Children with Special Needs (CWSN)
Schools affiliated to CBSE were advised(Circular No. 45 dated 29th October,2008) to ensure that no child with special needs is denied admission in main stream schools, it has been observed that there are many schools affiliated to CBSE who are not abiding by this directive.
There seems to be a misconception among schools and school authorities on various issues pertaining to children with special needs. The children with special needs face challenges in learning as they may not be able to focus on the teacher during classroom interaction or their pace of learning may vary. Moreover social skills and emotional skills may need to be further strengthened.
To overcome these problems generally an aid is given to the child. An aid is an adult sitting along with the special child encouraging and motivating the child to move alongwith the class.
Schools are advised to allow parents when they make a request to provide an aid so that individual attention is possible for the child and enables the student to grow and learn alongwith the other peers in the class.
Further inclusive education also needs to be done with an Individual Evaluation Program. Specific goals should be set for each child with special need based upon the appraisal. For this purpose the schools need to have a special educator as has already been recommended earlier.
It is being reiterated that any school which fails to provide attention to a child with special needs or makes a pretext of denying admission to any category of a differently abled child will be liable to stringent action even to the extent of disaffiliation.
Source: CBSE Circular No. 65
Inclusive Education of Children with Disabilities (IECD)
Guidelines of Inclusive Education of Children with Disabilities (IECD) each school is advised :
- To ensure that no child with special needs is denied admission in Mainstream Education
- To monitor the enrollment in schools of disabled children
- To provide support through assistive devices and the availability of trained teachers
- To modify the existing physical infrastructure and teaching methodologies to meet the needs of all children including Children with Special Needs
- To ensure that 3% reservation of persons with disabilities is done in all institutions receiving funds from Government (Under The Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995)
- To ensure that all schools are made disabled friendly by 2020 and all educational institutions including hostels, libraries, laboratories and buildings will have barrier free access for the disabled
- To ensure availability of Study material for the disabled and Talking Text Books, Reading Machines and computers with speech software
- To ensure an adequate number of sign language interpreters, transcription services and a loop induction system will be introduced for the hearing handicapped students
- To revisit classroom organization required for the education of Children with Special Needs
- To ensure regular in-service training of teachers in inclusive education at the elementary and secondary level.