The differently-abled and those facing learning difficulties are not a homogenous group. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Their problems and challenges require special kinds of solutions which are diverse in nature as well as therapeutic. Today, the entire priority of health sector has been shifted towards attending to people affected by COVID-19. Hence, other health conditions are bound to face neglect.
Children with disabilities and learning difficulties have some other health-related issues (mental, intellectual, physical, etc.) as well as social-communication challenges. With hospitals not entertaining other cases, the situation has worsened for the differently-abled as they are at a greater risk of being discriminated. And discrimination is even more defined when disability and gender intersect.
As per the World Health Organization, nearly 15% of the world’s population, representing more than 1 billion people, live with disabilities with female prevalence at 19.2%. About 2% to 4% find day-to-day life challenging without assistance, and low- and middle-income countries have higher rates of disability than high-income countries.
As per the 2011 census, 2.68 crore individuals in India are facing some or the other kind of disability. Out of these, 1.18 crore were women. With such data in existence, there is a need to think and rethink differently in order to make India’s education more accessible and inclusive for students, especially girls with disabilities and learning difficulties—because they need much more assistance than others in the face of a pandemic.
What About Girl Children With Disabilities?
India is amongst the 153 countries currently witnessing temporary closure of schools and colleges to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus. This transition will not only impact and bring changes in the methodologies, pedagogies and curriculum development of private schools but would have a far-reaching impact on low-income private and government schools.
The burden has further increased on those families who were reliant on the mid-day meal scheme for their children’s nutritional needs. The situation is unfavourable when the notion of gender is prefixed with it. It gets worse when the aspect of disability also comes into play, making these girls one of the most marginalised groups in the world.
A girl child with a disability is often hardly able to articulate her medical problems and now imagine those with mental disabilities and with sight or hearing impairments, especially those belonging to low-income families. They will find this change even harder in the long run. Young and adolescent girls are twice as likely to be out of school in crisis situations. Further, they are more likely to face greater vulnerabilities, such as domestic/gender-based violence when not in school.
Gendering Education
The drop out rate of girl students in India is already a significant barrier to girl child education. The inaccessibility of school premises, the lack of basic infrastructure such as toilets, safety concerns make it even worse for girls with a disability. As classes go online, the stark digital gender divide will likely increase drop out rates during this pandemic. Girls, in general, will be forced out of schools as resources go scarce, and online education will not be an option for many.
The socio-economic disparities prevalent in rural, semi-urban and urban areas are grim for mothers and girl child alike. As per reports, India also has the highest number of anaemic women in the world. Due to dearth of income, especially among migrant workers in cities, landless labourers in villages and slum dwellers in semi-urban areas and the absence of mid-day meals for young girls, the pandemic will get more challenging for low-income groups.
According to the ASER report, among the age group 4-5, 56.8% of girls are enrolled in government schools compared to 50.4% of boys, while 43.2% girls and 49.6% boys are enrolled in private pre-schools or schools. The difference gets wider with their age. In the 6-8 years age group, 61.1% of the girls attend a government school, in comparison with 52.1% boys.
The burden of domestic work on Indian girls has further increased.
“Even before Covid-19, girls in India did substantially more unpaid care work than boys. This mirrors Indian adults – Indian women have among the highest number of hours spent per day on care work (297 minutes a day) while Indian men have among the lowest (31 minutes),” said Antara Ganguly, Gender Specialist at UNICEF India.
While girls in general face discrimination when it comes to accessing quality education, girls with a disability face double discrimination due to the socio-cultural norms and biases based on their gender and disability. In the absence of resources, infrastructure and support, these barriers become even more complex.
The outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic is acting as a hindrance to the learning outcomes of students with disabilities and learning difficulties. This is the first thing that enters the minds of educators, parents, students and school leaders across the globe. But can we spot a silver lining?
Let us flip the lens and question: What if the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is providing us with an opportunity to rethink how emergency education planning can be inclusive and accessible for children with disabilities? What if we use this as an opportunity to empower girls with disabilities?
Isn’t this global crisis presenting a unique opportunity to rethink the need for accessible and inclusive education? The answer is a simple “yes”. The real effort lies in taking steps towards this direction. To find solutions to the challenges girls with disabilities face, we not only need to look at barriers that all children with disabilities face but also those specific to being a girl.
How Can We Ensure That Online Education Caters To The Needs On Students With Disabilities?
Students with autism are struggling with virtual classes. There are testimonials of parents available that reveal that online communication and instructions are often improper due to several issues like connectivity, apathy, lack of time and transition to online teaching. Increase in screen-time has further aggravated the problem for students with sight and anxiety issues.
Children with NF1-ADHD show lower overall performances in the areas of intensive, selective, and executive attention, while children with ADHD-only showed slower response times in a sustained attention task. The impact of COVID-19 has exasperated the learning difficulties while lowering the retention power of students with ADHD.
Children with Borderline Intellectual Functioning are at higher risk than others. It is a relatively unknown condition and has not been exclusively classified as a true mental health disorder. Children with such functioning are highly vulnerable to substance use disorders. Adaptation to “new-normal” lifestyle while following the discipline of “social-distancing” comes with a challenge as the impulsivity among BI students is likely to rise.
Seema Lal, Special Educator/Co-Founder, TogetheWeCan, a Kerala-based parents support group, said, “Parent empowerment is key while working with children with neuro-diversities, and this was addressed ineffectively as it is. Most schools in India do not follow the mode of differentiated teaching within classrooms which involve parents, teachers and peer groups. Now, with the system turning online, this divide has widened. The responsibility has shifted on the parent entirely suddenly.”
The real worry lies in implementing and monitoring the transition in the lives of children with special needs. These kids are affected because their memory and retention power is not similar to others. In these extraordinary times, we need extraordinary measures to make education not only accessible but also inclusive. The children with mental, physical, emotional, or intellectual limitations may need extra words of reassurance, more explanations about the event, and more comfort and other positive reinforcements of messages.
Are Government Initiatives Inclusive Enough?
As per the National Education Policy 2019, “Every school complex will create the infrastructure necessary to ensure that appropriate support is available to all CWSN, within the complex.” It aims to provide assistive devices and appropriate technology-based tools, as well as adequate and language-appropriate teaching-learning materials (e.g. textbooks in accessible formats such as large print and Braille) will be made available to help CWSN integrate more easily into classrooms and engage with teachers and their peers.
Government’s emergency initiatives like PM e-VIDYA aim to unify all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education. A National Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Mission will be launched to ensure that every child in the country necessarily attains foundational literacy and numeracy in Grade 3 by 2025.
It is important to note that school education for CwDs (Children with Disabilities) in India is already at crossroads. So the real question is: Are these initiatives inclusive enough?
There has been no separate announcement by the Department of Empowerment for Persons with Disabilities (DEPD) (under the Ministry of Social Justice and Welfare) and the Ministry of Human Resource Department (HRD) about how educational services will be provided to children with disabilities during the pandemic. There is no clear cut mention of how many of these beneficiaries belong to the CwD category, or how these platforms are being designed to suit their needs and specifications.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), along with the Department of School Education and Literacy, has released ‘Pragyata’. It consists of extensive guidelines for digital education for schools, states, parents and students. Only one section in the 20-page rulebook has been devoted to teaching children with disabilities. This has dismayed experts and parents as yet again, the government falls short to cater to the needs and challenges of CwDs.
The push towards digital education is against the provisions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016. The Act mandates “inclusive education, differentiated teaching and peer support”. This is an antithesis to the concept of online education. The sweet fruit of inclusive education can only be fully relished through the training of teachers. But this training has been woefully limited, and its implementation even more depressed and hard-hitting.
While students, schools, educators, leaders and parents are constantly struggling to embrace the online mode of learning, the digital divide deprives a large population of children, especially with disabilities and learning disabilities from access to education not only in the rural areas but also in cities.