Education for Special Need Children in India

Child with special needs always has difficulties in attending to classroom education. Most schools in India are not accessible for children with special needs and they face isolation and exclusion from the regular students. This leads to severe functional and psychological impact on the child and affects the personality and prospects when the child grows up. The barrier starts from the elementary to the higher levels of education in India.


Siva Saraswathi Vidyalaya, an integrated school, was started as a primary school in Ayikudy village in Tirunelveli District of Tamilnadu in June 1981 with 5 students in a thatched shed as the first effort of Sangam to give quality education at affordable cost to the physically challenged as well as other rural students. The school grew to 5 teachers and 110 students by 1990 to further progress in our integration efforts of disabled children with others to achieve equal rights for all. In 1995, we started Middle school which was upgraded to High school in 2009 and Higher Secondary in 2015. Here, in Amar Seva Sangam, we provide a complete inclusive solution for education of children with special needs.

 Our inclusive and integrated school is established to include mainstream children with special needs children. We are highly successful in the process of inclusive education and most children who have gone out after finishing their schooling have been highly successful in their lives. This encourages us to cater to more and more such children in our region. Hence, frequent requirements for funding have become necessary.

COVID pandemic has severely impacted on the studies of our school children. Being rural poor background of our students, the stress on them is even more, which in turn caused stress in the families of both the teachers and the students. Also, there was no clue of when the lockdown would be totally lifted so that the schools can reopen for the benefit of the students. However, we have quickly overcome this situation and started online tuitions so that the children do not miss their studies. Even though the government is thinking about 'all-pass' during this academic year, we never wanted the children to miss the syllabus, which is valuable for them, though our students hailing from rural poor background do face certain difficulties of online classes. At this critical time, we are striving hard to impart quality education to our students, so that they do not miss the academic year. As you know, Amar Seva Sangam has the twin responsibility of shouldering the inmates, school children and other persons with disabilities, who are all more vulenrable for the virus as also the financial requirements that we need to constantly build up.