According to UNICEF, children with disabilities are 25% less likely than other children to attend early childhood education and 49% more likely to never have attended school. An estimated 95% of the 53 million children under five with disabilities who are in low- and middle-income countries face particular disadvantages, with poor affordability, availability and accessibility of services for early child education. Additionally, the lack of systemic frameworks, standards and regulations for pre-primary teachers inhibits scaling of differentiated play-based pedagogies and coordination systems that have proven valuable for disability inclusion.

This project is generating knowledge on the evidence and capacity gaps in scaling the impact of early interventions for boys and girls with disabilities through quality, inclusive early childhood education systems in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. It explores how to support children with disabilities through inclusive early childhood education systems with relevant coordination mechanisms and links with health and social work sectors. The project aims to define systemic frameworks, pathways, standards, and regulations to enable teachers to adopt inclusive and differentiated play-based pedagogies and coordination systems for disability-inclusive educational services in humanitarian contexts. It seeks to shape investment cases around emerging priorities around inclusive early child education to strengthen pro-equity strategies in Education Sector planning and financing. The project is also developing an early child education tracker to monitor progress countries make in establishing quality inclusive systems.