Inclusive Education Landscape Assessment in El Salvador, Colombia, Haiti, and Honduras

• In Event: Improving Implementation in Disability-Inclusive Education

Proposal

This presentation will focus on presenting the findings from an inclusive education landscape assessment (IELA) in four countries. The assessment had two main purposes: to provide updated and comprehensive information about the main barriers to generating and accessing data on marginalized groups’ enrollment in school and education outcomes in the target countries; and to identify what policies, practices, and school environments (i) create barriers to equitable access to quality, equitable, and inclusive education and (ii) work to mitigate those barriers. A mixed-methods approach was used to conduct the IELA.

The IELA aimed to help donors in the LAC region to understand to what degree marginalized groups are accessing the education system, why their access may be limited, how they are performing, and what is affecting their performance. Ministries of Education, donors, and implementing partners will use the findings and recommendations from this study to adapt policies and programs and to consider how to better target education interventions to marginalized groups in the future.

The team used a synthesis of available literature and descriptive statistics of secondary data available for each country, combined with a multi-case study drawing upon key informant interviews (KIIs) and System in a Room (SIR) workshops with stakeholders. The inquiry functioned at two levels: 1) a broad overview of trends on inclusive education across the four countries, and 2) a multi-case study that includes country-level cases of data, policies, practices, and other factors around inclusive education from within these countries. This presentation will share the findings from the IELA highlighting similarities and differences between countries and the reasons those differences may be present, in addition to identifying gaps and solutions for the region as a whole as well as individual countries.

Authors

• Carla M Doolin Paredes, DevTech Systems

• Siham Bojji, DevTech Systems