Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Bypasses the Disabled?

To further highlight this gaping hole in the SSA program plan, disability rights activists in Chennai, has called upon a nationwide intiative that would work towards ensuring that children with disabilities are not excluded from the campaign. To articulate this demand on a public forum, oragizations like Action Aid, Ability Foundation, the TN Association of the Physically Handicapped, Action Aid and Vidya Sagar organized a solidarity rally on 14th November - Children's Day.

The "Education for All" campaign, a world wide movement, of which India is a participant, includes provisions stressing the education of girls and children with special needs and in particular encourages interventions to suit local contexts. In order to effectively include children with disabilities into the mainstream program, adaptations in designs have to be made to increase access, enrolment, retention and achievement through various innovative methods, including enrolment drives, special camps, alternate schools, monitoring of attendance and follow-up of dropouts and conduct of special coaching classes.

More importantly, as Poonam Natarajan of Vidya Sagar points out, the SSA ensures that it will follow a "zero rejection policy such that no child is left out of the educative system", with a thrust on providing integrated and inclusive education to all children with special needs in general schools. Further, it lists supports available such as aids and appliances, removal of architectural barriers, remedial teaching and curricular adaptations.

However in Tamil Nadu as elsewhere, Ms Natarajan says none of the lofty promises is being kept. "Though the 93rd Amendment does mention in the preamble that education for all means children with disabilities as well, the actual structural changes to implement all these policies and Acts have not taken place."

"It is not for us to argue whether the scheme is feasible or not. It is the responsibility of the Government to ensure that children with disabilities get their due," says T A P Varadakutty, TN Association of the Physically Handicapped founder.

Quoting a Madras High court ruling on engineering admission to a student with disabilities, he says: "disability is not in the individual, but in the institution." The activists also point out that a judgment in Kerala called for a three percent reservation in all Government and Government-aided schools. "There are some excellent examples of integrative education, especially in Chennai. The Children's Garden School and the AMM School have worked well, in association with special schools," points out the Ability Foundation deputy director, Janaki Pillai.

As an essential first step in the implementation of the goals of the SSA, there is an urgent need to 'shift jurisdiction' of the education of children with disabilities from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (or social welfare) to the Ministry for Human Resource Development.

Source: Education-for-all project let down the disabled.
The Hindu. 13 November 2002, Chennai.
Source: The Hindu