News

Volume 3 Issue 3 - February 01, 2005

Special children to be part of mainstream schools

The Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) signed an agreement to make inclusive education a reality by developing appropriate education programmes that enable a teacher to train both disabled and non disabled-children in a general school environment.

As a result of this collaboration, the two statutory bodies will work towards developing a course curriculum on special education that will be incorporated as a component in general teacher preparation programmes.

The important objective of this initiative is to strengthen the education system by creating appropriate platform for the inclusion of special children in general schools with the ultimate aim of creating one school system for all children. The RCI officials feel that it is high time that the divide between the special educators training and the general teachers training is reduced and common areas are explored to improve the education of children with special needs.

“With this, the RCI aims to meet the demand for special educators in general schools across the country. Since there is a well-established infrastructure in the country for teachers’ training, the same could be used to boost special education,” said Major H.P.S. Ahluwalia, chairman, RCI.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Shardindu, Chairman, NCTE, pointed out, “The NCTE is committed to planned and co-ordinated development of teacher education system in the country. This includes all the aspects of teacher education, which comprises the education for complete personality development for all children. I am sure that this Memorandum of Understanding will prove to be a landmark in this direction.”

In the tenth plan, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development had emphasised the need for at least one special educator for children with disability in one upper primary school in every block in the country to meet the goals envisaged in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan launched by the government.