People with Disabilities in India: From Commitment to Outcomes

operating independent systems, may be overburdening anganwadi workers and others with
reporting demands. The weakness of identification is in part lack of local capacity, for which
there remain major training needs. Improved initial identification needs to be complemented with
strengthening of SSA’s simple systems for ongoing school-based assessment of emerging (and
often easily reversible) disabilities. However, the broader question relates to pre-school age
screening for which MHRD is not responsible, and this is a critical area for further work. All new
school construction should be physically accessible and current efforts of retrofitting accelerated.
The provisions of the PWD Act to support children with disabilities in reaching school also need
more serious attention, ad focusing on the final stages of access is meaningless if children have
not been able to access the vicinity of the school.
4.73. Improving the quality of education services: GOI should require all states to develop a
strategy for delivering education to children with special needs, in order that SSA and other
central funds can be allocated in a less mechanical manner. This strategy would assist in
improving the currently poor expenditure performance, and more importantly move the system
towards a more child-centered allocation which can provide parents and local authorities with
more options and greater accountability for resource use. Second, a key element of strategy
execution must be making the special needs resource centre model operational. In many states,
this will require piloting of different models with good evaluation. Third, current efforts to make
the curriculum accessible and adapted to the learning needs of children with disabilities need to
be accelerated. For special education curricula, greater efforts to assess the needs of children in
activities of daily living and focus learning materials on acquisition of these skills is required.
Fourth, as part of this strategy, the Government could also ensure that special education
knowledge is imparted to all teachers in pre-service training. Basic training of educational
administrators would also be necessary in order to ensure that teachers are encouraged to use their
disability-specific skills. In this regard, it would be important to review the performance of
Rehabilitation Council of India in its training provision and regulation role.
4.74. Strengthening education institutions. This reform would first involve a more direct
institutional relationship with MHRD rather than MSJE. Shifting all special education under
MHRD, so that planning, financing and monitoring of the education of all children with special
needs in the public and aided systems can be done in a coherent manner. Ensuring VECs, CBR
groups, womens’ groups, and other community organizations are actively engaged in the
importance of educating children with special needs, and familiarized with the benefits for all
children educationally and socially will also be important. Finally, as in the case of health service
delivery, overcoming weaknesses in public sector implementation by developing public/private
partnerships, learning from NGO sector innovations in education of children with special needs,
and deepening public/NGO partnerships in those states where they are lagging will be important.
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