Closing gaps between girls with and without disabilities in Kenya’s Lake region

Leonard Cheshire’s Inclusive Education project in Kenya’s Lake region successfully closed gaps in attendance, transition, and learning between girls with and without disabilities. The project was funded by the Girls Education Challenge, the largest fund for girls’ education in the world.

The project supported 2,800 children with disabilities, including 2,100 girls, across 50 primary schools, 25 secondary schools and 8 vocational institutions in Kisumu East, Siaya, Homabay, Migori, and Kuria East.

At schools, the project trained teachers, school leaders, and county officials on inclusive education, provided sanitary pads, assistive devices, and school fees, and established Child to Child Clubs to support girls with disabilities to improve their life skills through peer coaching and individualized support. In communities, the project worked with caregivers through Parent Support Groups to increase awareness about inclusion and reduce stigma.

For girls with disabilities in project areas, gender related barriers intersect with barriers associated with disability. These include a lack of access to assistive devices, non-inclusive teaching practices, low levels of life skills, safety concerns in and traveling to school, distance to school, non-inclusive school facilities, and economic hardship.

Transition and Attendance

One of the most significant successes of the project was maintaining and improving the transition rates for girls with disabilities. Despite facing significant barriers to staying in and attending school, by Endline, girls with disabilities were equally likely to successfully transition as girls without disabilities. In the project region, while 91.7% of girls with disabilities transitioned to the next level of education, 89.2% of girls without disabilities did so. Differences were not significant.

Despite a trend in declining transition rates amongst girls without disabilities throughout the project’s duration, and fueled by COVID-19, girls with disabilities were able to sustain their transition and attendance rates. Between Midline and Endline, transition rates fell by 10% for girls without disabilities but held steady for girls with disabilities.

Through Child-to-Child Clubs, the project invited role models to speak to children with disabilities about their successful transitions.

After girls with disabilities completed primary school, they were provided with guidance counseling to support them and their families to choose the most relevant transition pathway, whether that be to secondary school or vocational training.

Girls with disabilities facing economic hardship, who chose to continue to secondary school and vocational training, were provided with bursaries by the project to support them to afford the costs of school and training.

Results from qualitative interviews suggest that the project supported girls with disabilities to attend school by facilitating a welcoming environment, improving accessibility, and reducing stigma. Interviews also suggest the role of Child to Child Clubs in growing intrinsic motivation to support school attendance: clubs provide opportunities for girls to interact with peers who do not have disabilities and develop life skills. A club facilitator explained that sometimes girls host club sessions on their own, which further builds their agency and supports their motivation:

“There are times they conduct their discussions on their own… they can discuss their issues as children without any interference from the teachers. [Through this] they have gained self-esteem...they can express themselves and know that it is their right to be in school. They also understand they need to have education as well as others”.

Teaching and Learning

Project activities positively influenced learning outcomes for girls with disabilities. Girls with disabilities improved literacy scores by 10% between Baseline and Midline and 7% between Midline and Endline, on average.

Improvements were supported by inclusive education practices, teacher training, individual attention from teachers, improved self-esteem, empowerment to participate in class, and community safety, respect, and acceptance.

Teachers were able to provide specific examples of accommodations and modifications made to make lessons more inclusive, including the use of individual education plans, providing targeted and individualized support to children with disabilities, adjusting the physical classroom environment, adjusting curriculum expectations to meet children at their level of ability, and relying on a wider range of teaching strategies.

Despite Covid-19 school closures, across domains reviewed, lessons at Endline were more likely than lessons at Midline to adopt inclusive education practices at statistically significant levels.

Relevant stakeholders all report that the project strengthened relationships between teachers trained, EARCs, and parents to develop individualized strategies to support children with disabilities and provide a holistic perspective on their needs.

Some barriers remain

Despite these significant project achievements, the endline identified several barriers which will continue to influence educational outcomes for girls with disabilities in the region.

High chore burdens continue to make it difficult for some girls to attend school. Women and girls are more likely to have to perform duties such as cooking, fetching firewood and water, cleaning, and babysitting. Economic hardship and COVID-19 related shocks in the project area affected household incomes, exacerbating chore burdens in some cases. As caregivers spend more hours outside the home, this has led to an increase in the amount of time some girls spend doing chores.

Compared to girls with disabilities who spend less time on chores, girls who spend half the day or more doing chores had: lower attendance levels and experienced smaller attendance improvements over the course of the project.

While the prevalence of corporal punishment has decreased, after findings at Midline and due responsive targeting by the project, a large proportion of girls still experience corporal punishment administered by their teachers.

At Midline 31.7% of girls with disabilities reported being physical punished by their teachers in recent weeks compared to 19.7% at Endline. At Midline girls with disabilities were more likely at statistically significant levels to have experience corporal punishment than girls without disabilities and this was no longer the case at Endline.

Some teachers reported adopting alternative strategies to manage disruptive behaviors. While others reported shifting where the corporal punishment takes place, to more private settings. This pervasive practice should be addressed in future project designs.