9.1 Householdsection
9.1.11 Education
The percentage of school attendance among disabled members aged 5 years old and above was considerably lower than members without disability; 40.5% vs. 70.8%. The lower school attendance among individuals with disability is found in all age categories.
There is a drop in school attendance among both individuals with and without disability with increasing age, reflecting increased school coverage over the years.
Among disabled persons aged 5 to 10 years, 35% were not attending school (Table 17).
This was much higher than the proportion of non-disabled members of the same age group (5%). For disabled persons aged 11 to 20 years, 30% of them were not attending any educational institutions. More males than females are attending school, a pattern that is even more pronounced among people with a disability.
School attendance differs between the five Development regions. Among individuals with disability, highest attendance is found in Western region, and the lowest in Eastern region. Among non-disabled, the highest and lowest school attendance was found in Western region and in Eastern region. While the difference between groups
(disabled/non-disabled) was found in all five regions, the gap between the two groups varies from 19 percentage points (Mid-western region) to 3.2 percentage points (Western region), most likely indicating variation in practices resulting in different levels of
exclusion/inclusion of individuals with disability in the formal school system.
More males were attending or had attended school, college or university (Table 13) as compared to females. This trend was the same among both disabled and non-disabled persons, with the gender gap being more than 30 percentage points in both groups.
School attendance is further shown to increase sharply with higher socio-economic status.
Table 17. School attendance by age, gender, region and economic group. Age 5 years and above. Percent. N = 18851.
Disabled Control
Total Percent
40.5 71.1
Age group 5-10 64.6 94.8
11-20 69.7 95.3
21-30 57.3 81.9
31-40 43.2 60.2
41-50 30.9 43.8
Disabled Control
Source: Household roster1 School attendance = ever accessed formal primary education, 2SES scale divided into three, see text about socioeconomic status above
As many as 59.5% of disabled aged five years old and above were recorded as “never attended school”, compared to 29% in the control group. The household head or main informer in the household was asked the reasons why household member(s) had never attended school, with lack of money being the main reason for not attending among both
individuals with disability and non-disabled. This explained almost half of the reasons for not attending school among people without disability. Among individuals with disability, shortage of money explained one fourth of the reasons. For more than 20% of people with disability aged five years old and above, the disability was attributed as the reason for not attending. Furthermore, 16.7% of persons with disability stated illness as a reason for non-attendance, as compared to 1.9% of non-disabled. Bearing in mind that health and disability often are associated, close to 40% of disabled non-attendees thus stated their own functional/health status as the reason.
Table 18. Reasons for never attending school by disability status
1 Discrimination in terms of caste, economic status and gender
Number of years at school is shown in Table 19. Firstly, number of years at school is reduced with increasing age among both cases and controls, indicating some positive development during recent years. Secondly, females with disability report substantially
Reasons Disabled Control
% %
Not enough money 40,7 47,9
Failing/underachiever 0,4 0,2
Illness 0,5 0,1
Lack of interest 8,6 12,2
Because of disability 21,0 0,0
School not accessible 13,9 14,9
Pregnancy (female only) 0,2 0,1
Discrepancy1 8,5 15,1
Other (not allowed; lack of knowledge about it; no practice; need to support family for household chores)
3,2 4,2
Do not know 3,1 5,3
Base percent (n) 1255 4819
more years in schools than their male counterparts, while the gender difference is
marginal among controls. Thirdly, there is substantial difference between among cases by Development regions, with particularly high mean number of years in Central province.
There is further substantial differences between the ecological zones with the lowest mean years in school found among both case and controls in the Mountain zone, and the highest in the Terrai zone. There is also a clear SES gradient in that higher
socio-economic status is associated with higher mean number of school years, among both cases and controls. Overall, individuals with disability report lower number of years in school as compared to cases.
Table 19. Number of years at school by age, gender, region and socio-economic
Source: Household roster1 School attendance = ever accessed formal primary education, 2SES scale divided into three, see text about socioeconomic status above
Figure 13 shows firstly that many students drop out of school during primary and lower secondary school (Standard 1 – 9). Secondly, more non-disabled seem to drop out during the first years (Standard 1). There is a tendency among both males and females that individuals with disability drop out earlier than non-disabled. Gender difference is not very clear, although more females drop out during the first three years of education. The highest drop-out rates are found between Standard 2 and Standard 5 for all groups.
Figure 13. Highest grade achieved by disability status and gender. Age 15 years and above (N = 12724)
(The detailed numbers used in Figure 13 is shown in the table below for easier interpretation).
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Percentage
Highestachievedschoolgradebydisabilitystatusand gender(=>15years)
Disabledmales Disabledfemales Controlmales Controlfemales
Table 20. Highest grade achieved by disability status and gender. Age 15 years and above (N = 12724)
Disabled males
Disabled females
Control males
Control females Not completed
Standard 1
4.5 6.9 6.8 8.2
Standard 1 5.4 4.6 5.6 5.8
Standard 2 11.1 8.3 6.7 7.0
Standard 3 10.5 13.2 7.1 7.4
Standard 4 10.9 9.2 9.0 8.0
Standard 5 9.4 8.6 10.2 10.1
Standard 6 5.6 6.9 6.6 6.9
Standard 7 6.2 8.9 7.4 7.6
Standard 8 7.2 7.3 7.7 8.2
Standard 9 8.9 9.6 9.0 9.5
SLC 9.4 5.3 11.5 11.3
10 + 2/IA or eqv 7.2 9.2 6.7 6.5
BA or eqv 2.5 1.8 3.8 3.0
MA or eqv 1.1 0.3 1.7 0.5
Individuals with disability are overrepresented among those with highest achieved school grade at the low end of the scale. This pattern is more mixed and to some extent reversed in the higher grades. The difference is however not very pronounced/systematic except in the lower grades, indicating that many individuals with disability who enter the education system reach the same levels as non-disabled. The urban – rural difference is also reflected in the figure.
Figure 14. Highest grade achieved by disability status and location. Age 15