A Child-Centred Care Approach to the Learning Process: Lessons Learned from a Participatory Intervention in Primary Schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan

About 240 million children have disabilities globally. Sustainable Development Goal 4 calls for inclusive and equitable quality education for all, including children with disabilities. Compared to children without disabilities, children with disabilities are more likely to never attend school or to drop out from school due to barriers such as negative attitudes among teachers, parents and peers, lack of trained teachers, inadequate learning materials and inaccessible facilities. Our study examines the effect of a participatory child-centred pedagogy intervention on academic and non-academic learning outcomes of children with disabilities in primary rural schools of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We use an ICF-based disability measure, the Child Functioning Module, to identify children with disabilities. We built a participatory intervention on the ethics of care and the capability approach that aimed at improving the learning process. It did not significantly improve the learning outcomes of children with disabilities compared to non-disabled children. However, we found that children with disabilities overall progressed significantly more than non-disabled children on several learning outcomes while benefiting from a larger reduction in stigma and discrimination. The impact was secured overall for children despite school lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and political unrest in both countries. Therefore, we argue that this type of intervention could potentially improve the inclusion of children with disabilities in school with more time for implementation and circumstances allowing schools to stay opened.