Educational Inclusion of Children with Disabilities: Government Schemes, Policies and its Awareness

Abstract

Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) are the integral part of the society. Their rights, entitlements and opportunities as well as services for their specific needs, have to be made available in the same ways as they are made available for populace. It is the attitude, knowledge and awareness that can help our society to move from segregation to Inclusion. As India is the signatory to the ‘UN Millennium Development Goals’ (2000) with one of the aim being ‘Universalization of Primary Education by 2015’ (although, Inclusion was not specifically mentioned), various Government policies and schemes have been launched to promote Inclusion and striving to make the objective successful. As the schemes and policies are specifically made for mainstreaming of Children with Disabilities (CwDs) into regular setup, it becomes very important that the target population are made well aware about the schemes so that they can avail maximum benefit and advantage of it. The current paper is trying to gain attention towards the importance of awareness of schemes relating to PwDs and provides an understanding of value of awareness of legislative obligations of Government Departments, legal rights and entitlements of PwDs and various benefits/concessions available to them through the Government sector. Therefore, an attempt has been made ‘to study the Government schemes and policies (Central and State) for Inclusion and their awareness among the parents of CwDs’. A sample of 80 parents has been selected from Delhi through non-probability sampling technique. Interview schedule and questionnaire have been used as tools for data collection. The main findings of the study came out is that yet parents of CwDs are considered as the ‘PARTNERS’ in promotion of Inclusion in the society but the ground reality is that they themselves are not fully aware about the various schemes related to Inclusion. The awareness level of the educated parents is average and of uneducated parents, it is poor. The findings clearly suggest that one of the prime focus and objective for Inclusion is need to be shifted to – ‘increasing the awareness level of people with disabilities and their parents towards government policies’, as they are the main beneficiaries who can actually help in making Inclusion successful by availing these assistances. The objective of Inclusion is not only to provide equality but also equity (Figure 1).