Asked by Lord Low of Dalston To ask Her Majesty’s Government
what assessment they have made of the #CostingEquity report on
disability responsive education financing, published by the
International Disability and Development Consortium, which outlines
the steps and resources necessary to deliver the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goal 4 on inclusive education....Request free trial
Asked by
-
of Dalston
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have
made of the #CostingEquity report on disability responsive
education financing, published by the International
Disability and Development Consortium, which outlines the
steps and resources necessary to deliver the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goal 4 on inclusive education.
-
The Minister of State, Department for International
Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, we welcome the IDDC’s report. Disability has been
underprioritised in the past and, as a result, insufficient
global resources have been allocated to education. We
recognise the challenge and are steadily taking steps to
scale up our own response and encourage others to do more.
-
of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I am very grateful for that Reply. The Minister
will be aware that more than 32 million children with
disabilities in low and middle-income countries are out of
school and denied an education. That is why 40 NGO leaders
have endorsed a joint call to action to invest in
disability-inclusive education, in which they have agreed
to make education for children with disabilities in
developing countries a top priority and to urge donors to
increase funding for inclusive education and make
disability inclusiveness a necessary criterion for
accessing funding for all education programmes and
projects. Can the Minister assure the House—and from his
Reply I am very hopeful that he can—that the UK Government
will follow the same approach and support these
recommendations?
-
I am very happy to give that assurance, and I pay tribute
to the noble Lord for his work on the steering group of
this very valuable report. We are still digesting a lot of
its conclusions—but, undoubtedly, the one that we should
focus on is that 90% of children in the developing world
with disabilities are not in school. Clearly, that is
contrary to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities and to at least goal 4—and probably goals 8
and 10—of the sustainable development goals. It is
something that we are committed to responding to, and I
will be very happy to speak to the noble Lord afterwards to
outline some of the thoughts that we have in this area
about what we hope to bring forward in response to the
report.
-
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
In response to the report on disability from the
International Development Committee three years ago, the
Government adopted a disability framework. What progress is
being made in evaluating the data to identify how many
disabled children in particular are affected in countries
where DfID has programmes and to what extent is DfID
targeting them, as well as on employing disabled staff in
the department to ensure that there is a real connection
between the rights of disabled people and the need to serve
their needs?
-
One thing that was identified in the report to which we
have just referred was the lack of data about what the need
was and what the responses were. We have a disability
framework in the department, which guides everything that
we do across our aid strategy. We are looking at finding
better practices for what is working; for example, we are
working in Kenya and Uganda with Leonard Cheshire to try to
find better examples of what is working on the ground to
address this problem.
-
The (CB)
Is the Minister looking at how many of these children are
in institutional care and whether it is always appropriate
for them to be so? Many of them could be better placed in
foster or kinship care. Is that a matter that the Minister
might look at?
-
A number of excellent charities are working in this very
area. It is certainly something that we are sympathetic to;
disability has been one of the core criteria for UK Aid
Direct, a new round of which has come in. We also have the
Girls’ Education Challenge, which has educated some 46,000
girls with disabilities in schools. The next round of that
project will increase the allocation still further to 15%
of the total fund.
-
(Lab)
My Lords, promoting inclusive education is obviously a key
priority for DfID. The International Development Committee
of the other place recommended that DfID should spend at
least 10% of its budget on that, but it is currently 8%.
What steps is the Minister going to take to ensure that we
reach that target so that we can deliver the promise of the
noble Lord, ?
-
There is a significant financing gap in global education.
The UK is one of the better ones—in fact, the report on
page 26 highlights that DfID was ranked number one by
donors for its disability education as a priority, and
number 2 for its funding overall. The amount is currently
at 8.5%, about £650 million; we also spend about £227
million through multilateral agencies, so I think we are
doing better than most. But with the scale of the problem
that has been identified, we cannot afford to be complacent
and we will certainly keep that under review.
-
(Con)
My Lords, perhaps I may refer to the Minister a charity
called Wheelchairs of Hope. Using old plastic chairs, the
inventors have created strong and sturdy wheelchairs for
the developing world at a cost of somewhere between $50 and
$100 per chair. This has been a great thing for people in
the developing world, especially for young children who
would otherwise not be able to get to school. I suggest
that the Minister has a good look at it. I hope that DfID
might help these children get to school and give them a bit
of mobility which they have not had before.
-
I am very happy to look at that. I also encourage the
charity itself to see whether it would be eligible for the
UK Aid Direct funding round which is in place at the
moment, or the small charities challenge fund, which has
just been launched.
-
(Lab)
My Lords, one noble Lord mentioned earlier the need for DfID
to employ people with disabilities. This is extremely
important: we need their talents and we need them as role
models. What is DfID’s policy? Also, what is its policy
towards other organisations to which it gives grants? It is
extremely important that they, too, employ people with
disabilities.
-
Through the disability framework, we now ask a question about
disability inclusion as part of all business cases. I am very
happy to write to the noble Baroness with specific numbers.
Our annual report was produced last week and the numbers are
listed in it, as they should be. I am sure that there is more
that could be done, but we can take a degree of pride from
the report on what UK aid is doing for those with
disabilities around the world.
-
(Con)
My Lords, this is obviously work of great international
importance. However, does the provision for our own children
meet the criteria that we are recommending for international
communities?
-
The international standard that has been adopted by the UN
recommends that between 4% and 6% of GDP should be spent on
education. In the UK it is currently 5.6%. In many of the
countries that we are helping most, such as Pakistan and
Bangladesh, it is 2.4% and 2.2% respectively, so there is a
lot more that those countries can do themselves—and, of
course, there is always a need to keep spending in this
country under review to ensure that we continue to maintain
our standards.
|
