Even as the world observes International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Wednesday, children with special needs (CWSN) in the state are left to fend for themselves as neither the inclusive education promised to them under the Right to Education Act has become a reality, nor are there enough special educators to cater to them. As a result, of the 1,45,326 students who are out of school in the age group of 6-13 years, a total of 22,551 are children with special needs. “Disability or poor health is the most common reason for being out of school among CWSN. An estimated 21.39 lakh children (1.05per cent) in the age group of 6-13 years have been identified as CWSN. Among those aged 6-13 years, 5.94 lakh children are out of school. This means 28.23 per cent of the CWSN are out of school. This is much higher than the national estimate of out-of-school children (2.97per cent). An analysis of the out-of-school data by type of disabilities reveals that 44.13 per cent of those suffering from multiple disabilities (more than one type of physical or mental disability or both) are out of school. Out of the total children suffering from any mental disability, 35.97 per cent children are out of school, 34.82 per cent of those suffering from speech disability are not going to any school,” says the National Survey on Estimation of Out of School Children on the official website of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. The Maharashtra education department had prepared a report proposing inclusive education for children even in secondary classes. “Before the RTE Act came into effect in 2009, there were special educators. But the RTE Act propagates inclusive education. Hence, instead of earlier secluding the CWSN and then teaching them, we now have CWSN being taught in regular classes,” said S Chockalingam, Commissioner of Education, Maharashtra. “But when these students move into secondary classes after Class VIII, they come under the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan which says there should be one special educator for every five CWSN. Hence, this again becomes segregation of students, which is not what the RTE Act intends to do, thus failing the entire aim of inclusive education. Hence, we proposed to have a similar teaching method to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan even in secondary classes where students with special needs can sit together with regular students and study,” said Mahavir Mane, Director, Primary Education. However, the state that talks about inclusive education and giving special training to regular teachers to make them equipped to teach CWSN has till date no such training conducted by the State Council of Educational Training and Research. When asked, Deputy Director Shakuntala Kale said: “We have not done any training programmes yet but we will be doing it from next year.” The survey further says 25.12 per cent of the total estimated CWSN suffer from orthopaedic disability, 19.59 per cent from visual disability, 16.95 per cent from speech disability and 14.57 per cent from mental disability. “An estimated 11.81 per cent children among CWSN suffer from more than one type of disability. Zone-wise analysis reveals that 38 per cent of CWSN in the central zone, 36.27 per cent in the north-east zone, and 35.35 per cent in the north zone are out of school. This proportion is the lowest in west zone where 13.30 per cent of CWSN are out of school,” it adds.
