Iran: Schools block enrollment of children with disabilities

Discrimination against children with disabilities must end; inclusive education with the provision of necessary facilities must be guaranteed.

The Human Rights Campaign in Iran and Human Rights Watch announced in a joint report released today, coinciding with the start of the 2019-2020 academic year, that children with disabilities face significant discrimination and barriers in accessing education.

The 47-page report, “Like Other Children: Children with Disabilities’ Lack of Access to Quality, Inclusive Education in Iran,” documents discrimination and barriers to education for children with disabilities in the country’s education system. The report finds that one of these barriers is the mandatory “Health Screening for New Students,” which can completely deprive children of education. Other barriers include inaccessible school buildings, discriminatory attitudes among school administrators, and a lack of adequate training in inclusive education methods for teachers and school administrators.

“Denying children with disabilities from accessing education in an inclusive environment adds to the social stigma that millions of people with disabilities in Iran face daily,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign in Iran. “Educating children with disabilities in the same environment as their peers improves the quality of learning for all children and benefits society as a whole,” he added.

Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Campaign interviewed 37 people in Iran for this report, including children with disabilities and their parents, disability rights activists, and government officials. The research follows a joint report by the two organizations in 2018. The previous report documented discrimination and lack of accessibility for people with disabilities in Iran, stereotypes and stigmatization, mistreatment by some government officials and employees, and barriers to access to transportation and medical care.

Children with disabilities have the right to an inclusive and quality education, an education system in which children with disabilities and children without disabilities study together in mainstream schools, with access to necessary supports. The two organizations state in their report that inclusive education plays a key role in reducing social stigma and promoting the rights of people with disabilities throughout their lives.

The Iranian education system forces all children to participate in a discriminatory testing scheme. The “educability” of children is determined based on the IQ score obtained from the child in this “health testing scheme.” Children who score low on this test are forced to study separately in special schools. Children with the lowest scores are labeled “uneducable” and are completely deprived of education.

In this report, the mother of a seven-year-old blind child who also has communication problems described her experience of her daughter's physical health and educational readiness assessment and diagnosis of being "uneducable": "The day they told me they couldn't even enroll my daughter in an exceptional school was one of the worst days of my life... I want my daughter to go to school like other children. I had bought all the school supplies for her, but during the assessment session, my daughter didn't answer any questions, and the man in charge of the assessment said that she wasn't teachable. I was crying the whole way home when I was taking my daughter home."

Children with disabilities who enroll in schools also face a variety of barriers. These barriers include inaccessible buildings, classrooms, and restrooms, or the lack of assistants and other supports. The government should ensure that children with disabilities have access to mainstream facilities, including the support they need in the classroom and school building. This could include assistive devices such as hearing aids or educational content in different formats, including Braille or audio.

The lack of such support can place a heavy burden on families. Some parents in the report said they had to accompany their children to school, carrying them up and down stairs or helping them with reading and writing.

Inaccessibility and lack of conventional facilities in schools can also lead to children with disabilities dropping out of school or forcing them to continue their education in schools far from home or even in special boarding schools away from family and community.

According to government statistics, only 150,000 school-age children with disabilities were enrolled in schools during the 2018-2019 school year, while more than half of these were in special schools, separated from other students. According to international estimates, the number of school-age children with disabilities in Iran is about 1.5 million.

In recent years, the Iranian government has taken steps to improve access to education for children with disabilities, including significantly increasing funding for special education and establishing accessibility standards for newly constructed or renovated school buildings. The government has also expanded its support for children with disabilities in public schools by providing educational content in accessible formats, including Braille or audio.

However, due to the lack of a comprehensive approach to ensuring inclusive education across the entire education system, these measures are not sufficient to ensure that children with disabilities have access to education on an equal basis with other children. Iran has ratified the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Both conventions guarantee the right to quality education without discrimination for all children. In addition, under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, governments must ensure accessibility and reasonable accommodation to support the quality education of children with disabilities.

“The Iranian government’s approach to educating children with disabilities leaves many of them marginalized,” said Jane Buchanan, deputy disability rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately end the Early Childhood Health Screening Program, which is preventing children from accessing education, and take steps to ensure that all children with disabilities are in public schools alongside their peers.”

Source: Human Rights Campaign