilities

Our global seminar took place on Tuesday, July 28^th and was a rich discussion focusing on the following:

Global Reflections from the Global Education and Monitoring Report team on the inclusion of learners with disabilities during COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
Regional reflections on the usefulness of the issues paper with country representatives from Nepal and Kenya considering education, digital technology, and social inclusion and protection.
Discussion from Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) regarding barriers to accessing remote learning and solutions for learners with disabilities during COVID-19.

More information on the event can be found here.

We were able to introduce Jozi! Jozi is excited to finally return to school, especially because it means seeing her best friend, Wazi. As fun as it is to see her best friend once more, Jozi understands that they must see other at a 6-feet distance. She goes on to offer us some crucial information on safe practices before entering the classroom: through practicing social distancing, sanitizing her hands, having her temperature checked, and wearing a face mask.

Finally, we coordinated with the Human Capital Project on the launch of the Human Capital and Disability brief. The Human Capital Project is predicated on the importance of investing in all people. This brief outlines the barriers faced by persons with disabilities at different points in the lifecycle as they strive to purse their human capital goals. It describes the whole-of-government approach needed for disability inclusive development to take place and outlines what the World Bank will do to support action now.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Diverse Storybooks: Inclusive Practices to Grow Children’s Book Collections
Wednesday, August 26, 2020 at 1:00pm EST

Childhood literacy development in a globally diverse population requires an equally diverse collection of children’s books so that every developing reader can see both their experiences reflected in a book, and have books present a window to the world beyond their own. You are invited to register for Room to Read’s upcoming online event ‘Diverse Storybooks: Inclusive Practices to Grow Children’s Book Collections’ on Wednesday, August 26, 2020 at 1:00pm EDT. This event will draw on Room to Read’s global storybook collection of more than 1600 titles in 42 languages to discuss the importance of inclusive storybooks to support education for all children.

Global Education Learning Series: Disability Inclusive Education Successes and Lessons Learned
Tuesday, August 18 at 9am EST

This session brings perspectives from two USAID missions (Malawi and Nepal) working to strengthen learning outcomes for children and youth with disabilities in low-resource settings. The subject matter experts will provide a comparative analysis across their diverse contexts and facilitate a conversation about challenges and opportunities that have emerged during implementation.

COVID-19 and girls with disabilities: A safe, inclusive return to school
Thursday, August 20 at 9am EST

Building on the Framework for Reopening and the new UNESCO GEM report, the “COVID-19 and girls with disabilities: A safe, inclusive return to school” webinar will support ‘back to school’ efforts for a safe, inclusive return to school for all learners. As governments across the world seek to get education systems back on track following prolonged school closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this webinar brings a focus to learners with disabilities, and the particular challenges that girls face. Each presentation will amplify experiences, learnings and recommendations from a diverse range of organizations and expertise, with the shared goal of ensuring that girls with disabilities do not become further marginalized in education through this pandemic.

KNOWLEDGE HUB

Inclusive Futures is about finding what genuinely works, so we can transform knowledge into radical new approaches to inclusive development policy and practices.

Down Syndrome International has launched The International Guidelines for the Education of Learners with Down Syndrome. Please find the announcement with the link to the guidelines here.

As an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Innovation Development Directorate (IDD) at Education Above All is happy to introduce the Activity Bank for Disabilities, an activity bank developed in collaboration with experts in order to support continued development and learning for those with different needs and abilities that require additional and specialized support. The resources are designed for NGOs, schools, educators, parents and students in the nearly half of global households that are not connected and for those that have moved to online-schools to supplement their learning.

UNICEF has published “Producing Disability-Inclusive Data: Why It Matters and What it Takes” to provide general recommendations that can be applied through a combination of judgement and careful decision-making during the various stages of the evidence-generation process. They also wrote blog post “Collecting data in the age of COVID-19: Will persons with disabilities be left out?” to discuss the importance of this new publication.

FROM OUR MEMBERS

Hayley Niad from Inclusive Development Partners shared the following blog post: “Kinjojo Primary School: A Case Study in Excellence”. It demonstrates a success story of school leadership and teacher excellence in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) implementation from a school in rural Rwanda.

Rebecca Curley from United World Schools spoke as a panelist on webinar, "Every Child Counts: Inclusion in the age of Covid-19". This was a valuable opportunity to share innovative education practices during a challenging time for schools around the globe. The panel reflected on the importance of teachers, which is perhaps only beginning to be recognized by some during this pandemic, and shared their hopes for student's futures. United World Schools' education team explained their key strategies for overcoming multiple layers of disadvantage to ensure all children can continue to learn and we heard how these are being put into practice in Myanmar.

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