Sharing lessons learnt from including learners with disabilities in learning assessments in Tanzania

• In Event: Measuring reading and language skills of learners with disabilities: Formative and summative assessment case studies from East Africa

Proposal

The project, through this submission, would like to share its contributions to the international efforts to fight for the rights of persons with disabilities by promoting national education inclusion, in line with the principle of ‘Leave no one behind’.

The project is a six-year programme to improve the quality of education in pre-primary and primary and to improve transition between primary and secondary schools across nine regions. Part of the programme’s ambitions are to mainstream inclusive learning assessments and improve identification of children with disabilities, in line with the Washington Group guidance.

From 20 Feb 2023 to 6 March 2023, the project team conducted a baseline survey in its nine regions in which EGRA/EGMA learning assessments were modified and adapted to include learners with disabilities in 180 sampled schools. The survey targeted 1.080 students to conduct the learning assessments, of which 432 with disabilities. Children with disabilities were sampled from special schools and schools with SNE units.

The programme succeeded in evaluating children with different disabilities, including physical impairments, intellectual impairments, hearing impairments and visual impairments. The test administration consisted of adaptations and modifications of EGRA/EGMA assessment for each disability type through three different test designs. The enumerators collecting the data were trained by a disability expert organisation and the team designing the tools worked in consultation with a disability and inclusion expert.

The choice of the test to be administered was guided by the specific needs of each student and in consultation with their teachers. Examples of successful accommodations included making the assessment rooms accessible (providing adaptive furniture or/and space for a wheelchair). In addition, any object/tool that the students use in the classroom daily was allowed to be taken into the examination (i.e., toys, etc.). For children with intellectual impairments enumerators were instructed to speak to the child’s teacher and enquire whether the students could understand and communicate back to the enumerators to decide on whether they could take part in the assessments. The tool was also accommodated to make sure all subtasks were untimed for children with intellectual and hearing impairments. For children with visual impairments, the adapted tool with more time was used, with additional accommodations including the provision of a larger font, high contrast versions of stimuli, magnifiers, etc. For blind children, Braille text was printed by an expert from the University of Dar es Salaam, taking into consideration that students were in primary school, so that the printing would adhere the style of primary Braille textbooks. Enumerators were trained to sit next to the children and give them physical cues by placing their hands in the Braille.

Despite all the adaptations and modifications, there were several challenges and lessons learnt from the implementation. The project team hopes to share its experience adapting and modifying the learning assessments with other professionals at CIES to benefit from the debate and recommendations that will come out of the discussions, including lessons learnt from other contexts that can be mainstreamed into more inclusive learning assessment in Tanzania.

Author

• Nicoletta Giulivi, Mott MacDonald Ltd