Report
by Nidhi Singal and Hannah Ware
In 2019, a report published by the Education Commission; Transforming the Education Workforce: Learning Teams for a Learning Generation noted that an increasingly diverse student population needs a deeper engagement with a diversified teacher workforce. The report highlighted the need for new approaches to ensure routes into teaching are accessible for underrepresented groups, including those with disabilities. However, discussions on teacher diversity in countries around the world tend to focus on race, gender and ethnicity with very little attention being paid to other factors such as disability.
Since the 1990s, while considerable attention has been placed on developing inclusive schools (for example Ainscow, 1999), very little attention has been given to the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the education workforce. The overall objective of this exploratory project was to provide a snapshot of the experiences of English language teachers with disabilities in four purposively selected ODA countries where the British Council currently operates. This was done to better inform the British Councils’ inclusion of teachers with disabilities within their work on English for Education Systems. The countries included in this small-scale exploration are Nepal, India, Rwanda, and South Africa.
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