Children with disabilities in the Global South are one of the most marginalized groups in this world. While education enables them to escape from poverty, their schooling and learning status remains unclear due to a lack of comparable and comprehensive data. However, a new round of international household surveys overcomes this issue. Thus, I aim to understand their schooling and learning status and characteristics using the social and medical models of disability with the novel dataset from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Ghana. I analyze these datasets using the linear probability model, logit model, and household-fixed effects model. The first part of my study examines the associations between disabilities and schooling/learning among school-age children. While disabilities are negatively associated with all aspects of schooling and learning in Bangladesh and Pakistan, it is negatively associated with learning and private school attendance only in Ghana. Thus, while the negative associations between disabilities and learning and private school attendance are observed consistently, the degree of negative associations between disabilities and public schooling differs across three countries. Accordingly, even though children with disabilities are one of the most marginalized groups of children in the Global South, global education stakeholders should scrutinize if it is true in their targeted countries to provide better education policy support. The second part analyzes whether factors predicted by the medical and social model of disabilities modify the associations between disabilities and education among school-age children. Some factors predicted by the social model of disability, such as household wealth, household location, and sex of a child, slightly modify the associations between disabilities and some aspects of education. However, factors predicted by the medical model, such as severity and type of disability, modify the associations. Especially, the negative associations are significant and large among those with severe disabilities and both types of disabilities listed and not listed in the Washington Group Short Survey. Further, although the definition set by the Washington Group does not count children with mild disabilities as children with disabilities, mild disabilities are slightly negatively associated with learning. My findings suggest that global education stakeholders should provide support to those with significant disabilities (severe or multiple) to ensure their schooling. At the same time, global education stakeholders currently work on learning poverty and learning loss, but even children with mild disabilities should be prioritized to realize their targets.The third part scrutinizes if the associations found in the first and second parts can be observed even among pre-school age children. Findings between school-age and preschool-age children are similar. Although disabilities are negatively associated with access to early childhood education and child development, the degree of the associations differs across the countries. Further, compared to the factors predicated by the social model of disability, those predicted by the medical model are more significantly negatively associated with early schooling and learning. My findings indicate that global education stakeholders should address the educational needs of children with disabilities even before their primary school entrance.
Read
