Indian Schools Fail Their Students With Special Needs, Thousands Of Children Are Forced To Drop Out

Mamta Kumari, her proud parents said, had begun spelling out 'apple' and 'ball' on her own by the time she was four. To her poor parents, both of whom had never been to school, it was nothing short of a miracle. They had great hopes from their daughter. And then Mamta developed an eye problem that deteriorated rapidly, almost blinding her by the time she was 10.

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In the absence of a disabled-friendly classroom and teachers, she dropped out, like the thousands of children with disabilities who leave studies each year or are forced to remain illiterate because there is nothing and nobody to help them.

A recent Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan study said that 3,417 disabled children had no access to education in Agra alone. There were almost 3,400 such kids in Bareilly, thousand in Bijnor.

Ironically, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the national educational initiative to help realise universal elementary education policy, says:

"Every child with special needs should be placed in regular schools with the needed support services."

In UP, the ground realities Amroha, and thousands in other districts of UP. The biggest factor contributing to their plight is the near absence of special teachers. For example, in the 2,970 primary schools in Agra, only 37 special teachers report to work. The numbers are even dismal in other districts. Besides, there is no hope in the near future for this to be rectified as the BEd programme for special educators has seen a constant dip in the number of applicants in recent years. are quite different, and stark.

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There is no special school being run by the state government in a majority of UP districts. Though basic education department officials claim disabled students are provided admission in normal schools and special teachers are assigned the duty to visit each primary and junior high school twice a week, special teachers hardly manage to visit school even once a week, say sources. Also, there is no fixed schedule for special classes in normal schools. Even those who get enrolled face a lot of difficulties in the absence of special provisions and eventually drop out.

Simran, 10-year-old daughter of Mohammad Rafiq who drives an auto-rickshaw, is blind. She enrolled in a government primary school a few years ago but had to drop out because the teachers there were not supportive. "My classmates troubled me regularly. I was only listening in a classroom where everyone else looked at the blackboard. Finally, when I complained to the principal, my teachers asked my parents to put me in a special school," she told TOI.

Kuldeep Tiwari, Agra district coordinator of UP 'Education for All' scheme, said "There are 37 special teachers in the district with more than 2,900 primary schools. We have appointed at least two special teachers in each of the 15 development blocks in the district. They visit different schools to teach disabled students on a daily basis."