overty at household level and observance of education rights of disabled children in Tanzania: a case of Morogoro Municipality
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Date
2011
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Sokoine University of Agriculture
Abstract
The majority of children with disabilities in Tanzania lack access to quality education.
Since studies on education rights of disabled children in Tanzania are rare, this dissertation
was formulated to generate empirical information to help policy and decision makers. The
dissertation mainly looks at households’ income levels, resources allocation priorities, and
attitudes of the community towards disabled children. How are these affecting
observances of rights of disabled children? A hundred (100) households and 11 key
informants were purposively selected for the study. A household questionnaire was the
main instrument used to collect data on demographic and social characteristics of
households, wealth status, patterns of resources allocation, and caretakers’ perspectives on
rights of disabled children. Information from the institutions and focused group
discussions were collected through interviews and conversation guided by checklists of
items for discussion. Also reports on children with disabilities from the municipal council,
Sokoine National Agricultural Library, and the Internet were sources of secondary data.
Data were analysed by using SPSS Version 12. For qualitative data analysis, content
analysis was done by grouping responses with respect to differences and similarities
among them. In quantitative data analysis, descriptive statistics employing percentages,
means, and frequencies were computed. This dissertation took one year from September
2009 to September 2010. The study found that there was a significant relationship
between poverty at household level and observance of rights. About 81% of the
households failed to observe the education rights of their disabled children. This caused
150 disabled children to drop out of school, 95 not to join standard I in 2009, 90% to have
irregular school attendance, and 79% to perform not well academically. Basing on the
findings it is concluded that cost sharing in education will increase the burden to the
households and make them poorer. Therefore, there is a need to find ways to ensure that
talents of disabled children are not wasted because they come from poor households.
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Disabled children, Disabled children-educational rights