Disability and learning in Ethiopia: what changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Figures & data

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics iIncidence of disabilities, numeracy and confounding factors.

		Disability 2018–2019			Disability 2020–2021
Variable	Unit	No	Mild	Moderate /Severe	No	Mild	Moderate /Severe
Incidence	%	82.00	15.24	2.76	76.91	19.34	3.76
Formal numeracy attainment (% correct response in test)
Numeracy grade 1	% correct	70.38	75.79	68.60	58.62	59.43	63.97
Numeracy grade 4	% correct	44.62	49.82	49.13	44.83	44.93	45.24
Confounding factors
Sex	% boys	50.89	49.83	55.24	50.37	51.79	47.35
Age	Years	9.7	9.5	9.9	9.4	9.3	9.0
Child health	Poor	0.37	1.29	12.56	1.00	1.65	3.89
	average	1.79	20.89	13.07	3.25	5.84	8.48
	good	21.20	37.89	20.60	24.28	36.61	31.10
	v. good	76.64	39.93	53.77	71.47	55.91	56.54
Preschool	% yes	0.44	0.50	0.48	0.61	0.58	0.52
Meals at school	% yes	0.02	0.04	0.02	0.14	0.14	0.11
Household size	#	5.9	5.4	5.5	5.5	5.3	5.5
Caregiver literacy	illiterate	65.55	62.20	61.31	55.76	53.14	50.89
	basic	10.11	10.07	8.54	13.19	17.78	20.28
	can read	24.33	27.73	30.15	31.06	29.08	28.83
Wealth	index	0.28	0.32	0.30	0.32	0.30	0.30
Sample size		6231	1158	210	5791	1456	283

Sources: RISE Data 2018–2019. Gates Data 2020–2021. Notes: Average age for those in grade 1 was 7.8 years (range 4–18) in 2018–2019 and 7.6 years (range 5–15) in 2020–2021. Average age for those in grade 4 was 11.4 years (range 6–19) in 2018–2019 and 11.1 years (range 6–18) in 2020–2021.

Table 2. Relative risk ratio estimates [standard error] for incidence of disability.

Variables	Mild	Moderate to severe
Year (2020–2021 = 1)	1.530***	1.663***
	[0.0769]	[0.171]
Gender (male = 1)	0.973	0.944
	[0.0451]	[0.0909]
Age	1.014	1.012
	[0.0147]	[0.0316]
Grade (4th grade = 1)	0.964	0.799
	[0.0653]	[0.113]
Child health (average)	2.444***	0.424***
	[0.524]	[0.112]
Child health (good)	0.758	0.108***
	[0.153]	[0.0255]
Child health (very good)	0.319***	0.0720***
	[0.0637]	[0.0164]
Preschool (yes = 1)	0.986	0.933
	[0.0553]	[0.108]
Meals at school (yes = 1)	0.527***	0.362***
	[0.0573]	[0.0880]
Household size	0.965***	1.008
	[0.0130]	[0.0285]
Caregiver literacy (basic)	1.287***	1.561***
	[0.0909]	[0.221]
Caregiver literacy (can read)	1.006	1.169
	[0.0612]	[0.143]
Wealth index	1.023	0.652
	[0.204]	[0.275]
Region (Amhara)	1.096	0.955
	[0.111]	[0.193]
Region (Benishangul)	0.621***	0.214***
	[0.0702]	[0.0590]
Region (Oromia)	0.309***	0.385***
	[0.0332]	[0.0834]
Region (SNNP)	0.320***	0.157***
	[0.0360]	[0.0416]
Region (Somali)	0.465***	0.289***
	[0.0507]	[0.0713]
Constant	0.713	0.789
	[0.195]	[0.343]
Observations	14,666	14,666

Sources: RISE Data 2018–2019. Gates Data 2020–2021. Notes: Robust standard errors in brackets. Asterisks *, **, ***, represent statistical significance at 10, 5 and 1% level, respectively. Models estimated using multinomial logit. Reference category: no disability.

Figure 1. Incidence of moderate to severe disabilities by type in 2018–2019 and in 2020–2021 academic years. Sources: RISE Data 2018–2019. Gates Data 2020–2021.

Table 3. Proportion of children with disabilities in 2018–2019 and 2020–2021, by region.

		Disability
		Academic year 2018–2019			Academic year 2020–2021
		No	Mild	Moderate /Severe	No	Mild	Moderate /Severe
Region	Addis Ababa	68.6	26.0	5.4	77.5	19.8	2.7
	Amhara	69.6	26.6	3.9	62.3	30.1	7.6
	Benishangul Gumuz	85.8	13.0	1.1	72.3	25.7	2.1
	Oromiya	90.9	5.9	3.2	81.6	14.9	3.4
	SNNP	92.8	6.3	1.0	84.7	13.9	1.4
	Somali	77.5	21.8	0.7	81.4	14.4	4.3

Source: RISE Baseline Data 2018–2019 and Gates/RISE Baseline Data 2020–2021.

Colour coding: green indicates that the incidence of disability was lower in the academic year 2020–2021 relative to 2018–2019. Orange indicates the opposite.

Figure 2. Changes in predicted grade 1 numeracy score over time for children with and without disabilities. Sources: RISE Data 2018–2019. Gates Data 2020–2021.

Figure 3. Changes in predicted grade 4 numeracy score over time for children with and without disabilities. Sources: RISE Data 2018–2019. Gates Data 2020–2021.