Inclusive education

Inclusive education was identified as a thematic priority in 2021, with our main objectives set out in our International Strategy.

The First Minister announced in October 2024 that new inclusive education programmes, funded via the International Development Fund, would be delivered through multi-year commitments in Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia (Central Province) and Pakistan.

In April 2025, we also made first-time commitments on disability inclusion at the Global Disability Summit in Berlin.

Watch a video about Scotland’s commitment to accelerating access to education for all.

We are delivering our commitments on inclusive education through four current projects:

The Realising Inclusive and Safer Education (RISE) programme aims to remove barriers to quality education for out-of-school children with disabilities and additional support needs. The programme is being delivered by Link Education International between July 2024 and March 2029.

The RISE project started implementation in October 2024 and involves more than 400 government schools in eight districts in three countries – Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia. Over five years (2024 to 2029), the project aims to support children with disabilities, especially girls and those who are out-of-school, to access a safe and quality education, through Scottish Government funding of up to £1.5m per year.

The project, led by Link Education International, is implemented through local organisations based in our partner countries:

Link Community Development Malawi
School to School International in Zambia
Chance for Childhood in Rwanda

The project:

supports identification, assessment and device provision for children with disabilities
strengthens teacher and leadership training in gender and inclusive education
engages communities and school governance bodies to better support children with disabilities

Progress

This project is now in Year 3, having (as of April 2026) screened around 360,000 children with disabilities or additional needs prior to enrolment in school. The project has also provided around 1,000 assistive devices to children with disabilities, and has supported communities, teachers and parents to engage and support those children.

In Year 2 (financial year 2025 to 2026) RISE reported the following results in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia):

Malawi

A total of 455 children were assessed, with expanded assessments reaching children with visual, hearing, physical, and learning difficulties. 315 assistive devices were distributed, including glasses, hearing aids, wheelchairs, and physiotherapy equipment, in order to support improved mobility and classroom participation.

The project also supported more than 400 school leaders and teachers in targeted districts to strengthen inclusive classrooms and to use data for decision-making. Safeguarding orientations reached more than 500 teachers and leaders to strengthen inclusive teaching, child protection, and accountability systems.

Zambia

RISE worked closely with the Ministry of Education to develop and implement training manuals for Inclusive Education Teacher Training, Leadership Training, Safeguarding Training, and a Community Champion training manual.

The project also trained 1,473 teachers, and local officials in Inclusive Education Pedagogy, and trained 147 school headteachers and deputy headteachers in Leadership for Inclusive Education, equipping school leadership to drive and sustain inclusive practices. It also trained 220 School Inclusive Education Coordinators and Guidance and Counselling teachers in Safeguarding for Children with Disabilities.

Rwanda

The project provided technical support to the National Examination and School Inspection Authority to strengthen inclusive standards through improved inspection tools, accessible infrastructure assessments, and data collection.

A total of 317 teachers were trained as Inclusive Education Focal Teachers, while 471 teachers received Braille, mobility and orientation training, and 153 teachers were trained in Rwandan Sign Language. Community engagement reached 23,421 participants through awareness campaigns, improving attitudes toward disability and increasing demand for education and rehabilitation services. Participation included men, women, boys, girls, and persons with disabilities.

The Girls Initiative for Resilient Learning and Support (GIRLS) Project aims to help women and girls to finish secondary school and to transition to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) or tertiary education in Malawi (2 districts), Rwanda (10 districts), and Zambia (4 districts).

This programme is being delivered by Oxfam GB between July 2024 and March 2029, GIRLS started implementation in October 2024 and will run for five years, supported by Scottish Government funding of up to £1m per year.

It is implemented through partnerships with:

the Young Women’s Christian Association in Zambia and Rwanda
the Concerned Youth Organisation in Malawi
government ministries, departments and agencies responsible for education and gender.

GIRLS achieves its aims through providing scholarships to girls, including those with disabilities, as well as critical wrap-around activities. These include mentorship, counselling, career guidance, and teacher capacity strengthening.

Progress

This project is now in Year 3, having (as of April 2026) have supported 3,523 scholarships for girls from marginalised backgrounds to enrol in secondary school and TVET courses across Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia.

In Year 2 (financial year 2025 to 2026), GIRLS reported the following results in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia:

Zambia

The RISE project has supported scholarships for 2800 girls, and provided girls with a package of essential resources to support their attendance at school. These resources included the distribution of new 178 bicycles this year, 650 pairs of shoes, and 1,350 sanitary and dignity kits. Mentorship sessions through Girl Power Clubs reached 764 girls. The project also delivered psychosocial counselling training to 40 teacher mentors) across secondary schools in Central Province.

Malawi

The GIRLS project provided a range of support to 500 marginalised girls as part of their scholarship, including dignity kits, solar torches, bicycles and counselling. This package of support helped to improve scholarship recipients attendance, and helped improve the quality of their study time at home. The project also provided assistive devices to learners with disabilities, as well as medical assessment and treatment. The project also helped address harmful cultural practices and on the importance of girls’ education, reaching over 5,000 community members.

Rwanda

The project provided scholarships to 223 girls including 16 girls with disabilities and 42 single parents, to attend a range of higher learning institutions across Rwanda. The project also trained 20 science teachers from 10 districts on inclusive education as part of its commitment to supporting greater inclusion in Science, Technical, Engineering and Maths (STEM) education. The project also supported 12 Girl Power Clubs and STEM Clubs across six districts, engaging around 300 adolescent girls.

Our funding of the World Bank Inclusive Education Policy Academy and Learning Exchange (IEPALE) ended at the end of March 2026. It was a three-year programme, supported by the Scottish Government since March 2024 and March 2027, worth around £900,000 over that time. The programme supported policy-makers from our partner countries in Africa to strengthen the delivery of inclusive education policy in their countries. Read the news release about this project.

Our aim was to support the development of inclusive education practices globally and to supporting our partner countries to achieve equitable access to quality education. This initiative is our first-ever contribution to a World Bank programme, made through its Foundational Learning Compact Trust Fund, multi-donor trust fund supporting early childhood, primary, and secondary education.

Between 2024 and 2026, our contribution (£356,000 in Year 1, £431,000 in Year 2, and £177,000 in year 3) has supported the policy-makers of Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia to build more inclusive education systems.

IEPALE’s main objectives were to:

strengthen education systems to be more inclusive for all learners, through knowledge-sharing and peer support
strengthening the technical capacity of policymakers and practitioners to build quality education systems for all, and specifically for learners with disabilities.

In delivering EPALE, the World Bank has used the latest research in inclusive education to design a series of online and hybrid learning modules. It has also used virtual and in-person workshops on a range of themes (including teacher education and education technology, community leadership on inclusion and education management information), and site visits to classrooms and disability-inclusive education services.

Find out more about IEPALE (World Bank website).

An evaluation of this work under has been commissioned by the World Bank’s Foundational Learning Compact team and will be linked to here before the end of 2026.

Results

Malawi

IEPALE has helped Malawi to ensure that Continuous Professional Development activities, including school leadership, are inclusive from the design stage. IEPALE has shaped the development of Malawi’s Inclusive Education Policy and its strategy, with Malawian government policy makers now taking forward a proposal to turn one of the existing teacher education colleges into an inclusive education college.

Rwanda

In Rwanda, IEPALE has supported the development of a teacher guide on identification, assessment, and referral tools for children with disabilities, as well as plans for a teacher training centre for inclusive education, which was made operational in 2026.

Zambia

In Zambia, IEPALE supported the incorporation of modules on inclusive education in the Continuous Professional Development framework for Early Childhood Education (ECE). IEPALE has also supported the planning of Centres of Excellence in inclusive education, to be implemented in three primary and two secondary schools in Lusaka.

Regional

In February 2025, a regional workshop in Rwanda helped policy-makers from Malawi and Zambia to share experiences and lessons as well as to share insights from Rwanda's implementation of their competence-based curriculum and inclusive education practices.

Find out more about the progress of IEPALE (World Bank website)

The Scotland-Pakistan Scholarships scheme for Young Women and Girls is the Scottish Government’s longest-running international development programme. Its aim is to remove barriers for women and girls to pursue and complete secondary education and transition to higher education. This includes both bachelor’s and master’s degrees, with a focus on supporting women to study STEM subjects.

The scheme has been implemented by the British Council Pakistan since 2013. The British Council work with regional organisations to identify and award scholarships to young women and girls across Pakistan, targeting those from marginalised minority groups and students with disabilities. Forty percent of the funding is targeted towards girls from minority religious groups (20%) and disabled students (20%).

We are providing the British Council Pakistan with up to £500,000 to operate the scheme in the financial year 2026 to 2027.

More information about the Scholarship scheme (British Council website)

Progress

since 2013, the scheme has successfully enabled more than 25,000 female students from low-income backgrounds and communities to pursue education at both school (22000) and university levels (3000) in Pakistan
in 2022, with additional SG support, the program further targeted students from communities affected by floods in Pakistan
the scheme was nominated by the UK’s Ambassador to UNESCO for the UNESCO Prize for Women and Girls Education in 2024
in 2025, an independent evaluation by Ipsos showed that the scholarship programme had made a significant contribution to the employment and empowerment of women in Pakistan. It found that 73% of beneficiaries affirmed that they would not have been able to pursue their education without the scholarship, with 49% indicated they would have had to work part-time to fund their education without the scholarship.

In 2024/25 we supported, through £150,000 of Scottish government funding, a small number of scholars in Zambia to pursue online MBAs through Heriot-Watt University’s online campus. This programme is closed More about the MBA Scholarships in Zambia project.

We will also continue supporting the Development Education Centres, which aim to inspire learning communities and young people in Scotland to realise their roles as good global citizens. This initiative is supported in 2025/26 with £330,000 of Scottish Government funding (comprising £230,000 from education portfolio budgets and £100,000 from the International Development Fund).

Background

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948) states that education is a basic right. A range of declarations and conventions highlight the importance of education for disabled people: the Salamanca Statement on education and special needs in 1994, as well as article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) adopted in 2006.

The International Development Fund Inclusive Education programme analysis report (date) showed that the governments of Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia have made significant progress on inclusive education, but that securing equitable access to education for disabled learners and for women and girls remain significant challenges.  

Our inclusive education portfolio builds on previous projects carried out between 2018 and 2022 in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia

International development