Times of India: New Delhi: Sunday,
May 08, 2016.
Most Delhi
schools are not inclusive, and their differently-abled students are deprived of
assistive devices or materials even though the Central Board of Secondary
Education has issued guidelines on these. Replies to queries under the Right to
Information received from the capital's government, government-aided and
private schools reveal that most of the institutions have not carried out
audits to establish the levels of the prescribed amenities.
Unfortunately,
CBSE, having issued three guidelines over the years, too said in a reply to an RTI
query that it had no information on access audits, compliance and action taken
in case of non-compliance. The education board first issued guidelines on
making school disabled-friendly way back in May 2005. It reissued fresh
guidelines in October 2008 and then reiterated these in 2009, making it
incumbent on schools to comply with measures suggested in the guidelines.
These
included provision of support through accessible educational material and the
availability of trained teachers, modification of the existing physical
infrastructure and teaching methodologies to meet the needs of all children,
including those with special needs, ensuring availability of study material for
the disabled and talking text books, reading machines and computers with speech
software and the induction of an adequate number of sign-language interpreters,
transcription services and a loop-induction system for the hearing-impaired
students.
TOI has
copies of the 160 RTI replies received by petitioner Abha Khetarpal, president
of Cross the Hurdles, an NGO that works with people with physical challenges.
Only two of the schools claimed to have carried out the mandated access audit.
In a majority of the schools, the queries about study materials, teacher
training, infrastructure, access audit report and number of students with
disabilities evinced "not applicable" as the response. Just five
schools said they had visually-impaired students, and there was no data on
students with disabilities like locomotor disability.
According
Khetarpal, "The annexure in the 2009 guidelines clearly stated the things
that schools were to provide in order to make them inclusive, failing which
they would lose their affiliation. CBSE now replies that they do not keep a
record of such information." The board told Khetarpal that affiliated
schools only provide Open Text Based Assessment material in Braille, but this
carries only 10% weightage in the final exams and is also meant only for
Classes IX and XI. What about 90% of the study material, she asks. How would
students with visual impairment cope?
Some private
schools refused to divulge the information on the ground that they did not come
under the purview of the RTI Act. So, there is no confirmed number on students
with disabilities in regular inclusive schools and what they study. Khetarpal
says that when asked this, CBSE said it not only didn't have the data, but that
it also doesn't monitor compliance of its guidelines.
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