SHILLONG, OCT 21: The Christosffel Blindin Mission (CBM) that includes Vidya Campaign will be launched in Meghalaya from October 27-30 aiming to at spread awareness and sensitizing the masses about the importance for inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream education.
“We will be having a series of events to raise awareness on the issue including a walkathon on October 30,” Bethany Society secretary Carmo Noronho during a media conference on Tuesday.
He said, “Through this campaign, we want to appeal to all the schools both private and government run to include children with disabilities into mainstream education.”
According to him, this is part of CBM mission to ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls, will be able to complete a full course of primary education and adopt a zero rejection policy so that no child is left out of the education system.
Bertha Dkhar, a special educator and member of the society said, “Schools should create an environment where children with disabilities are made to feel that they are like any other students and that they are classmates and friends.”
She informed that the state, which has one of the highest concentrations of children with disabilities in the north east (over 13,000) has many of them out of schools.
According to her, as per the SSA, out of the 13000, about 7000 CWDs are already enrolled in schools under SSA or are being provided with home based learning.
While around 8,000 of these children with disabilities are reportedly enrolled into Sarva Siksha Abhiyan schools, the number of special educators is only 53, she added.
Dkhar however said, “But I think enrollment is not enough as there is quite that needs to be done without keeping aside the out of school children,” adding “What we need is to how we can improve education for everybody.”
“Special education can only be successful only if we have more trained teachers in this area,” she asserted.
On asked about the level of awareness in Meghalaya, she said though they are quite familiar with word ‘inclusive’ but sadly the schools here are yet to know how to make use of inclusive education and they are still skeptical about this concept by failing to give space to such children.
According to 2011 census, there are 26.81 million persons with diabilities in India and the number of children with disabilities between the age of 5-10 is estimated to be 2.36 million. However, only 1.72 million are enrolled in schools.- By Pur Reporter
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