India is inhospitable terrain for people and children with disabilities. It grudgingly hosts 26.8 million (Census 2011) people with disabilities including 7.8 million children. The country’s education institutions, public spaces, transport systems and workplaces have dismally failed to provide ease of access and make an estimated 27 million citizens — that’s a huge number — to feel welcome.
Tragically, there’s pervasive indifference within society to the needs of disabled children and youth who with a little encouragement and empowerment could transform into productive, tax-paying citizens.
According to a 2019 Unesco report, 75 percent of children with special needs (CWSN) are not enrolled in any education institution. Moreover, less than 2 percent of India’s 1.4 million primary-secondaries provide enabling facilities for CWSN. Although the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, mandates admission of children with special needs into all mainstream schools, this directive is followed more in the breach. Most schools including top-ranked institutions pay mere lip service to inclusive education.
Way back in 2011, in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (published by EducationWorld — an affiliate publication of ParentsWorld), which rate and rank the country’s Top 4,000 schools on 14 parameters of education excellence and in the annual EW rankings of preschools, your editors included special needs education as a parameter of excellence with equal weightage (100). Subsequently in 2015, EW also started rating and ranking the country’s most respected special needs schools separately to inform parents and encourage schools to pay greater attention to differently abled children.
However, despite strident advocacy for inclusive education and accessible public spaces, the pace of change has been painstakingly slow and scattered. Largely, the education and socio-economic environment remains discouraging for children with disability. Within this disheartening environment, the role of parents in enabling children and youth with special needs to access education, therapy and training facilities has become critical. In our cover story in this issue, we present useful advice from parenting advisors and counselors on ways and means parents of CWSN can practice self-care, as well as follow practical guidelines to nurture special children.
There’s much else in this issue of PW. Check out our Middle Years feature on the benefits of giving children choices and enabling them to develop independence, decision-making skills and confidence, and the Special Essay highlighting the critical importance of parents remaining connected with teenage children. Also recommended is the Health & Nutrition essay on three ‘superseeds’ offering exceptionally high nutritional value