Government Schemes Fostering Access to Education for Disabled Children: A Comprehensive Overview

The Centrally sponsored Samagra Shiksha – is an integrated scheme for School Education of the Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, covers children from pre-primary to senior secondary level, including children with special needs. Under Samagra Shiksha, apart from overall interventions of the scheme, there is a dedicated component for Inclusive Education for Children with Special Needs (CwSN) through which various provisions are made available for the educational needs of differently abled children such as, provision of aids, appliances, assistive devices & teaching learning materials (TLMs), transportation, escort and scribe allowances etc. The component support also includes annual block identification and assessment camps and stipend for differently abled girls etc for supporting access to schools and completion of their schooling.

Provision for barrier free access within schools has also been made available under the scheme through ramps with handrails and differently abled friendly toilets. As per UDISE+ 2021-22, 5,89,986 schools have ramps with handrails,  2,14,430 schools have differently abled friendly toilets for boys and 1,80,786 differently abled friendly toilets for girls respectively. Adequate provisioning of funds under Samagra Shiksha is made to the States/UTs based on their annual proposal under Annual Work Plan and Budget.

The focus of Samagra Shiksha is on providing inclusive education to Divyang children wherein, children regardless of their abilities/disabilities participate and learn together in the same class, thus creating an enabling educational environment for all students.

The information was given by the Minister of State for Education, Smt. Annpurna Devi in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.