Inclusive Education in Jammu and Kashmir

Inclusive education is to empower and rehabilitate disable children in school education. To fulfil this motive wide range of services has been offered in India at the disposal of these CWSN children all over country. Inclusive education in normal schools, by providing them assistive devices as per their nature of disability, checks ups by doctors, education by special and trained teachers at primary secondary and higher secondary levels. This was providing under SSA and RMSA, now merged in to SAMAGRA SHIKSHA. 10 % population of the world are disable and 80% of these disable people are living in developing countries. Therefore, India one of the developing countries, is facing the challenges of disability. Disable population in India as per census 2011 (2016 Updated).

In India out of the 121 Cr population, 2.68 Cr persons are disabled which is 2.21% of the total population. Among the disabled population 56% (1.5 Cr) are males and 44% (1.18 Cr) are females. In the total population, the male and female population is 51% and 49% respectively. Majority (69%) of the disabled population resided in rural areas (1.86 Cr disabled persons in rural areas and 0.81 Cr in urban areas). In the case of total population also, 69% are from rural areas while the remaining 31% resided in urban areas.

Jammu Kashmir Education

Similarly, Jammu and Kashmir total population as per census 2011 is 1.25 crores among which the Disable population was 361153. while as Jammu and Kashmir houses around four lakh persons with some disability. Some NGOs working with differently-abled people say the number of people living in the JK State with some kind of disability is around eight lakhs. As in other parts of developing countries, due to lack of understanding and awareness, the differently-abled persons don’t receive the support and respect they deserve in the State. This coupled with government apathy towards them makes life miserable for differently-abled population. The state lacks in basic infrastructure for people with some physical or mental disability. There are no wheelchair ramps at public places, in schools and in most of hospitals in the State. There are not many special schools that can cater to the special needs of differently-abled children in the State (Akmal Hanan,2017). As inclusive education we also lack the necessary student teacher ration to educate the CWSN in the state. The identified population of CWSN children in Jammu and Kashmir districts are as, Doda 1300, in Poonch 2266, Kishtiwar 902, Budgam 3168, Udhampur 2400, Samba 650, Bandipora 1100, Ganderbal 1200, Anantnag 3083, etc. But only 58 special educators and 27 resource persons are working in the state on contractual bases without salaries from last six months. Special educators where engaged to deal with CWSN children etc. But they are also engaged in other services like identification of CWSN from place to place in the state, visiting to schools and also to work at resource rooms which becomes a big challenge for special educators to provide proper services to CWSN children in the state. Need of the hour is to engage more special educators on the permanent basis. More infrastructure in schools is very poor for CWSN children. Problem of syllabus, transport facility, reach out to all regions is still a question mark? In service teachers are not aware about government facilities nor they are trained how to deal with CWSN children. At school level the is no separate syllabus for these children which is again a big problem in inclusive setup. Side by side government id providing various supporting services to empower these children in inclusive education like assistive devices as per needs of the child, disability funds, uniform, medical treatments and other allowances all these facilities are reaching to these children with huge gaps, like time, document problems, unawareness of parents, poverty, illiteracy by which the identified as well as un identified CWSN children are not getting benefits properly. Secondly due to huge time gap the services to these children reaches very late or didn’t reach to them. Thirdly, due to poor conditions of resources rooms parents mostly found it useless to send their children to resources rooms and schools.

Most of school teachers in India are not trained to design and implement educational programs for students with disabilities in regular schools. Most teacher training programs in India do not have a unit on disability studies (Myreddi & Narayan, 2000). The majority of schools in India are poorly designed and few are equipped to meet the unique needs of students with disabilities. It is also worth noting that there are challenges around procuring and resourcing for assistive devices. Despite various efforts for inclusive education in India, about 94% of children with disabilities didn’t receives any educational services. Over and above some of these challenges that India shares with other developing countries are some distinctive features that will make the implementation of educational reform particularly difficult. The commitment of the Government of India to Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) cannot be fully achieved without taking care of special educational needs of the physically and mentally challenged children. Inclusion is becoming a cant and doing the rounds in education circles but there are still a lot of cobwebs surrounding it. Now how to correct these problems in inclusive education in India? we should follow these steps to enshrine. As a system, inclusive education should be flexible. Its flexibility must be reflected in the methods and materials used to give these children the widest possible access to the regular curriculum. A school-based support team should develop strategies for the whole school to meet the needs of learners with special educational needs. This team should also be a resource for teachers experiencing problems in their classrooms. Bringing special children into mainstream requires adjustments that schools need to make in advance. Transport facilities should be altered, so that these children can move around with relative ease. Architecturally, there should be ramps and wheelchair access constructed in service areas such as toilets. Student-oriented components, such as medical and educational assessment, books and stationery, uniforms, transport allowance, reader allowance and stipend for girls, support services, assistive devices, boarding the lodging facility, therapeutic services, teaching learning materials, etc. should provide according to need of the students. In-service training programmes of two to three weeks’ duration for general educators and special educators in all the disabilities and in specific areas of disability should arrange to effectively teach children with disabilities. Periodic evaluation of the training programmes and constant updating to meet the challenges of changing trends in special education should be part of the planning of teacher preparation. The reform of the curriculum should be made in parallel with a proper training for teachers regarding their knowledge of inclusion and its principles. The curriculum for each of the above programmes should be carefully developed by an expert group which includes practicing special teachers.