It's possible now: Speech and hearing impaired children to study at normal schools

It has been a long standing appeal from parents of speech and hearing impaired children to get admission in normal schools and now it is finally being fulfilled. Under the new initiative, select teachers from government schools and some private schools have been trained in teaching children who are speech and hearing impaired. Already 450 schools have admitted 1,000 such students and they are studying along with normal students, reports Kannada Prabha.

A project under the heading ‘Primary Education to Speech and Hearing Impaired, a modern initiative’, a training was conducted for teachers at Chikkaballapur, Vijayapura and Davanagere districts between June 2012 and May 2016. It was held under the grants provided by The Big Lottery Fund of Association of People with Disabilities (APD), Deaf Child Worldwide (DCW) of United Kingdom. The evaluation of this training was recently conducted by the Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR). It is found that the initiative resulted in better communication and social skills, better literacy age-wise and class-wise and also in mathematics. The project focused on getting admissions for 790 children with speech and hearing impairment into normal schools and community-based rehabilitation.

In the three select districts, every member of the community has been reached out and awareness has been created. Parents, guardians and teachers have been trained in sign language, skill development and primary education. They have also been provided with facilities implemented by the government.

A total of 21 APD staff, sign language experts, 800 government school teachers were engaged in this project. As many as 3,500 to 4000 classmates of the impaired children have been trained in the basics of the Indian sign languages and their capabilities. As a result of the initiative, 96 per cent of the children were able to mingle with normal children and learn with equal opportunity, said IIHMR officials. Encouraged by the success of the project, it has been decided to extend it to other districts as well.

Dr Usha Manjunath, director, IIHMR, said under the model school initiative teaching, learning, printing and distribution of learning materials, technology, including sign language training is being imparted. This has resulted in 90 per cent of impaired children getting educated along with normal students.  

Guruprasad, Assistant Director, APD, said around 2,000 speech and hearing impaired children are attending normal schools.  Though there are 60 per cent special schools for impaired children, the atmosphere is not conducive for equal learning. The initiative aims at providing integrated education to 70 per cent of impaired children.

• Speech and hearing impaired children
• karnataka