People with Disabilities in India: From Commitment to Outcomes

4.37. Once children have been identified as disabled, an assessment is undertaken to determine
the nature, type and extent of disability. This is done by a team comprising of doctors, eye and
ENT specialists, and general and resource teachers. The child is then placed in a particular
school-type. While the guidelines calls for all children with disabilities to be placed in regular
school settings, they also permit the placement of children in special schools, AIE/EGS centers,
distance learning centers and home-based education if it is decided that the child is not in a
position to participate in regular school, and the interventions they require will be beyond those
that can be offered in a regular school even with a trained and qualified teacher. This reflects the
broader transition from a special education to inclusive education model.
4.38. There are three key issues with early detection and identification of CWD for education
policie s:
• technical and logistical difficulties in early identification. As noted earlier, some of the
issues relate to institutional lack of coordination and duplication. A second aspect of this is
the functioning of disability identification camps, which achieved at best partial coverage of
CWD. 106 A further concern with testing of younger children is that they need specific
preparation for testing, and that the instruments and personnel needed for these may not be
readily available in many parts of India.
• there are large discrepancies in the number of CWD identified between census data,
school-based records through DISE, and PAB survey aggregates used for the preparation
of SSA annual prospective plans. For example, PAB data find only 1.54 percent of children
identified as having special needs nationally, though this is a significant improvement from
only 0.35 percent in 2002/03. Even more significantly, there are unreasonably low shares of
children identified as having special needs in specific states. For example, data for 2005-06
suggest that only 0.31 percent of children in Rajasthan had special needs and 0.7 percent in
UP. In contrast, states such as Maharashtra had 2.45 percent and HP around 2.3 percent of
children identified with special needs. In contrast, census data on 5-14 year old children with
disabilities nationally suggests that 2.2 percent of children have disabilities. On a statewise
basis, the differentials are even more dramatic in several cases, e.g. the number of children
identified by PAB in Rajasthan as disabled for 2005-06 was less than 15 percent of the
number of 6-14 year old disabled children identified in the 2001 census. For UP, the PAB
share was under 30 percent of the census figure. In contrast, states such as Maharashtra and
Kerala have SSA CWD numbers well above the census estimates. The discrepancies between
SSA and census sources suggest major challenges for government in identifying children
with special needs. Figure 4.11 provides comparative figures for several states on the share
of children identified as disabled through SSA and the estimate of all CWD in the 6-14 age
cohort as per the census.
106 E.g, in the UP and TN survey, only 23 percent of PWD had attended a disability assessment camp.
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