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Learnings from use of Washington Group Short Set questions to identify functional difficulties among children in Pakistan’s Annual School Census

Mon, March 24, 9:45 to 11:00am, Palmer House, Floor: 7th Floor, Dearborn 2

Proposal

Background: In the context of a global education crisis, children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable, their needs often creating barriers to educational access or success. Currently, most countries, including Pakistan, don’t have disability-disaggregated education system data, rendering children with unique additional needs invisible and uncounted – perpetuating marginalisation and exclusion. A core challenge is the absence of a standardized, practical approach to identification of children with disabilities and their needs within educational settings.
In response to the need for disability-disaggregated educational data to measure progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 – inclusive and equitable quality education for all children – Pakistan has prioritised strengthening educational system data on children with disabilities. We share learnings from Pakistan’s integration of four of the six standardised disability questions, the Washington Group Short Set (WG-SS), in the 2023 Annual School Census (ASC).
Objectives: This work documents challenges and learnings from the Pakistan ASC’s use of the WG-SS, in relation to data collection, data quality, data analysis, and data use, to support further refinement and strengthening of disability data within the ASC and broader Education Management Information System (EMIS).
Method: We present findings from an ongoing mixed methods research study of the ASC WG-SS rollout in late 2023. Study components comprise:
- Documentary review of ASC forms, training and guidance materials, reports, and notes from meetings, stakeholder orientation sessions, and master training sessions during the WG-SS ASC preparations and roll-out.
- Secondary analysis of 2023/2024 WG-SS ASC data from all provinces in Pakistan, exploring functional difficulty prevalence, and variations in prevalence by school, class, sex and geography.
- Key informant interviews (KII) and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with federal and provincial stakeholders, headteachers and schoolteachers, exploring practical experiences with data collection, analysis and use.

Findings: Initial findings highlight extent of preparatory work required for school-based disability data collection at this scale (covering over 150 000 public schools education over 21 million children). There is a tension between the time and resource requirements of collection of the four WG-SS question used, and stakeholder demands for inclusion of a wider range of disability domains, and higher levels of data disaggregation. Details of implementation varied substantively across the four provinces, with some challenges identified in adherence to data collection guidelines. In particular, inappropriate use of school-level screening questions, some changes to question wording, and limited collection of sex-disaggregated. Prevalence of functional difficulties in the ASC data appears to be notably lower than in other sources of data collected using WG question sets. Our initial findings will be further refined and deepened by ongoing data collection and analysis through to late 2024.
Conclusions: Standardised tools and guidance for disability data inclusion in national educational data systems are essential to informed decision making, and protecting educational access and equity for children with disabilities. However, this study highlights important questions and considerations about investing in scaling use of WG questions, relative to investment in individual learner records, and strengthening of screening, referral and clinical assessment pathways.

Authors