Court Orders!

New Delhi: Law provides hope to dyslexic children

For dyslexic children and their parents in the Capital, the Bombay High Court's order creating all schools in Maharashtra to abide strictly by the guidelines for students with learning disabilities, has come as a ray of hope.

While schools here claim they do their best to integrate such students into regular schooling, parents, however, feel much more needs to be done. "On an average, at least three to four students in a class of 60 suffer from varying degrees of dyslexia," says an expert. "The core issue is to sensitize and create awareness among teachers."

Even though there is no such directive from the state government or Delhi courts CBSE has a protocol for inclusive education in schools. Some schools follow the protocol, while others don't.

"We have specially-trained teachers to interact with such students and also have special educators and counselors who identify students suffering from dyslexia," said Madulika Sen, principal of Tagore International, Vasant Vihar.

She added, "We allot lesser syllabi for special students, who are given extra time during exams. In addition, no marks are deducted for spelling errors,"

Parents of dyslexia children, however, complain that schools should do more to make learning easier for the children.

"My child cannot retain lessons for long and usually messes up when he is asked to write down what he has learnt. To help students like these, the schools should put maximum weightage on oral exams than a written one, as suggested by the committee," said Deepa Mathur, parent of a dyslexic child of Class VIII.

Understanding the degree of dyslexia is also important, both for schools and parents. "We have a medical team and a special education cell to identity such cases and refer them to counselors, if need be," said Usha Ram, principal of Laxman Public School.

The Bombay High Court directive makes it mandatory for schools in Maharashtra to screen students who fall to do well in examination because of learning disabilities in the third and sixth standard. Once a learning disability is confirmed, the school is bound to provide facilities to the student free of cost.

On June 23, a Maharashtra government-appointed expert committee had also recommended that compulsory training be imparted to teachers for handling students with learning disabilities.

It main recommendation was to integrate such students into regular schooling. As Poonam Natarajan, chairperson of National Trust put it: "Once these special children are integrated into the regular system, hopefully necessary changes will be made to make them comfortable."

"These recommendations, if implemented, would make inclusive education possible in India like in the west," said Natarajan, who's also member of the national consultation group. The group was constituted to work on human resources ministry's action plan for the inclusion of children and youth with disabilities in education.

The action plan states "functional qualification is better than medical definition. Instead of going through medical assessment and certification, assessment should be done at school".

Natarajan added, "As far as possible, the mainstream methods of identification of children with learning disabilities should be used."

Kids with learning disability have brains that work differently to process language. They have problems translating language to thought (in listening or reading) and thought to language (in writing or speaking).

The committee had recommended concessions for such students like giving 25% extra time during examinations. In addition they recommended p Provisions for readers/writers and stressed upon an oral examination along with a written one.

Source: Hope for late learners in school. The Times of India, New Delhi, 28 July 2006.