Inclusive Education at Samarthanam, Bangalore

When it comes to inclusive education, it is one of my subject which is very you know, close to my heart.

I have been seeing this program almost uh two decades now, okay. Involved in in very difficult terrain areas not just in India but also across Asian countries, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, uh Philippines, these are the countries where I have seen.

Largely, many people forgot inclusive education.

Especially after this COVID pandemic, many organizations shut down.

Uh the corporate law, recent corporate amendments, FCRA rules and regulations and all government amendments and you know, various other reasons.

Now I feel that our disability sector has gone back 15 years.

Considering this, I think there’s lot of attention, focus has to given, to be given, in order to make inclusive education heard, to, you know, from the grassroot to uh international level.

We are also good at using lot of good terminologies, but reality is very grim, right.

I would like to quote the example, just couple of days back, I come across experiences.

One of my close friend, her child is adopted, visually impaired child, went to approach one of the schools in Bangalore, they said, “we don’t have a support system, we can’t take your child to mainstream school,” okay.

So, this is the situation.

Recently one of the college going girl child, about 16, 17 year old lost her hearing capabilities, about 30%, 38% in both the years and she is um, you know, struggling a lot, but she passed with a distinction, you know, class 12 and struggling to get a seat for her, she wanted to be in the, in the, you know, uh engineering software.

She finds it very difficult, right.

So our schools and colleges are not really equipped, people are not sensitized, faculties are not sensitized.

Uh yes Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, education for all, right, put a lot of efforts in, you know, 10 years ago.

There was a lot of awareness earlier, but everything, I feel it is vanished and we have to talk more about inclusive education, right.

So this is what I feel.

When it comes to Samarthanam Trust, uh Samarthanam trust is a 27 year young organization, ISO recognized organization educating children without a disability and with disability, we call it as a Reverse inclusion.

So, we create accessible infrastructure, making curriculum accessible, teaching all the methodology used here, in a accessible way.

We have all expertise, we have special educator, for the deaf.

We have special educator for slow learner or intellectual disability.

We have occupational therapist, we have physiotherapist, we have our mobility instructors, we have a IT trainer, we have assistive devices, assistive technology uh experts, uh here in Bangalore.

About 250 plus students are undergoing uh inclusive education.

They stay with the disabled students. 80% of the non-disabled students and 20% of them are students with disabilities.

So we have uh children with visual impairment, children with physical disability, children with sensory impairment.

They all study together and they play together, they learn together, right, so this is what happens here in this, right.

Samarthanam embraced technology from its inception itself, when the technology grows, we adopt all the technology.

We have more than 20 diff…type, 20 different types of assistive technologies are used in our campus.

In order to ensure that the child with disability learns in par with a non-disabled child, this is what our motto.

Uh here class 1 to 10th, education is provided, uh so all of them play all the games together, starting from indoor, outdoor games, athletics, cricket everything together, and they learn together in the classroom, they use the technology.

Technology if we take, we have tinker lab, we have a mini science lab, we also have accessible digital library which caters here within the campus but also across 10 states of India who are undergoing, you know, inclusive education in the mainstream system.

The the the materials converted into soft version uh and provided to students with disabilities across 10 – 12 states.

So, we support about 5000 plus students uh across India, those who are into mainstream education system, from the class 11 to till post graduation.

All of our teachers are trained on inclusive education, uh plus also taught what are, whatever the specific needs of the individuals with disabilities to be, you know, taken care in the mainstream setup uh is being uh done here.

We follow state syllabus here, right, so Karnataka State syllabus, it’s a Kannada medium school, right, from the class 1 to class 10.

Uh there were 87 students who are studying in our campus from class 8 to class 10th, so in which 12 students are, you know, children with disabilities.

Uh so in the recent uh result, uh one of the student got 84% and four of the visual, four of the disabled students, they are in second class.