Beth Sprunt

This paper explores the validity (sensitivity and specificity) of different cut-off levels of the UNICEF/Washington Group Child Functioning Module (CFM) and the inter-rater reliability between teachers and parents as proxy respondents, for disaggregating Fiji’s education management information system (EMIS) by disability. The method used was a cross-sectional diagnostic accuracy study comparing CFM items to standard clinical assessments for 472 primary school aged students in Fiji. Whilst previous domain-specific results showed “good” to “excellent” accuracy of the CFM domains seeing, hearing, walking and speaking, newer analysis shows only “fair” to “poor” accuracy of the cognitive domains (learning, remembering and focusing attention) and “fair” of the overall CFM (area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve: 0.763 parent responses, 0.786 teacher responses). Severe impairments are reported relatively evenly across CFM response categories “some difficulty”, “a lot of dif...

This study investigated the seeing, hearing and walking questions of the UNICEF/Washington Group Child Functioning Module and the inter-rater reliability between teachers and parents as proxy respondents. Cross-sectional diagnostic accuracy study, two-gate design with representative sampling, comparing Module responses to reference standard assessments for 472 primary aged students in Fiji. Receiver operating characteristic curves were constructed to determine the area under the curve and optimal cut-off points. Areas under the curves ranged from 0.823 to 0.889 indicating "good" diagnostic accuracy. Inter-rater reliability between parent and teacher responses was "good" to "excellent". The optimal cut-off determined by the Youden Index was "some difficulty" however a wide spread of impairment levels were found in this category with most children either having none or substantial impairments. The diagnostic accuracy of the Module seeing, hearing and walking questions appears acceptable with either parents or teachers as proxy respondents. For education systems, use of the cut-off "some difficulty" with accompanying clinical assessment may be important to capture children who require services and learning supports and avoid potentially misleading categorization. Given the high proportion of the sample from special schools research is required to further test the Module in mainstream schools. Implications for rehabilitation Identification of children who are at risk of disability in Fiji is important to enable planning, monitoring and evaluating access to quality inclusive education. The UNICEF/Washington Group Child Functioning Module appears to be a practical and effective tool that can be used by teachers to identify children at risk of disability. Children identified on the UNICEF/Washington Group Child Functioning Module as having "some difficulty" or higher levels of difficulty in relation to vision, hearing or walking should be referred for further assessment and services. Rehabilitation services in Fiji need to prepare for greater numbers of referrals as the Ministry of Education increasingly rolls out the inclusive education policy, which includes identification by schools of children at risk of disability.

Pacific Island governments have to report against an increasing number and range of global and regional education indicators that require disability-disaggregated data for monitoring disability-inclusive education. Given the effort required to adapt data systems and build capacity for disability disaggregation, it is imperative that indicators provide optimal information to inform policy and planning. This paper reviews current approaches to disability data collection and disaggregation within Education Management Information Systems (EMISs) across 14 Pacific Island countries. It compares disability-related education indicators from the Sustainable Development Goals, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Incheon Strategy, and the Pacific Education Development Framework in relation to current capacity of Pacific EMISs to report against these. Amongst the countries studied, the most common approach to EMIS disability disaggregation is to categorise children ba...

Fourteen member countries of the Pacific Islands Forum have adopted The Pacific Education Development Framework as a means of improving quality of education across the region. Within this framework, special education and inclusive education are seen as priority areas that endorse a rights-based approach to educa- tion. Aligned with other Pacific regional advances for improving the measurement of the effectiveness of this Framework, is the development of a set of indicators to measure efforts towards disability-inclusive education specifically in the Pacific islands. The aim of this study is to identify existing measures that governments cur- rently employ to report against education outcomes. Data were collected by written responses from relevant ministries in the 14 Pacific member countries to a set of questions specifically developed to address this aim. This paper provides an analysis of these surveys and discusses how these data are informing the development of the indicators to...

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 is to ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ and the targets and indicators for SDG 4 emphasise the importance of measuring outcomes for children with disabilities (United Nations, 2015b). This paper reports on findings from qualitative research investigating Fijian stakeholders’ priorities for measuring success of efforts within a contextually and culturally meaningful process of disabilityinclusive education; that is, achievement of SDG 4 for children with disabilities. The priorities are presented in light of the specific challenges in Fiji to fulfilling this goal. The research presented in this paper is one part of a much larger mixed method study funded by the Australian aid program that aimed to develop and test indicators for the education of children with disabilities in the Pacific (Sharma et al., 2016). Fijian researchers with lived experience of disability undertook key in...

Disability disaggregation of Fiji’s Education Management Information System (FEMIS) is required to determine eligibility for inclusive education grants. Data from the UNICEF/Washington Group Child Functioning Module (CFM) alone is not accurate enough to identify disabilities for this purpose. This study explores whether combining activity and participation data from the CFM with data on environmental factors specific to learning and support needs (LSN) more accurately identifies children with disabilities. A survey on questions related to children’s LSN (personal assistance, adaptations to learning, or assessment and assistive technology) was administered to teachers within a broader diagnostic accuracy study. Descriptive statistics and correlations were used to analyze relationships between functioning and LSN. While CFM data are useful in distinguishing between disability domains, LSN data are useful in strengthening the accuracy of disability severity data and, crucially, in iden...

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an agenda which recognises the importance of action across all scales and sectors to achieve a sustainable future. A bottom-up approach to realizing the SDGs, led by communities, can be achieved through localization – the downscaling of goals to the local level, allowing for heterogeneity and diversity at the local scale. In order to direct decision-making for a sustainable future, local communities require local sustainability pathways to understand potential outcomes under different conditions. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are a framework that can be adapted for use in different contexts. We developed a participatory method to downscale both the SDGs and the SSPs and link them to co-create locally relevant pathways for sustainable futures through the development of a sustainability pathway space. We localized the SDGs and the SSPs through contextual analysis and community engagement, and co-developed Local Sustainability ...