Inclusion as a Policy

By Indumathi Rao and Sharada Prahladrao
CBR Network
Bangalore

All experiments by the government and NGOs to empower the disabled have failed.

In 1995 a special issue of CBR (community-based rehabilitation) Frontline Digest, titled Integrated /Inclusive education in South Asia was published. Ture Johnson, after reading this journal wrote, "Integrated and inclusive education are not the same, and these two approaches are built on different rationale and vision".

There is a Central Government sponsored scheme called Integrated Education of Disabled Children (IEDC). This project was started in the 80s and designed on the experience gathered from a UNICEF assisted pilot project called PIED (project on integrated education of disabled children). In the mid-80s many NGOs implemented this IEDC with grants from the Government.

This was basically an itinerant resource teaching approach and one resource teacher was given to every eight children with special needs. Although the goals and objectives of the IEDC programme were laudable, the number of children with disabilities enrolled was woefully small. IEDC was not successful because it never took the classroom teacher into confidence. It was heavily dependent on resource teachers. It continued to label children with disabilities as children with special needs.

Reach

The whole issue is why and where we have failed to achieve the desired goal of educational access and quality of early childhood development to every child with disability at least in the villages where Anganwadi centres and primary schools exist. The appallingly low reach of education, quantitatively and qualitatively, to those who are enrolled either by default or by design compels us to review our policies in the past and identify the point of modification required both at policy formulation and implementation levels.

"Perhaps lack of conceptual clarity and lack of convergence on inclusive education has led to conflicting objectives and/or strategies. Some children feel "left-out" and never enter school or enter only for a few years and, as repeaters, become "drop-outs" or, more accurately "pushed-outs", without their needs having been met."

With Inclusive education, the regular schools began to play a major role in making provision for children with special educational needs. Making the school system flexible and adopting an inclusive approach led to the need of reforming the school system as a whole from a traditional, examination-oriented to an inclusive, child-oriented approach. India has a curriculum framework that is developed centrally by NCERT and modified at the state-level. It is not sufficient to have such macro-level modifications. Curriculum has to be further modified at the classroom level.

It is over a decade in India for the inclusive education movement. Critically analysing the performance of both NGOs and the Government, we can find considerable lacunae in the policy formulation.

Relevance

There is lack of inclusive technology relevant to India to meet the needs in the diverse socio-cultural contexts. Instead of spreading inclusion thin and wide there is a need to develop policy based on evidence.

To open up the regular school system to disabled children is not an easy task. The policy on inclusion and mainstreaming can easily become "main dumping" if not implemented carefully. However, a big gap exists between this ideal situation and the present reality. There is an urgent need for interventions for equipping general teachers with special skills, making learning material disability-sensitive and addressing the attitudes of other children in the school.

Inclusive education must respond to all pupils as individuals, recognizing individuality as something to be appreciated and respected. It is not our education systems that have a right to a certain type of children. Therefore, it is the school system of a country that must be adjusted to meet the needs of all its children.

Source: Rao, Indumathi and Prahladrao, Sharada. Inclusion as a policy. December 6, 2006, Deccan Herald, Bangalore.