WG/UNICEF Inclusive Education Module (IEM)

About the IEM

Inclusive education is a key strategy to ensure that all children benefit from quality education to develop their skills and realize their full potential. The Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) and UNICEF have developed the Inclusive Education Module (IEM), a set of questions to understand the environmental factors affecting school participation. While the IEM was specifically designed to capture the educational experience of children with disabilities, its questions are applicable to all children, regardless of their disability status. This means that its use will help national decision-makers understand the educational experience of all children.

While not disability-specific, the questions were developed in line with the biopsychosocial model of disability which emphasizes the need to gather information on both individual characteristics as well as environmental barriers to participation for children with long-term impairments. The questions have undergone extensive review by experts to determine the quality of questions being asked and ascertain cultural understanding by respondents. The module was tested across a number of different countries, in multiple rounds, of different formulations of the questions, and showed that the best way to identify barriers to education faced by children with disabilities is to ask about characteristics of all aspects of the school environment for children with and without disabilities.

The IEM contains five modules. The first two modules provide background information on the child’s educational background. The third module provides general information on the school environment. The last two modules capture information about potential environmental barriers to education.

• Child’s background
• School type
• School environment
• Reasons for not attending school
• School attendance determinants

To address inclusion related to disability, the IEM set of questions is designed to be used in conjunction with the Child Functioning Module (CFM). The CFM, released in 2016, provides a population-level estimate of the number of children with functional difficulties. The IEM can be added to any survey that includes the CFM or both can be added to surveys that address education. When used together, the CFM and IEM will enable disaggregation of education characteristics and outcomes by disability status and identify both facilitators and barriers to school participation in order to inform policy to improve full inclusion in education for children with disabilities.

The questionnaire was officially released in June 2024, along with the Child Functioning Module – Teacher Version. The launch of the questionnaires was marked at a side event to the 17^th Session of the Conference of States Parties to the CRPD hosted by UNICEF, the Washington Group on Disability Statistics, and the Australian Government (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).