Costing inclusive education of children with disabilities: Analysis of expenditures of an inclusive education programme in Senegal

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Innovations in inclusive education policy to practice: How to make inclusive education a reality in low- and middle-income contexts

Proposal

The UN CRPD states that children with disabilities should have access to “an inclusive, quality and free” primary and secondary education, with “effective individualised support measures.” However, the number of children with disabilities not attending school remains high. Inclusive education is often considered financially challenging for resource-poor settings, but there is little real-life data to make accurate budgetary estimates. The study sought to identify the incremental expenditure of including children with disabilities in mainstream public primary schools in Senegal, West Africa, collecting from schools in suburban districts of Senegal capital, Dakar, where a total of 187 children with disabilities - primarily blind or had severe low vision, were enrolled in general education primary schools. The expenditure analysis was conducted retrospectively using accounting systems of the partners involved in the pilot. The analysis was incremental, so that only expenditures that were directly related to the Inclusive education intervention were included.
This presentation will share an in-depth analysis of expenditures of an inclusive education program in one country in Sub-Saharan Africa (Senegal), including guidance on how to make projections of the resources required to scale up inclusive education. In doing so, it will present how annual expenditures were allocated and how projections can be made of the resources required to scale up inclusive education in Senegal.

Author

• Elena Schmidt, Sightsavers