School enrolment and learning outcomes for children with disabilities: findings from a household survey in Pakistan

Abstract

This paper presents findings from household data collected as part of the Annual Survey of Education conducted in rural Punjab in 2015, which included questions on disability developed by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics. Data reported here focuses on the disability status of children aged 5 to 16 years, their schooling status and learning outcomes on basic reading and maths tasks. Our findings highlight that children who were identified by their carer/mothers as having moderate to severe disabilities were less likely to be attending school and had lower levels of learning on basic reading and maths tasks, than their peers who were not identified as having any difficulties in functioning. More importantly, our findings also suggest that being a co-resident/sibling in a household with a child with moderate to severe disabilities was associated with lower levels of basic reading and numeracy for the co-residents/siblings compared to other children. We conclude by highlighting important policy considerations and identifying areas of future research.