Investigating the cost and budget impact of inclusive education in Cameroon -

Main objectives

To contribute to the existing knowledge base on disability inclusion in education by determining the cost of making schools inclusive for children with disabilities, and the budget impact of scaling up inclusive education in Cameroon

Summary

With funding from Irish Aid, Sightsavers has been providing technical assistance to the Ministry of Education (MINEDUB) in Cameroon since 2014. This included a pilot project for disability-inclusive education (2017-2020), covering four demonstration schools in the central and far north regions.

To support the roll out of inclusive education in Cameroon, Sightsavers conducted a cost and budget impact study in 2021. The specific objectives included:

Determining the costs of making primary schools inclusive for children with disabilities, using real data from the demonstration project implemented by Sightsavers and the Government of Cameroon
Analysing the budget impact of rolling out inclusive education in Cameroon using different scenarios

Added value of the study

Understanding the costs of making schools inclusive for children with disabilities, and assessing the affordability of scaling up interventions, will help inform government budgeting and planning of inclusive education and support the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream government primary schools in Cameroon.

Policy and practice implications

Having established demonstration programmes in four schools, Sightsavers and MINEDUB now intend to scale up inclusive education provision to 69 schools, one in each district and in each region of Cameroon. This costing study identified the types and amount of costs that will need to be met for this scale up, based on a set of minimum standard activities for inclusive education.