The commercialisation of education
The recent trend of commercialising the Indian education system has proved to be quite flourishing in terms of businesses and futuristic in terms of infrastructure. However, this reformative approach has changed the prior focus of education in India which is meant to expand literacy with the children at its centre. Since the focus has shifted towards an economic motivation with meagre attention towards academic excellence of the children, the perspective and thought required for inclusive education has got diverted. One major challenge in fulfilling the need for inclusive education in India is the fact that Indian education is not that platform anymore where the students accomplish their academic goals and enjoy their scholarly achievements, but an arena instigating the students to participate in the rat race and competition to fetch higher marks and better academic performance than their peers.
Issues in implementing inclusive education in India
Any kind of unprecedented change has to go through storms of debate before being accepted as a valuable norm. Similarly implementing the infrastructure for inclusive education requires massive planning, financing, and consulting, which is not something that the Indian education system can currently support. With the educational institutions constantly upgrading themselves according to the requirements of the students, having an inclusive education system would require the schools to hire faculty who would be proficient in dealing with especially disabled children as well. They would also need to have a technological setup to facilitate the learning programs for all the children in a more advanced learning environment. But the problem is that the schools are not currently equipped to implement all these new changes to facilitate inclusive education in the near future.
Increasing population
An inclusive education would require an integration of students from all categories and social strata. The major issue here is that the current Indian population has a huge number of children who are right now at school-going age and are likely to enrol in schools, while on the other hand, the number of skilled and able teachers who can guide and well-direct the students to share their future, is glaringly disproportionate. In such a situation, the elite educational institutions are roping in all the talented and gifted professionals as valuable assets so that they can help to navigate the students through the maze of crazy competition and emerge as the winner. This creates a noticeable disparity between the populace of elite students and their poorer counterparts who comprise the maximum portion of the Indian educable population.
Lack of awareness about need for inclusive education
Another prominent challenge in the way of fulfilling the need for inclusive education in India is the lack of awareness regarding the need for inclusive education and the rights of the children to be treated equally as far as receiving a good education is concerned. The idea of having an educational system that will include both the non-disabled student and the disabled ones under the same roof and within the same scope of the learning program is still at an infant stage because the educational institutions, well most of them at least, are still not aware of the urgent need for this integration. Moreover, there is also a dearth of knowledge within the school setup regarding the requirements for creating a participatory environment to impart education to both disabled and non-disabled students at the same time without exhibiting any favouritism or uncalled-for inclinations. To know more visit https://hercircle.in/engage/work/career/the-importance-of-inclusive-education-in-classrooms-834.html
Lack of flexibility in the curriculum
In order to accommodate the need for inclusive education in Indian society, a lot of changes have to be made to the existing academic curriculum of certain schools. However, with the limited number of teachers and an all-time low technical infrastructure, which is pretty glaring to avoid, the schools do not have the fundamental setup that is required to successfully aid inclusive education. Another important part of the curriculum of an educational institution is the quality of teachers. The teachers, who are the key to facilitating an inclusive education, are responsible for educating the children and shepherding them to make their dreams come true. The problem is that the teachers are not trained enough and as a result, they are incapable of appropriately handling and helping the students with special needs as easily as the regular students.
Lack of affordability
Last but not least, a major section of the Indian society is still scrounging for their daily meals and in this scenario, education is the last thing in their minds. Many of these children with special needs who have reached their educable age hail from economically and socially weaker sections of society. Hence, their difficulty is doubled. As a result of multiple constraints and a lack of much-needed financial support, these children fail to access education and do not benefit from the education system. Their parents cannot afford to send these kids to the handful of schools that have started accepting an inclusive educational model and their need for getting included under a fair inclusive educational system gets ignored time after time. This automatically suggests that their future is most likely affected.