EENET asia Newsletters : Fourth issue June 2007 Contents

Inclusive Education in India: A Lot of Talk But Not Enough Action?

India is committed to fulfilling the goal of education for all and ‘inclusive education’ is now a feature of various government documents and plans. Between 35 and 80 million of India’s 200 million school age children do not attend school. In addition, fewer than 5 per cent of children who have a disability are in school. Research based at University of Cambridge (UK) analyses how ‘inclusive education’ is understood in India and what influences decisions to include or exclude children.

Inclusive education in India is seen by many as a matter of providing education for children with disabilities. However, many more children are excluded on grounds of gender, regional or caste differences, but these are in most cases not considered for inclusive education. While it is recognized that these children need to be included, efforts to do so are not well coordinated. Programmes for pre-school children, child workers, children from particular castes and tribes and those with so-called special educational needs are all run by different government ministries.

The research was carried out in a sample of schools in Delhi recognized as having made progress towards becoming more inclusive. Although all but one of the schools in the sample are private and fee paying this does not mean that private schools are just for the elite: in Delhi and elsewhere in India there has been an enormous growth in private education due to the perceived failure of government/public education. Many of these private schools receive grants from the government.

Through interviews with teachers and head teachers and lesson observation it was found that:

• Schools believe they deserve the label ‘inclusive’ as they include students who otherwise would be denied admission to the mainstream and are developing a range of responses to meet their more individualized needs.
• Whilst head teachers are familiar with the term ‘inclusive education’ - and have picked up this term at conferences - most teachers are unfamiliar with the concept.
• Interviewees regard efforts towards inclusive education as being shaped by Western influences, rather than being based on Indian reality.
  Changes have been driven by government and parental pressure: teachers have hardly been involved and the voice of the child has been completely neglected.
• Decisions to include children were governed by issues such as the degree and nature of a disability, perceived ‘IQ’, and behaviour of the child.
• Teachers received little or no formal training to help them meet the needs of children with different abilities and have made only small changes to their teaching methods: they primarily depend on informal and outside support from home tutors and parents.
  

Most practitioners seem resigned to the continuation of a system that excludes many children and regards learners’ personal inabilities and characteristics of mainstream education as the reasons why they cannot be included.

Arguing that Education For All in India will only be achieved by including all the excluded, not only those with disabilities, but also child workers, children from certain castes and tribes there is a need for:

• The development of a shared understanding of inclusive education which is communicated effectively to and within schools in order to create common goals
• More teachers to be involved in decision-making processes within schools
• Teacher training courses to respond to increased diversity in mainstream classrooms.

Providing access to education is only the first stage in overcoming exclusion from education. There needs to be a shift in perspectives and values so that diversity is appreciated and even celebrated, and teachers are given skills to overcome the cycle of failure and frustration which inevitably results from the present limited teaching practice.

Adapted from: ‘We do inclusion’: Practitioner perspectives in some inclusive schools in India’ in ‘Perspectives in Education’, No 21(3), by Nidhi Singal and Martyn Rouse 2003

EENET asia Newsletters : Fourth issue June 2007 Contents