Zenia

After independence, the Indian Constitution directed the state to ensure provision of basic education to all children up to the age of 14 years. The education of people with disabilities was, however, not explicit in the early constitutional provisions except for guaranteeing similar rights for people with disabilities as other members of society.
The Education Commission of 1966 (Kothari Commission) drew attention to the education of children with disabilities. In 1974, for the first time, the necessity of integrated education was explicitly emphasized under the scheme for Integrated Education for Disabled Children (IEDC). In pursuit of the goal of providing basic education for all, the National Policy on Education (1986) and its follow-up actions have been major landmarks. The World Declaration on Education for All adopted in 1990 gave further boost to the various processes already set in motion in the country.
The Rehabilitation Council of India Act 1992 initiated a training programme for the development of professionals to respond to the needs of students with disabilities. The enactment of the People with Disability Act in 1996 provided legislative support. This act makes it mandatory to provide free education to children with disabilities in an appropriate environment until the age of 18 years. In
1999, the government passed the National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral
Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act for the economic rehabilitation of people with disabilities. These acts have been instrumental in bringing about a perceptive change/ improvement in the attitude of government, NGOs and people with disabilities. In recent years, two major initiatives have been launched by the government for achieving the goals of universalization of elementary education (UEE): the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) in 1994 and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in 2002.
Programmes launched in the recent past have been able to make only a limited impact in terms of increasing the participation of children with disabilities in formal education. This situation needs to change; a focused effort is required. Keeping in view recent initiatives on inclusive education, a comprehensive review is necessary to help in better understanding the present status of education of children with disabilities, and how inclusive education can be promoted.
“Ignorance … is a guarantee of marginalisation.”
Lewin (2000: 23)
In a world where approximately 113 million children are not enrolled in primary school
(DFID, 2001), Lewin (2000) highlights the potential for education to reverse the negative effects of social exclusion. There are an estimated 25 million children out of school in India
(MHRD 2003 statistics, cited in World Bank, 2004), many of whom are marginalised by dimensions such as poverty, gender, disability, and caste. While many educational programmes have attempted to reach out to these previously excluded children, those with disabilities are often forgotten, emphasising their invisible status in a rigidly categorised society. This paper, while limited by the lack of available empirical data and constraints of desk research, aims to present a case study of the current status of inclusive education in India with a focus on children with disabilities. It may prove useful for anyone wishing to undertake empirical research in this, until recently, neglected field, or simply needing to gain an overview of the educational situation in India today for children with disabilities.
As a paper for the Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity
(CREATE) Pathways to Access series, it explores access issues faced by children with disabilities in the first three CREATE zones of exclusion – those without any basic education access, those who drop-out after entry, and those who are at risk from exclusion
(see Appendix B). After exploring some general, conceptual questions concerning the relevance of disability and inclusive education in the context of EFA, the paper analyses the interpretation and implementation of inclusive education in India, alongside the issues and constraints faced by the stakeholders involved. This is followed by discussion of the implications these may have for the future of educational inclusion of all children, particularly those with disabilities, in the areas of government policy, school quality, attitudinal change and the potential for research. Due to word-length and data limitations, the paper was not able to explore in-depth some of the more pragmatic areas of inclusive education implementation, such as curriculum access, assessment methods, measuring achievement, and the learning environment.
The paper concludes that a twin-track approach to disability may assist not only in improving educational access for marginalised children, but also the reconceptualisation of inclusive education as a school quality issue to benefit all children. This could contribute in the long-term towards the achievement of Education For All and fulfillment of the
Fundamental Right to Education enshrined in the Constitution of India in 2002
What is inclusive education?
Until recently, most conceptual literature on inclusive education was Northern (European and North American) in origin, taking a ‘whole-school’ approach to institutional change
(Peters, 2004), and influenced by the social model of disability. Children in special schools were seen as geographically and socially segregated from their peers, and the initial movement to locationally integrate these students in mainstream schools (‘integration’) shifted to one where the whole school was encouraged to become more adaptable and inclusive in its day-to-day educational practices for all students (‘inclusive education’).
Pedagogy in particular was highlighted as the key to meeting all students’ educational needs by making the curriculum flexible, and so more accessible. By recognising that teaching methods which can make curriculum accessible to children with disabilities can also make learning accessible to all students (Ainscow, 2005; Ainscow, 1991), a teacher or school principal is well on the way to improving the overall quality of their school. In this way, inclusive education is not a disability-only issue, but an educational quality issue
(ibid).
There is a growing, although not comprehensive, literature in the south, which focuses more on external factors with its ‘community approach’ (Peters, 2004). In developing contexts with large numbers of out-of-school children, inclusive education tends to be more broadly concerned with school access and education deprivations for marginalised groups such as girls, ethnic minorities, poor families and disabled children in CREATE zones one and two, who have never attended or dropped out of school (Subrahmanian, 2003). It seems that there is currently an expanding discourse on inclusive education developing amongst some academics and teaching professionals in India, many of whom, like Mike
Oliver (1996), see inclusive education as exclusively concerned with children with Inclusive Education in India: Interpretation, Implementation and Issues
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disabilities (Singal, 2005a). This discourse is attempting to shift perceptions of disability from the medical model to the social model. However, there are many conceptual difficulties with the terms of integration and inclusion in India, which are often used interchangeably (ibid). Further, varying definitions of disability and subjective interpretations of what ‘type’ of child a teacher is willing to include in their classroom add to the confusion.
Even if a previously excluded child is given access to a mainstream classroom, what happens within that space can be anything but inclusive if the school quality is poor, they cannot access an inflexible curriculum, or they are ignored or bullied by the teacher or their peers. These children would be found in CREATE zone three. Tomasevski (2003: 15) highlights how “…education is widely – albeit wrongly – perceived as inherently good.
Getting all children to school is thus mistaken for their right to education.” It is worth noting that the concept of inclusive education in the mainstream as opposed to specialist segregated provision is a matter of heated, inconclusive debate in the north, and yet it is seemingly being transferred unquestioningly as the panacea to the exclusion of children with disabilities in the south.
While in northern contexts, the discourse around inclusive education is primarily concerned with segregation as opposed to inclusion in the mainstream, in the south the coverage of special schools is so limited that the discourse is concerned with inclusion being potentially the most cost and time-efficient way of improving access to educational institutions. It may be that the promotion by the World Bank and OECD of the cost-effectiveness of inclusion in the mainstream enabling both economic and social benefits (Peters, 2004) may bear more relevance for resource-constrained governments and policy-makers than a child-rights approach. Although inclusive education clearly has the potential to improve teaching and learning processes for all children as well as fulfilling their rights, for the purposes of this paper we will be looking at inclusive education mostly in terms of access for children with disabilities in India due to their ‘invisibilisation’.
Implications
While there is no shortage of issues and constraints in the interpretation and implementation of inclusive education in India, it is important to remember that it is at a very early stage of conceptualisation and implementation. The fact that it is being discussed and in some places implemented, albeit falteringly, demonstrates a willingness to engage with elements of a new concept that has the potential to be developed in the future in a positive manner. This section will explore the implications that these issues have for possible areas of development that could move forward mutual understandings of how inclusive education could benefit the Indian education system, or rather the people in it.
Conclusion
In his influential work on educational change, Fullan (1993) highlights the complexity of the change process from a phenomenological perspective - stakeholder-driven and influenced, not straightforward, and a long-term journey or process of conflict, rather than a blueprint. Seen in this long-term, slightly chaotic, light, the sporadic implementation of inclusive education may be one step on this lengthy journey during which stakeholders learn from mistakes and adapt their plans and practices accordingly. The teacher education focus of some government programmes is perhaps going in the right direction. However, the apparently slight regard for content and methodology of the courses, which do not reconceptualise IE or address attitudes towards disability, demonstrates the need for further change in this context. Also, teachers are not the only stakeholders involved. Students, parents, administrators and local government officials are affected too, all of whom will see any innovation or new concept in a different light. However, the reconceptualisation of IE as whole school issue appears to be essential if IE is to be more than physical relocation of children with disabilities in a mainstream classroom.
While only 2.5-6% of the population may have a disability, with approximately 98% of children with disabilities not attending any type of educational institution, the current provision (specialist or mainstream, government or NGO) is clearly not enough to attain
EFA. This may partly explain why inclusive education is perceived by some as an inevitability rather than a policy preference, because resources cannot stretch to the number of special schools and specialist teachers that would be needed to cater for this excluded group. However, although children with disabilities are unlikely to suffer from only one exclusionary dimension, they are often excluded from programmes for girls, or SC, ST or
OBC students, further reinforcing their marginalisation from society. Human resource potential aside, without education marginalised children may not be able to fulfil their rights as citizens (Tomasevski, 2003) in the largest democracy in the world.
This suggests that the twin-track approach advocated by DFID (2000) may be a constructive way forward for the inclusion of children with disabilities in the Indian education system. While some programmes could focus specifically on educational provision for children with disabilities, others could mainstream disability alongside gender and other exclusionary dimensions such as poverty. This would ensure the inclusion of all in programmes intended to widen the impact of institutional systems such as education.
With the development of much-needed research into the inclusive education discourse and the implementation and outcomes of IE policy, reconceptualisation of inclusive education as a whole school quality issue for all children may be able to grow alongside this merging of agendas. Thus, EFA and the Fundamental Right to education for all children as declared by the 86 th Constitutional amendment in 2002, may be fulfilled in the long-term through the improved implementation of inclusive education.
*Inclusive education takes place when students, with or without disabilities, learn, participate, and interact together in the same classroom. When children with disabilities join classes with peers who do not have any disabilities, both the disabled and the non-disabled children can reap the benefits.

Effective Learning * In inclusive education, children with and without disabilities are all expected to study, learn, read, write. By having higher expectations for children with disabilities coupled with good and effective instruction, they quickly learn academic skills. Because the philosophy and mission of inclusive education is intended to help all students to learn, all children in the class benefit from the method of instruction. Based on evidence from the National Center for Education Restructuring and Inclusion, children with disabilities in the classroom tend to show academic achievement in several areas including improved performance on mastery of IEP goals, standardized tests, motivation to study and learn, overall good grades and classroom behavior. Also, children with disabilities who are instructed under general educational settings have scored higher on literacy than those children educated in segregated classrooms