[Children singing] [Birds chirping]
[Voiceover] Nearly 240 million children around the world
are estimated to have a disability
and 49% of children with disabilities are more likely to have never attended school.
This can be due to a lack of accessible facilities,
learning resources that don’t accommodate their specific needs
and teachers who are not trained to support learning for all children
- including those with disabilities.
Through a grant from the Inclusive Education Initiative
or IEI, the World Bank is supporting the Government of Rwanda
to make sure that children with disabilities
are provided with equal opportunities to learn.
One critical aspect of ensuring inclusive education
is making sure that students can access school facilities.
The biggest challenge we had at this school was parents and children's perception.
The second challenge was infrastructure.
[Voiceover] Through technical guidance from the
from the Inclusive Education Initiative,
the World Bank’s Rwanda Quality Basic Education Project
was able to build 126 double-story schools
equipped with ramps, more than 1200 inclusive lavatories,
and about 1100 accessible hand washing stations.
Previously, 3 or 4 students would have to share a single desk
and kids would stumble on my son’s leg.
Now that the new classrooms have been built,
there is no more squeezing and he can use the improved toilets
now because he no longer has to squat.
When my daughter started going to school,
I was worried about how she would manage to use the washrooms,
all children deserve getting education.
They built adequate toilets for the children with disabilities;
they gave us a building with ramps
[Voiceover] But accessible infrastructure alone is not enough.
Once the children are in school,
their teachers need to have the appropriate training,
teaching resources and support
to facilitate learning for all students
through inclusive pedagogies
and learning environments.
Across the country,
primary and secondary level teachers
are being trained on inclusive education
as part of their mandatory
continuous professional development courses.
The training we had about inclusive education changed our perception.
The approach we use with children with disabilities is no longer the same.
Children with disabilities are comfortable around others
because other children consider them as their peers.
[Voiceover] Publishers in Rwanda
are also being trained
and incentivized
to produce accessible digital content
for inclusive education.
Both children with and without disabilities are taken into consideration when writing.
Making a plan and budget for a book now includes online publishing
so that children who are blind or visually impaired but can hear are able access it,
and we also make sure we produce adequate books
for blind children who learned how to read braille.
This is a new element that was added
to the budget of our books after the training.
Parents have also changed their perception
because they now send their children to us.
Previously, they used to believe that children with disabilities couldn't go to school.
I am very happy that she is being ranked third in her class,
and I believe her teachers contributed a lot to her success.
My son tells me that he will be a doctor
and treat other children that have the same disability
just like the doctors treated him