Alka Verma –
Published On: October 29, 2021 at 13:43 IST
On Thursday, the Supreme Court ordered the Centre to clarify the norms and standards of student-teacher ratio of Special Schools.
The Court also asked the Centre to separate the norms of special teachers from general teachers who impart education to CwSN in the general schools.
Furthermore, emphasizing on the number of special teachers i.e. only 28,535 teachers are present for CwSN, the Court ordered State Governments to appoint more teachers in Schools imparting education to Children with Special Needs or suffering from disability (CwSN).
A Bench comprising Justices A.M. Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravikumar observed that according to the data presented by Unified District Information for Education, there are only 22.5 lakh CwSN in the Country.
Hence the Court stated that there is a lack of special teachers in the Country who are recognized and registered by the council concerned.
“Further, only 4.33 lakh general teachers have been trained to teach CwSN in addition to teaching general children and only 28,535 special teachers are available for children with special needs/CwSN,” stated the Bench.
Adding to this, the Court stated that, “Initiate appointment process to fill in vacancies for the posts so created for rehabilitation professionals/special teachers for being appointed on regular basis. The same shall be completed within six months from the date of this order or before the commencement of academic year 2022, 2023, whichever is earlier”.
The Bench also stated, “Other teachers and staff in general schools be given compulsory training and sensitized to handle CwSN, if admitted”.
The Court also ordered the concerning authorities to find all possibility of mixing non-working special schools with working special schools situated in neighborhood.
The Court also ordered that until a complete action plan is not prepared, the guidelines made by State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, National Capital Territory of Delhi in 2019, should be followed.
At the end, the Bench ordered the State Commissioners to start Suo Motu inquiries regarding the compliance and then make recommendation to the appropriate authority.
The Bench order State Commissioners to submit a report regarding the same by end of February 2022.
The Court made all these observations while it was hearing Petitions filed by Rajneesh Kumar Pandey and others.
The Petition was filed to support the argument that teachers qualified with B.Ed. (special) and D.Ed. (special) degree or diploma courses and fully trained can fulfil the needs of students of CwSN.