Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
189
success in preparing an intact legislation for disabled children’s access to education.499 The
steps are clear from diagnosing to distributing children to schools.
However, having the legislation is not enough on its own, it should also be implemented well
on the ground. In this respect, it is necessary for teachers to receive trainings on inclusive
education and that schools have the right infrastructure and are more accessible. In-service
training was found to be associated with increases in awareness and positive attitudes among
teachers towards disabled children in OIC countries like Turkey, Bangladesh and Iran. 500
5. Alleviate the impact of language as a barrier: When children are not taught in their mother
tongue they have difficulties in catching up and achieving similar learning outcomes with
children who can already speak the language of instruction. In this respect, over time many
Sub Saharan African member countries including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali, Mozambique,
Niger and Senegal increased the intensity of local language use in education. 501 Outside of the
OIC, Ethiopia provides primary education in seven different languages.502 In Mali children
attending bilingual schools were found to have a lower likelihood of repeating the year or
dropping out and in Burkina Faso they had a higher passing rate in primary school
examinations. 503 Where it is not possible to provide education these additional languages
governments shouldmake it a priority to expand pre-primary education in the formal language
of instruction so that children coming from minority backgrounds are better prepared for
primary school.
6. Making the education system work better to deliver higher quality results: First it is
necessary to adequately finance the education system. As a result of their 2007 meeting in
Dakar, The High Level Group on Education for All agreed that between 15 and 20 percent of
government budgets should be allocated to education.504 However, this is not the case in many
OIC member countries. An increase in per child spending is correlated positively with higher
scores in PISA but, after a certain spending level is reached, it is the effectiveness of the
education system that matters.505 Hence, while financing is important, it is not enough on its
own to achieve the intended outcomes.
Making schools more accountable of the results that they achieve could improve quality.
Informing parents of the results of their children and of the school overall is one way of
achieving this. This was applied in Pakistan where a school report card intervention was found
to increase learning outcomes of children while also lowering school fees.506 Public-private
partnerships could also be instrumental in increasing the supply of schools while making them
more accountable to the government. Again in Pakistan, a public-private partnership
499 See Turkey case in Chapter 3 for more details.
500 See Section 2.3 part “Interventions addressing disability” fır further details.
501 According to the Intensity of Local Language Use Scoring as calculated in Albaugh (2014)
502 UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) and UNICEF (2015) and UNESCO (2016)
503 Bender, Dutcher, Klaus, Shore, and Tesar (2005) and UNESCO (2010)
504 UNESCO (2007)
505 OECD (2012)
506 Andrabi, Das, and Khwaja (2015)