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girls and children with various forms of disabilities. It is estimated that a large proportion of out of school
children are those with disabilities. As of 2013, there were over 16,500 pupils with mild disability that are
enrolled in mainstream basic schools across the country.
FACTS ON O UTCOME, IMPACT AND EFFECTIVENESS
1. In general, like in many other countries, there is a lack of the collection of disaggregated data, which makes
impact assessment particularly difficult. In addition, as the law is of recent adoption, no review or evaluation
report was available.
2. A doctoral thesis of 2014 stated that the analysis of data concerning the accessibility to inclusive education for
children with disabilities and involving about a total of two hundred and eighteen respondents from two
selected districts in Ghana (Ga East and New Juabeng), showed evidence of acceptance of children with
disabilities into the mainstream schools, but that there are factors that posed challenges for complete practice
of inclusive education, including stigmatization, discrimination and cultural beliefs, teacher’s competence and
attitudes, parental involvement, unavailability of resources and inadequate policies. Because of these
challenges, many children with disabilities are not benefit from education.
TRANSFERABILITY, SCALABILITY AND COST-EFFICIENCY
Inclusive Education has been or is being adopted by most countries within the framework of Universal Design for
Learning and Child Friendly School Concept of the United Nations. It can be adopted by countries or organizations that
have not adopted it yet. Ghana adopted it on pilot basis for a while before finally accepting to implement it on a full
scale.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT (WITH ADDITIONS FROM THE ZERO PROJECT TEAM)
Next steps to be realized during 2015-2016, are to seek more partnerships and more support of the policy in terms of
financial, and material resources; to engage Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assembles (MMDAs) to support the
community-based rehabilitation programme, to mainstream Inclusive Education into their medium term development
plans and to provide adequate financial allocations; to get support from NGOs and development partners; to establish
new assessment centres in all regions and districts that conduct all year round assessment of all learners in schools; and
to ensure accessibility and child friendliness of schools and that appropriate equipment and assistive devices are made
available. Informants also pointed out that the current pupil teacher ratio is one teacher to 71 pupils, which is making
inclusive education impracticable; more classrooms need to be built and more resource teachers need to be recruited.
The policy itself stated that the education system continued to marginalize and exclude children, since many school-age
children remain out of school (more than 25 percent of out-of-school-children aged 6-14 has at least one form of
disability), some of those children with SEN who are in school are not learning successfully, while others drop out of
school without completing. All challenges the policy’s implementation seeks to address.
Generally, though the situation appears difficult due to critical barriers such as lack of practicing policies and
unavailability of resources facing the education system in Ghana (“far from complying with acceptable standards”).