Transport and Access to Inclusive Education in Mashonaland West Province, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Lack of accessible transportation is considered a major barrier to education for children with disabilities-children already far less likely to attend school. While millions of children face challenges with getting to school, including long distances, poor roads, lack of transport and safety issues, these can be compounded for children with disabilities. Yet there is little data from low and middle-income countries on the nature and extent of this exclusion, or on attempted solutions. This paper explores some practical options for improving transport as part of providing inclusive education for children with disabilities in low income countries, as well applying concepts of transport-related social exclusion in such contexts. The paper reviews a project designed to improve sustainable transportation to school for children with disabilities in four districts in Mashonaland West Province, Zimbabwe. The most common solution was three wheel motorbikes (tricycles) with trailers. Whilst not been unproblematic, teachers, parents and the wider communities overwhelmingly agree that they have supported children with disabilities to attend school. Obviously tricycles are not the only component needed for an inclusive education system, but they are a start. The paper also highlights some crucial gaps in current approaches, key among which is the fact the most government departments work in silos. Whilst inclusive education is strongly supported by the Zimbabwean Government, there is a lack of joined up thinking between transport and education ministries. Without stronger collaboration across ministries children with disabilities will continue to experience avoidable barriers and transport-related social exclusion.

Disability, Mobility and Transport in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Thematic Review

“…14]. However, regardless of the cause, it is unequivocal that barriers to accessing inclusive transport are found across most countries, in a range of contexts and for a spectrum of impairments, and result in a loss of education, employment and overall wellbeing (see for example, on reduced access to education [1,14]; for employment [15,16]; wellbeing more broadly [17]).…”

“…While there has been some research that links a lack of transport to barriers to other services for adults and children with disabilities, such as education [1] or healthcare [2], there has been much less focus on the actual mode of transport used, or the journey itself. So, despite a lack of transport often being cited as a reason for lack of inclusion of adults and children with disabilities, there is surprisingly little evidence which either quantifies this lack or translates what this lack of access means to people with disabilities in their daily lives.…”

Transport Policy and Social Inclusion

“…While the majority have a European focus, with four papers addressing transport and social inclusion in UK (Clark & Curl, 2016;Marshall et al, 2016;Pooley, 2016;Velho, Holloway, Symonds, & Balmer, 2016), one in Sweden (Lättman, Friman, & Olsson, 2016) and one in France (Purwanto, 2016), three explore different elements of the African (Alando & Scheiner, 2016;Kett & Deluca, 2016) and Asian (Thynell, 2016) contexts. From a methodological perspective, the papers present a variety of approaches (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods and a computer software simulation) drawn from a wide range of disciplinary areas, including sociology, history, gender and development studies, economics, science and technology studies, accessibility planning, engineering and transport studies.…”

“…The papers engage with a variety of transport users providing useful insights into the experiences of interest groups such as women (Thynell, 2016), disabled children (Kett & Deluca, 2016) and wheel-chair users (Velho et al, 2016). Marshall et al (2016) present a software design tool named HADRIAN, which can evaluate designs (e.g.…”

“…The second of these two papers focuses on providing accessible transport to school for children with disabilities in Zimbabwe (Kett & Deluca, 2016). The authors report on a participatory, community-led project that helped a number of schools in Mashonaland West Province to identify, procure and operate a bespoke transport service for school children with disabilities: trailers pulled by tricycles, produced locally and affordable for the communities involved.…”