Inclusive education is a journey that hasn’t yet reached its destination in India. In fact, the understanding of inclusive education itself is an evolving but promising concept. And thanks to sustained and combined efforts of the Government and civil society, the chances of inclusive education becoming a classroom reality have brightened.
The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) under MoE and Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) are working on a 6-month bridge course for special educators and the proposal to allow them to teach as general teachers has been accepted. Similarly, the 4-year Integrated Teacher Education Program (ITEP) currently offered by 64 HEIs has included 2 credits on inclusive education in its 6th semester, is reading for a future impact in coming years.
According to Kesang Yangzom Sherpa, IRS, Member Secretary, NCTE, the statutory teacher training body is committed to inclusive education and add-on courses are being planned. “We encourage teachers to join the National Mission for Mentoring (NMM) as mentees. We have close to 1000 mentors and growing on all major subjects and inclusive education is also in it. Technology is going to be key for taking NMM at scale and reach out to teachers in the remotest areas of the country,” she adds.
In all these enabling changes, Project Inclusion (PI) of The Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS), which began in 2016, has also reached an important milestone this year (2024) and given more hope to the advocates for inclusive education in the country. More than 3,60,000 teachers across India have trained under PI and includes teachers from 1,254 Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs). These many teachers are now not only sensitized to the learning difficulties of their students but equipped to identify them and motivated to support them as regular students. KVS is finetuning its in-service training programmes in light of the learnings from this project and continues to be an important component PI cohort for onward journey.
The need of inclusive education continues be a national priority. As per 2011 census, 2.21% of population (2.6Cr+ people) had disabilities. Then, out of an estimated 8 million disabled children, 45% were illiterate. As per latest studies about 8 % children have SLD (special learning disability), one in 12 has NDD (neurodevelopmental disorders) ASD (autism spectrum disorders) may be present in 1.7-2 million children, children with hidden disabilities like attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder etc are also in large numbers.
Even after the RPWD Act 2016 has broadens the spectrum of disabilities and expanded the number 21, awareness of teacher about these has remained very low. As a result, phenomenon like bullying, dropping out from school and tactics of keeping special children out of mainstream schooling have become a fact of school education in India. Prof Sudesh Mukhopadhyay, a former chairperson of RCI and an acclaimed expert on inclusive educaiton, is of the view that there is notion of average student is a misnomer and retaining students must be the strategy. “You have to trust the teacher, help and encourage him or her become a responsive teacher. Making teaching about this inclusivity is the way to go,” she says adding that the fragmentation of the system has to stop. Larger higher education scenario will have to be in favor in inclusivity and support adult activity of disabled. She also feels teaching and schools must become responsible for life-cycle learning and creating a service cadre of assistant to teachers instead of putting the burden on parents, will go a long way in addressing the challenges.
Project Inclusion, a key initiative of the Puducherry-based spirituality promotion non-profit spread over 350 branches globally with focus on action research for creating a better tomorrow, is creating waves in academic circles. This teacher training project – aligned with the NEP’s focus on inclusive education, provisions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act, 2016, and India’s 2030 SDG4 goals – set out to train teachers and special educators in schools through capacity building, access to technology, expertise, and support systems.
Tracing the history of the project, Dr. Simmi Mahajan, Chief Program Officer, Project Inclusion, Sri Aurobindo Society, says it was a challenge to challenge the notion of inclusive education as provision of special educators and treating children with special needs as an exclusive group was seen as the logical segment in completing it. However, tackling the range of learning difficulties so widespread in classrooms wasn’t investigated. Started in 2016, in some schools Ghaziabad, PI was successful in sensitizing teachers in the schools under the project. Even teachers of these schools felt empowered to screen the children and began to become aware what is wrong with them. But then, the questions on what after being identified and how to help the teachers to deal with them, how to educate them continued to be a challenge.
And then Covid happened. “Covid made us think more and with technology coming to rescue of education, we also decided to take a leap expand through technology,” she says. This is where SBI Foundation provided a three-year funding for PI and after recovery phase of pandemic, the momentum started in 2022. “Project Inclusion aims to bring about systemic changes and create a whole system that is built to serve the teachers, students and the school authorities. Our aim is to pull out all stops – knowledge-, technology – and behaviour-related –to ensure that every child across India has access to quality education. We have been very fortunate to have the faith of partners such as the SBI Foundation who are aligned to our goal and have enabled a project of this scale covering the length and breadth of the country.”
The successful implementation was celebrated through an event attended by Smt. Nidhi Pandey, IIS, Commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Smt. Kesang Yangzom Sherpa, IRS, Member Secretary, NCTE, Ministry of Education, Government of India, Sudesh Mukhopadhyay Ex-RCI Chairman, Smt. Radhika Purohit, Integrated Learning Mission, SBI Foundation Shri Sanjay Tripathi, Director International Development and Monitoring and Evaluation, Australian Council for Educational Research, Dr. Simmi Mahajan, Chief Program Officer, Project Inclusion, Sri Aurobindo Society.
Over two days (26 and 27 September 2024), senior policymakers, education leaders, and education experts from NCERT, CBSE, NCTE, RCI, KVS, IGNOU, NIEPA, Department of Education (CIE)- Delhi University, National Trust for the Handicapped, TISS, ACER, LADY IRWIN DU college, Gateway School Mumbai, Piramal Foundation, Shruti Foundation, AWES and Army Institute of Education (Greater Noida), committed to advancing inclusive education in India deliberated on ways to make Indian schools better equipped to support the learning needs of neurodiverse students. Participants shared insights, strategies and possible solutions across developing curriculum framework, evaluating teacher competencies, teacher training and capacity building, global best practices, role of Artificial Intelligence and Information Communication Technology (ICT) and the need for dedicated regulatory bodies for regular and special educators.
The event acknowledged key stakeholders and participants who contributed to the success of the project, and felicitated principals, teachers and officials who have undergone the necessary technical and behavioural change training and are remediating students in the classroom with diverse learning needs.
“Project Inclusion’s vision of reaching all teachers and students across India is aligned to our philosophy and we are glad that our collaboration has been able to scale the program to a national level.”, said Radhika Purohit, Integrated Learning Mission, SBI Foundation.
As PI prepares for next phase of creating centre of excellence and possibly make interventions more scientific and evidence-based, teachers everywhere will be able to turn classrooms inclusive and the labels for special children will one day disappear.
—Autar Nehru
