Historical Perspective of Inclusive Education.pdf

Historical Perspective of Inclusive Education

1. Historical Perspectives of
Inclusive Education
Akanksha Singh
Professor
Department of Education
University of Lucknow, Lucknow
Anjali Dwevedi
Junior Research Fellow
Department of Education
University of Lucknow,
Lucknow.
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3. Inclusive Education
• Inclusive education is an approach towards educating all children under the same roof.
•It requires to take care of learning needs of all children with a specific focus on those who are vulnerable to
marginalization and exclusion.
• It helps all learners to learn together through access to common educational set-up (pre-school, schools and
community education) with proper support services.
•The flexible education system which takes care of various types of learners and their needs can fulfill these
requirements.
•All the children (disabled or non disabled) are the future citizens of the country, so they have equal right to
education.
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4. •first school for the hearing-impaired children in 1885 in Bombay (Mumbai).
•first school for visually impaired children was established in 1887.
• Services for the physically disabled were initiated in the middle of 20th century
•first school for intellectually challenged was established in the first half of 20th Century.
•Therefore, the education of disabled was as long back as before India achieved independence.
•The Central Advisory Board of Education published Sargent Report in 1944. In this report, for the first
time provision for the handicapped (the word used in this report) were to form an essential part of the
national system of the education administered by department of education .
•According to this report handicapped children were to be sent to special schools when the nature and extent
of their defects made it necessary, institutions were to be established to prepare the handicapped for
employment and special teacher training programme be started.
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5. In 1964, the Kothari Commission (1964-66) brought up the issue of children with special needs in the Plan of
Action and recommended for including children with special needs into ordinary schools.
Most educators believed that the children with physical, sensory or intellectual impairments were so different that
they could not participate in the activities of a common school. Therefore, despite these early reports, there were
trends in favor of special Education in India. That is there is a trend of exclusion of the challenged children. The
National Policy on Education (1986) included a full chapter on “Education of the Handicapped” and formulated
guidelines for action.
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6. The NPE (1986) strongly emphasized the need for the expansion of integrated
education. The centrally sponsored scheme of Integrated Education for Disabled
Children (IEDC) was introduced in 1974 as per the recommendations of the NPE
(1986). Thus, efforts for inclusion were persistently made. Meanwhile the NCERT
playing advisory role to the government of India, joined hand with the UNICEF and
launched the Project Integrated Education for the Disabled (PIED) in 1987.
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7. •The project aimed at strengthening the integration process for learners
with disabilities into regular schools. Integrated Education for Disabled
Children (IEDC) was later amalgamated as component with other
basic education project like the District Primary Education Programme
(DPEP) and Sarva Sikhsha Abhiyan, a project taken as mission mode to
achieve the goal of Universalisation of Elementary Education – UEE
(Department of Education, 2000).
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8. In India, the linguistic shift from the term, integration to inclusion was formally
introduced in the National Curriculum Framework for School Education –
NCFSE (2000) brought out by the NCERT. It recommended inclusive schools for
all and to provide quality education to all learners.

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