Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 14, 2008
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Online edition of India's National Newspaper Thursday, Feb 14, 2008 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version |
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Tamil Nadu
MOVING TIOWARDS MAINSTREAM: Physically challenged and special children being taught at the recently opened day care centre of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in Medavakkam. — TAMBARAM: In order to reach out to a large number of physically challenged and special children in the southern suburbs of Chennai, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has opened a day-care centre in Medavakkam near Tambaram. The SSA was functioning as a single unit for St. Thomas Mount Block and last year, it was divided into rural and urban for administrative reasons . The SSA’s objective is to ensure that every child in the school-going age attended classes. Another important component of the SSA is to impart education to physically challenged and special children under its Inclusive Education for Disabled project. An elaborate survey all over St. Thomas Mount Block prior to the commencement of the academic year 2007-08 revealed that there were 512 children with different physical disabilities. The disabilities included visual and hearing impairments, orthopaedic disabilities, mentally challenged children and others with multiple disabilities. Of them 221 were in rural division and 291 in the urban division. Of these 512 children, 263 attended regular schools, 105 attended special schools, 125 received home-based-learning with assistance from SSA tutors and physiotherapists. More than a dozen of the remaining 19 are now accommodated in the day-care centre, functioning from a classroom inside the St. Thomas Mount Block’s Model Primary School in Medavakkam. SSA teachers train children in basic skills through activity-based learning and physiotherapists provide certain physical exercises depending on the child’s disability. While some children are taken care of for two hours before being sent to their respective schools, those with acute disabilities are taken care of throughout the day, SSA officials told The Hindu. The objective was to improve the levels of confidence of children with disabilities and to integrate them with children in mainstream schools. Many parents prefer to keep children with disabilities confined to four walls rather than sending them to school and hence the initiative to start these centres, the officials said. It was earlier functioning in Chitlapakkam for some time, but access to it was extremely difficult in the absence of proper transport. With the division of SSA into urban and rural, it was decided to start such a centre in each of them and locate them in easily accessible places and hence the decision to locate it at Medavakkam, the officials said. Parents of the disabled children undergoing home-based learning are being encouraged to send their children to these day-care centres and they expected the strength to increase in the weeks to come, the officials added.
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