Moa Jamir
‘Inclusive education happens only on paper,’ Principal Director of School Education Shanavas C reportedly observed on October 26, highlighting its ‘poor state’ in Nagaland. He was addressing a one-day workshop on ‘Inclusive Education – A Step Into Inclusion’ organised by the office of the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities in collaboration with Bumblebee Inclusive School.
Also speaking in the workshop, Nagaland Board of School Education Chairperson Asono Sekhose admitted that the state does not have the required trained teachers and opined that “there may be no teacher trained in sign language interpretation as of now, in any of the educational institutions under NBSE.”
Both, incidentally, cited lack of data as one of the major challenges and acting as a hindrance to plan welfare activities for children with disabilities, while awareness among the general populace towards promoting the rights and wellbeing of persons with disabilities (PwDs) is low.
The admissions from two top honchos of the State related to the crucial children education is refreshing, to say the least. However, it also raises a penitent question: what steps have had been taken to enable inclusivity when they are at the helm of affairs?
For instance, the baseline survey or specific data on various categories of students must be available with the concerned authorities by now.
Take the case of broad data reflected on the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), which, among others, is a database on enrolment, availability of infrastructure and teachers and other facilities available in all schools across India and acts as a source of “primary information source for educational planning and accessing the progress under education sector in India.”
Nagaland’s performance on inclusion, as reflected in the UDISE+ 2019-20 report, is mangy. Presumably, it is an improvement over previous years. As per the report, a total of 2809 Children With Special Needs (CWSN) were enrolled in various classes from Primary to Higher Secondary (1-12) levels across the State in 2019-20. However, the State was found most wanting in the provision of facilities to enable unrestricted access for the CWSN.
For instance, out of 2758 schools in the state, only 37.49% had ramps for CWSN against the All-India average of 67.65. The percentage falls to just 14.5% if ramps with handrails are considered, against the national average of 43.73%. Just 3.84% of the schools in the State had ‘functional CWSN friendly toilets’ while it was available in 20.66% of the schools in India.
In this context, one concurs with the State Disability Commissioner Diethono Nakhro, who in the same workshop, asserted that “All matters concerning children with disabilities, including education, was also completely neglected.” The Commissioner also cited lack of any proper information on “how many there are, how many are out of school and how many have assistive technologies to aid their education etc” as one of the biggest challenges with CWSN.
As such, the three concerned authorities seem to have diagnosed ‘lack of data’ as one of the biggest challenges facing the state's policymaker to implement corrective measures to enable or improve inclusive education.
To this end, the identification of the problem is the pathway in exploring potential solutions. The three concerned authorities, hereafter, should converge and start a systematic process to improve and enable inclusive education. As the State Disability Commissioner rightly noted, “We cannot continue making the education of our children with disabilities an afterthought.”
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