A new set of “three R’s” – Rights, Resources and Research – is urgently needed to prevent education systems worldwide from failing young people with disabilities, a major international summit will hear this week.

The proposal – which deliberately plays on the 19^th-century formula that defined the three basics of education as “reading, writing and arithmetic” – will be presented at the third Global Disability Summit: a high-profile gathering of government ministers, NGOs and disability rights advocates, being held in Berlin from 2-3 April.

It is being put forward by Nidhi Singal, Professor of Disability and Inclusive Education at the University of Cambridge, who will use her keynote address on education to argue for a gear-change in international efforts to support learners with disabilities.

People with disabilities make up around 15-16% of the world’s population, but the majority continue to be excluded from mainstream participation in sectors including education, health and employment.

While previous Global Disability Summits, in 2018 and 2022, produced various commitments to address this, Singal argues that they have not consistently translated into concrete policies and planning.

Her address will highlight concerns about the continued “invisibility” of learners with disabilities in education policy and the urgent need for action. It will also note the generational benefits of inclusive education, from delivering stronger educational and social outcomes, to building more resilient economies; arguing that the systemic reforms that inclusive education demands benefit all children.

Her framework of Rights, Resources and Research distils the essence of a body of research on inclusive education, including actions that emerged through collective deliberations at a pre-summit workshop in Cambridge last year. That event brought together 31 organisations and produced specific recommendations to help make the 2025 summit “count”. It has also informed the section on education, co-authored by Singal, in a new Global Disability Inclusion Report: Accelerating Disability Inclusion in a Changing and Diverse World, which will be launched at the summit in Berlin.

“The idea that we need to master a new set of three R’s for disability inclusion in education is really just a way of conceptualising what different stakeholders, including governments and organisations can do,” Singal said.

“We urgently need to look at actions and tangible ways to accelerate the changes required to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4, on inclusive and equitable education, and the commitments made in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

Although the first of Singal’s three R’s – the Right of children with disabilities to education – is increasingly recognised in law, she will suggest that this has not necessarily resulted in action.

As of 2021, while 86% of countries had laws and policies safeguarding the right of children with disabilities to education, only 17% guaranteed this in inclusive learning environments. Even when in school, children and young people with disabilities are 42% less likely to acquire foundational reading and numeracy skills than their peers, due to the quality of teaching and learning they receive.

The gap, Singal warns, is at risk of widening as education systems respond to a new wave of global challenges. There is strong evidence that the effects of climate change, armed conflict, and health emergencies like COVID-19 generally disrupt the education of students with disabilities more than most, yet their needs are frequently overlooked in crisis planning. “If we do not see young people with disabilities, then we will never develop education plans which respond to their needs,” Singal said. “They need to be at the heart of education planning.”

One fundamental right that governments must therefore address, she argues, is the right to be counted, since without accurate, nuanced data which do not homogenise disability, children with disabilities remain excluded from planning or provision.

After Rights, the second “R” – Resources – refers to human and physical resourcing, and the funding needed to sustain them. Singal argues that disability inclusion depends on actively recruiting and retaining teachers with disabilities. This is partly about providing effective pre- and in-service training for all teachers and school leaders, but also giving them the necessary support, such as therapists and sign-language interpreters. She adds that education systems must invest in learning resources that match local needs.
 
Her keynote will underline the need for innovative financing strategies. While ring-fenced public funding is essential, new approaches – possibly involving public-private partnerships and targeted philanthropic donations – will also be needed. Currently, about 14% of education aid is disability-inclusive, but less than 1% identiies disability inclusion as a principal objective.

The third “R” – Research – calls for the evidence base underpinning disability-inclusive education to itself become more inclusive, representative and collaborative.

The Cambridge Network for Disability and Education Research (CaNDER), which Singal convenes , has consistently shown that education research focused on disability-inclusive education either neglects the Global South, or studies these regions without meaningfully involving local researchers. Her keynote will call for closer engagement with people with disabilities, particularly those from the Global South, as well as broader collaboration with organisations led by persons with disabilities. This, she suggests, will generate more contextually relevant evidence on critical issues, such as learning outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and how best to scale up different models of educational support.

The Global Disability Inclusion Report expands further on the “three R’s” concept by identifying five focal points for policy-making on disability inclusion in education:

1.    Promoting political commitment, governance and visibility: Ensuring clear strategies for disability inclusion supported by advocacy and awareness campaigns, and continuity plans for emergencies.

2.    Establishing disability-inclusive education financing mechanisms, in which commitments are matched to funding.

3.    Ensuring inclusion in mainstream education systems and quality learning environments, that guarantee equitable access and participation.

4.    Building local systems for providing assistive devices and workforce capacity: Investing in teacher education, recruitment strategies, and accessible, affordable resources and technologies suited to learners’ needs and context.

5.    Strengthening education data systems and monitoring. Using up-to-date and reliable data to advance disability inclusive education policies and programmes.

 Resources and outputs from the Global Disability Summit 2025 will be made available through the event website.