Inclusive classrooms represent a microcosm of our broader society, where diversity is both celebrated and leveraged for mutual growth. The biggest challenge is ignorance and being in denial.
Extent of the Challenge
According World Economic Forum 2022, about 1.3 billion people (17% of global population) across the world live with some form of disability. The UNESCO’s State of Education Report for India (2019) suggests that nearly 7.8 million Indian children suffer from disability, whereas the Mumbai-based ADAPT in its survey (2019) pegs the number of Indian children with special needs at close to 20 million.
A study (2018) published in PLOS Medicine shows that 12% of Indian children between the ages two and nine show signs of neuro-developmental disorders — an alarming finding that suggests that one in every eight children could be struggling with learning disorders.
The UNESCO’s State of Education Report for India (2019) also points out that a large majority of children with disabilities are not part of the formal education system.
- PWD Act, 1995, recognized 7 disabilities
- RPWD Act, 2016, recognized 21 disabilities
It may help to place this discourse in historical perspective before we proceed.
It was only in the 90s that the west woke up to the need of systematic inclusion in education. We followed suit soon. By 1995 the Indian Parliament had passed the PWD Act which recognized seven disabilities.
It took us nearly two decades to expand our understanding of disabilities. It was in 2016 that the Parliament of India recognized twenty-one disabilities.
Inclusive Education: A Work in Progress
Today our school, DLF Public School, Sahibabad, is a fully inclusive school that believes that education must reach the last child. Inclusivity is always a journey and not a destination.
Although the story of our school started in 1996, it was not until the 2000s that the chapter on inclusivity started taking shape.
We started out by taking small steps such as special input classes and adopt-a-child program under which every teacher adopted a low-achieving child and designed personalised assistive plans for the child.
But despite our best efforts, we observed that some students were just not able to progress to a satisfactory degree.
Our journey to inclusion took a dramatic turn in the year 2012 when through Cambridge Education Foundation, UK, I got the opportunity to take up an action research under the aegis of Global Teacher Accreditation Program powered by British Council.
The action research turned out to be propitious because it brought into sharp focus the need of a more systematic and concerted measures to address the special educational needs in children.
Tackling the Challenges: Measures & Mechanisms
In 2014, DLF Sensorium was established and was led by a team of doctors, special educators and was managed by our school’s counselling cell.
As our attempts at inclusion gained momentum, we realised that to be a truly inclusive school, we need to ensure that we take all the stakeholders on board.
We ran a series of awareness programs and sensitization workshops for teachers, parents, and our support-staff.
Other than institutional remedies, we also sought to incorporate small changes in our day-to-day teaching-learning processes so as to make our classrooms more inclusive.
Right from the stage of planning a lesson to delivering it and then to assessing the learning- the inclusive consciousness permeated all three stages.
Our lesson plans catered to differentiated needs of our learners. We moved to IEP- Individualized Education Plans- and kept reviewing and revising them time to time to whet their efficacy.
We empowered our teachers by devising screening checklists in consultation with experts and by training our teachers to use those screening checklists to identify students with probable cases of SLD and ADHD that were further examined by experts.
Untapped Potential and Opportunities
This journey has not been without its share of challenges. There was resistance from all quarters, starting from parents to the state machinery. When we diagnosed children with special learning needs and wanted to register them in the state’s data base, we were met with raised eye-brows for the number of diagnosed cases.
Despite the hurdles, we were able to tap into the vast the opportunities that inclusive classrooms bring along. We managed to drive home the idea that disability is not inability.
This change in attitude became the inflection point in many ways and it began to have a ripple effect for all the stake-holders.
Our teachers transformed into wellness teachers and part counsellors. We could see that the student community had progressively become far more emotionally intelligent.
The adults, including the parents, began to look beyond the disabilities and began to value the talents and strengths that the CWSN possessed. By assigning a special mentor to each CWSN, we ensured that the talent gets honed and boosts the self-worth of the child.
Many of our children have taken forward this training and have turned it into successful careers. So that CWSN get an opportunity to collaborate we started the HUM Utsav, our unique inter-school multidisciplinary inclusion festival through which the children to learn the true meaning of collaboration and inclusion.
Over the last many years, our CWSN have been consistently producing 100% results in the CBSE exams. Most of the students scored in the range of 75-90%.
Our mission is to create an environment where every student, regardless of their background or abilities, can succeed and feel a sense of belonging.
By embracing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of inclusive classrooms, we can build a more equitable and compassionate educational landscape.
