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ImpactMojo 101 Series · Free Forever

Inclusive
Education
101

What inclusion means in law and in the classroom: the CRPD and General Comment 4, the RTE Act 2009, the RPwD Act 2016, NEP 2020 and Samagra Shiksha, the data, neighbours' laws, teaching practice and how to measure it, for practitioners in South Asia

100 SlidesSouth Asia FocusFree ForeverRTE, RPwD and NEP 2020

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Agenda

What we cover

What inclusive education means

Slides 3–12

Models of disability

Slides 13–20

Who is left out in South Asia

Slides 21–28

The Constitution and the RTE Act 2009

Slides 29–36

The RPwD Act 2016

Slides 37–44

NEP 2020 and Samagra Shiksha

Slides 45–51

What the data shows

Slides 52–59

Neighbours' laws

Slides 60–66

Classroom practice

Slides 67–76

Teachers and support staff

Slides 77–83

Measuring inclusion

Slides 84–91

A practitioner's toolkit

Slides 92–99

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Section One

What inclusive education means

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The definition

Inclusive education is a change to the school, made for every learner

Inclusive education

A process of systemic reform that changes content, teaching methods, approaches, structures and strategies in education to overcome barriers, so that all students of the relevant age range get an equitable and participatory learning experience in the environment that best corresponds to their requirements and preferences. Wording from CRPD Committee, General Comment No. 4 (2016), CRPD/C/GC/4, paragraph 11.

What the definition asks of a school

The duty sits with the system. The school changes its curriculum, its timetable, its buildings, its tests and its teaching so that a child who learns differently can take part. The child is not asked to become someone else before being admitted.

Who it covers

General Comment 4 is written about disability, because it interprets the disability convention. Its logic applies to any child the system leaves behind: a girl kept home to look after siblings, a Santali speaker taught only in Odia, a child of migrant brick kiln workers who moves twice a year.

Keep this definition in mind through the deck. Each later section asks the same question of a law, a dataset or a lesson plan: who is expected to change, the child or the school?

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Four words

Exclusion, segregation, integration and inclusion are four different things

The CRPD Committee separates four situations that are often blurred together in Indian programme documents. The distinctions decide whether a project is moving a system forward or relabelling what already exists.

Term	What it means, in the Committee's words (paraphrased)	A South Asian example (Illustrative)
Exclusion	Students are directly or indirectly prevented from, or denied, access to education in any form	A child with cerebral palsy in a hill village who has never been enrolled anywhere
Segregation	Education of students with disabilities in separate settings designed for an impairment, in isolation from students without disabilities	A residential school for blind children in the district town
Integration	Placing students with disabilities in mainstream institutions on the understanding that they adjust to its standard requirements	A deaf child enrolled in Class 4 with no interpreter, sitting at the back
Inclusion	Systemic reform of content, methods, structures and strategies so that all students learn together	The same child with an Indian Sign Language interpreter, captioned videos and a teacher trained to plan for her

Source: CRPD Committee, General Comment No. 4 (2016), CRPD/C/GC/4, paragraph 11. The Committee adds that placing students in mainstream classes without structural change does not constitute inclusion.

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A right of the learner

General Comment 4 says what kind of thing inclusive education is

Paragraph 10 of General Comment 4 lists four ways inclusive education is to be understood. Each one has a practical consequence for how a school, a parent or a programme behaves.

Paragraph 10 says inclusive education is	What follows in practice
(a) A fundamental human right of every learner; the right of the individual learner and not, for children, of a parent or caregiver, whose responsibilities are subordinate to the rights of the child	A parent's wish to keep a disabled daughter at home does not end the state's duty to her
(b) A principle that values the well-being of all students and respects their dignity and autonomy	Children are consulted about their own support, in ways suited to age
(c) A means of realising other human rights, and the primary means by which persons with disabilities can lift themselves out of poverty	Education spending on disabled children is also poverty and employment policy
(d) The result of continuing, proactive commitment to remove barriers, with changes to the culture, policy and practice of regular schools	Inclusion is a process with milestones, measured over years

Point (a) is the one that surprises practitioners in South Asia, where family decisions about schooling are usually taken as final. Source: CRPD Committee, General Comment No. 4 (2016), CRPD/C/GC/4, paragraph 10.

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Salamanca, 1994

The Salamanca Statement made regular schools the starting point

More than 300 participants representing 92 governments and 25 international organisations met in Salamanca, Spain, from 7 to 10 June 1994, at the World Conference on Special Needs Education organised by the Government of Spain with UNESCO. The conference adopted the Salamanca Statement and a Framework for Action.

Regular schools with this inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society and achieving education for all.

Salamanca Statement, paragraph 2 (UNESCO, ED-94/WS/18, 1994)

Why it mattered

Before 1994 most international work on disability and schooling spoke of special provision. Salamanca put the regular school at the centre and treated separate schools as the exception that needs a reason.

Its efficiency argument

The same paragraph says inclusive schools give an effective education to most children and improve the cost-effectiveness of the whole system. Finance ministries listen to that sentence more readily than to a rights argument.

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Salamanca's reach

The Framework for Action named many more children than disabled children

Paragraph 3 of the Salamanca Framework for Action sets its guiding principle: schools should accommodate all children regardless of their physical, intellectual, social, emotional, linguistic or other conditions. It then lists who that includes.

Disabled and gifted children
Street and working children
Children from remote or nomadic populations
Children from linguistic, ethnic or cultural minorities
Children from other disadvantaged or marginalised areas or groups

Reading it in South Asia

Each line has a local face. Working children in Sivakasi or in carpet weaving in Bhadohi; nomadic Bakarwal families in Jammu and Kashmir; Rohingya children in Cox's Bazar; Adivasi children whose language is absent from the textbook. Inclusion in this wider sense is the frame NEP 2020 later adopts with its term socio-economically disadvantaged groups.

Source: Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education, UNESCO and Ministry of Education and Science, Spain (1994), Framework paragraph 3.

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CRPD Article 24 (1) and (2)

Article 24 turns inclusion into a treaty obligation

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 13 December 2006. Article 24(1) requires States Parties to ensure an inclusive education system at all levels and lifelong learning. Article 24(2) lists what that requires.

(a) No exclusion from the general education system, or from free and compulsory primary or secondary education, on the basis of disability
(b) Access to inclusive, quality and free primary and secondary education in the communities where children live
(c) Reasonable accommodation of the individual's requirements

(d) The support required, within the general education system
(e) Effective individualised support measures in environments that maximise academic and social development, consistent with the goal of full inclusion

Clause (e) is where individual education plans come from. Clause (c) is where a ramp, a scribe or extra exam time comes from.

Source: CRPD (2006), Article 24, text as published by UN DESA. India ratified on 1 October 2007 (UN Treaty Collection, CRPD status page, read 6 October 2026).

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CRPD Article 24 (3) to (5)

Language, communication and teachers are part of the right

Article 24 goes beyond admission. It names the means of communication a child needs, and it puts a duty on the state to employ teachers who can use them.

Clause	What it requires	What it looks like in India
24(3)(a)	Learning of Braille, alternative script, augmentative and alternative communication, orientation and mobility, and peer support	Braille textbooks, communication boards for a child with cerebral palsy, cane training
24(3)(b)	Learning of sign language and promotion of the linguistic identity of the deaf community	Indian Sign Language taught as a full language with its own grammar
24(3)(c)	Education of blind, deaf or deafblind children in the most appropriate languages, modes and means	A choice of setting made around communication needs
24(4)	Employ teachers, including teachers with disabilities, qualified in sign language or Braille, and train all staff	Deaf and blind teachers in ordinary schools
24(5)	Access to tertiary education, vocational training and lifelong learning	Section 32 of the RPwD Act 2016 reserves at least 5% of seats in aided higher education

Source: CRPD Article 24, UN DESA text; Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, s32(1).

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General Comment 4

Two lines in General Comment 4 that programme designers often miss

General Comment 4 was adopted by the CRPD Committee and issued on 25 November 2016. It is the Committee's authoritative reading of Article 24. Two of its paragraphs change how a government or a donor should plan.

Paragraph 31: accommodation now

The denial of reasonable accommodation is discrimination, and the duty to provide it is immediately applicable and not subject to progressive realisation. A state cannot say that a ramp or a scribe will come when the budget allows. In paragraph 30 the Committee adds that accommodation may not be conditional on a medical diagnosis of impairment.

Paragraph 40: one system

Progressive realisation means moving as fast and effectively as possible towards Article 24, and the Committee says this is not compatible with sustaining two systems of education, a mainstream one and a special or segregated one. It encourages states to move budget towards inclusive education.

Hold paragraph 40 against section 31 of India's RPwD Act 2016 in Section 5 of this deck, which gives a child the choice of a neighbourhood school or a special school. The two texts pull in different directions. Source: CRPD Committee, General Comment No. 4 (2016), CRPD/C/GC/4.

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SDG 4.5

SDG target 4.5 makes equity measurable

Target 4.5 of the Sustainable Development Goals reads: by 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations. Indicator 4.5.1 measures it through parity indices, female to male, rural to urban, bottom to top wealth quintile and, as data become available, disability status.

0.91

Wealth parity index, primary completion (poorest 20% / richest 20%)

UN SDG progress, Goal 4, 2026

0.68

Wealth parity index, lower secondary completion

UN SDG progress, Goal 4, 2026

0.34

Wealth parity index, upper secondary completion

UN SDG progress, Goal 4, 2026

Read the three numbers together. Globally, the poorest children nearly match the richest in finishing primary school and fall far behind by upper secondary. Exclusion grows with every stage, which is why an inclusion programme that stops at Class 5 has done a third of the job. Source: sdgs.un.org, Goal 4 progress text, 2026.

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Section Two

Models of disability

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Why models matter

The model you hold decides what you try to fix

A model of disability is a working answer to a simple question: where does the problem sit? Teachers, officials and parents rarely say which model they use, but their decisions reveal it. A headteacher who says a child is not ready for school is using one model. A district officer who asks why the school has no ramp is using another.

The charity model

Disability is misfortune, and the response is kindness. Disabled children are recipients of help, often in separate homes or schools run by religious or voluntary bodies. The giver decides what is given, and nobody owes the child anything.

The medical model

Disability is a defect in the body or mind, and the response is diagnosis and treatment. The specialist is in charge. Schooling waits for a certificate, a therapy plan or a cure, and the ordinary school sees the child as a case to refer elsewhere.

Both models still shape South Asian systems. Disability certificates, which gate most entitlements, come from the medical model. Many special schools began in the charity model. Neither model asks the school to change.

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The social model

The social model moves the problem from the child to the barriers

Social model of disability

The view that people are disabled by barriers in the environment, in attitudes and in institutions, and that removing those barriers is the main task. Impairment is a fact about the body; disability is what happens when the world is built for other bodies.

IMPAIRMENT: low vision in a Class 6 girl

→

BARRIER: small print on the blackboard, no large-print book

→

RESULT: she falls behind and is called a slow learner

→

FIX: seat near the board, large print, a teacher who reads aloud

The flow is Illustrative, and it shows the logic. Change the barrier and the outcome changes, though the impairment stays the same. The social model came out of disability movements, and it is the reason the CRPD speaks of barriers in its definitions.

For an education planner the social model has a practical virtue. Barriers can be listed, costed and removed. A school audit, like the one in Section 12, is the social model turned into a checklist.

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The human rights model

The rights model adds duties, remedies and dignity

The CRPD and India's RPwD Act 2016 go one step further than the social model. They treat the disabled child as a holder of rights, and the state as the bearer of duties that can be enforced. Section 2(s) of the RPwD Act defines a person with disability as a person with long term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment which, in interaction with barriers, hinders his full and effective participation in society equally with others.

What the rights model adds

A named duty bearer, a standard to measure against, and a remedy when it is breached. Section 3(1) of the RPwD Act obliges the appropriate Government to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy the right to equality, life with dignity and respect for their integrity equally with others.

What it means in a school

A refused admission becomes a legal wrong with a forum to hear it. A parent can cite section 16 of the Act. A court can order posts to be filled, as the Supreme Court has been doing for special educators since 2021.

Source: Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (No. 49 of 2016), ss 2(s) and 3(1).

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Functioning

The ICF describes disability as an interaction, and surveys now use it

The World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) offers a bio-psychosocial view: disability arises from the interaction between a person's limitations in functioning and barriers in the environment, physical, social, cultural or legislative. The Washington Group on Disability Statistics built its survey questions on the ICF.

Why statisticians moved to functioning

Asking 'Is anyone in this household disabled?' gets low and unreliable answers, because stigma and the word itself put people off. Asking whether a child has difficulty seeing, hearing, walking, remembering or making friends gets more consistent answers across countries.

What it means for schools

A functional approach looks at what a child finds hard in the classroom. It can start before any diagnosis. That fits General Comment 4, paragraph 30, which says accommodation should rest on an evaluation of social barriers to education, and says it may not be made conditional on a medical diagnosis.

Source: Washington Group on Disability Statistics, WG Short Set page (read October 2026); CRPD Committee, General Comment No. 4 (2016), CRPD/C/GC/4.

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Comparing models

Four models side by side

Model	Where the problem sits	Who decides	Typical school response
Charity	In the child's misfortune	The giver	A separate home or school run by a trust, with gratitude expected
Medical	In the body or mind	The doctor or specialist	Wait for a certificate; refer to a special school; therapy before teaching
Social	In barriers of design, attitude and policy	Disabled people and their organisations	Remove barriers: ramps, large print, sign language, flexible tests
Human rights	In the failure of duty bearers	The rights holder, backed by law and courts	Admission without discrimination, reasonable accommodation, remedies when refused

Most programmes in South Asia mix these. A Samagra Shiksha district plan may fund identification camps (a medical step), ramps (a social step) and a grievance process (a rights step) in the same year. That mix is normal. The risk is a plan that funds only the first.

A quick test for any proposal: does it spend money on finding and labelling children, or on changing the classroom they will sit in? A good proposal does both, and spends more on the second.

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Words in use

Official language in India uses several terms, and each carries a history

Indian policy uses children with special needs (CWSN) in Samagra Shiksha and UDISE+, children with disabilities in the RPwD Act 2016, children with benchmark disabilities for those certified at 40% or more under section 2(r), and Divyang, which NEP 2020 paragraph 6.2.5 uses alongside CWSN. Disability rights groups have debated each term.

Why the label matters

A term decides who is counted. 'Benchmark disability' needs a certificate showing at least 40% of a specified disability, so a child with a mild learning disability may fall outside entitlements such as free assistive devices under section 17(g), while still needing support in class.

A practical rule

In documents, follow the statute you are applying. In a classroom or a survey, ask families and disabled people's organisations which words they use, and use the child's name before any label. Avoid words that describe a child as suffering or confined.

Sources: RPwD Act 2016, ss 2(r) and 17(g); National Education Policy 2020, Ministry of Education, paragraph 6.2.5.

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Many identities

Disability rarely travels alone

A disabled child is also a girl or a boy, from a caste and a community, speaking a language, living in a village or a slum. Exclusion compounds. Census 2011 shows that among disabled children aged 5 to 19, 62% of boys and 60% of girls were attending an educational institution, and boys were 57% of those attending.

62%

Disabled boys aged 5-19 attending an educational institution

Census 2011, in MoSPI, Disabled Persons in India: A Statistical Profile 2016

60%

Disabled girls aged 5-19 attending an educational institution

Census 2011, in MoSPI, Disabled Persons in India: A Statistical Profile 2016

54%

Children with multiple disabilities aged 5-19 who never attended

Census 2011, in MoSPI, Disabled Persons in India: A Statistical Profile 2016

The gap between disabled boys and girls looks small. The bigger gaps lie between kinds of disability: children with multiple disabilities and children with mental illness (50% never attended, same source) are the furthest from school. A programme that serves the easiest-to-include children first will look successful and leave these children where they were.

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Section Three

Who is left out in South Asia

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Wealth

Household wealth predicts who is in secondary school across the region

Net secondary attendance measures the share of children of secondary school age who attend secondary school. The Demographic and Health Surveys tabulate it by wealth quintile. The pattern is the same in all four countries, and the slope is steepest in Pakistan.

Net secondary school attendance rate by wealth quintile (%)

DHS Program API, indicator ED_NARS_B_BTH: NFHS-5 India 2019-21, Bangladesh DHS 2022, Nepal DHS 2022, Pakistan DHS 2017-18

In Pakistan the richest fifth attend secondary school at about four and a half times the rate of the poorest fifth (65.9% against 14.6%). In India the ratio is about 1.4. Poverty is an inclusion issue before any other identity is added. India's bars use NFHS-5 because the NFHS-6 (2023-24) fact sheets released in May 2026 do not tabulate attendance by wealth quintile.

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Disability, globally

Children with disabilities are counted far less often than they are left out

On 10 November 2021 UNICEF released what it called its most comprehensive statistical analysis of children with disabilities. Surveys of this kind rest on functional questions such as the Child Functioning Module described in Section 11 of this deck.

~240 m

Children with disabilities worldwide, about 1 in 10 children

UNICEF press release, 10 November 2021

49%

More likely than other children to have never attended school

UNICEF press release, 10 November 2021

42%

Less likely to have foundational reading and numeracy skills

UNICEF press release, 10 November 2021

What the numbers say

Children with disabilities are disadvantaged on most measures of child well-being. Those with difficulty communicating and caring for themselves are the most likely to be out of school, and out-of-school rates rise with severity.

Why the 1 in 10 figure surprises

It is far above the share of children that most South Asian school records identify as disabled. The gap comes from definitions: functional difficulty in a survey catches many children who will never hold a certificate.

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Census 2011

Census 2011 counted 2.68 crore disabled people, and 27% of disabled children never went to school

Disabled children aged 5-19, school attendance status (%)

Census 2011, in MoSPI, Disabled Persons in India: A Statistical Profile 2016

Census 2011 counted 2.68 crore persons with disabilities, 2.21% of the population. Among disabled children aged 5 to 19, 61% were attending an educational institution, 12% had attended earlier and 27% had never attended.

Attendance was 65% in urban areas against 60% in rural areas. Among all disabled persons, 55% were literate: 62% of men and 45% of women.

The 12% who attended earlier and left are a group to look for. They were enrolled once, so the barrier that pushed them out is often in the school itself.

Source: Census 2011, in MoSPI, Disabled Persons in India: A Statistical Profile 2016. Census 2011 is the latest completed census. The next census has a reference date of 1 March 2027 and includes caste enumeration.

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NSS 2018

The NSS 76th round measured disability and schooling in more detail

The National Sample Survey's 76th round, July to December 2018, surveyed 1,06,894 persons with disabilities. It found a prevalence of 2.2%: 2.3% in rural areas and 2.0% in urban areas, 2.4% among males and 1.9% among females.

62.9%

Persons with disability aged 3-35 ever enrolled in an ordinary school

NSS 76th round (July to December 2018), NSS Report No. 583, MoSPI

4.1%

Ever enrolled in a special school, among those not in an ordinary school

NSS 76th round (July to December 2018), NSS Report No. 583, MoSPI

10.1%

Aged 3-35 who attended a pre-school intervention programme

NSS 76th round (July to December 2018), NSS Report No. 583, MoSPI

52.2%

Persons with disabilities aged 7 and above who were literate

NSS 76th round (July to December 2018), NSS Report No. 583, MoSPI

Two lessons. First, special schools reach very few children: 4.1% of those outside ordinary school. Whatever one thinks of segregation, it is not where most disabled children are. Second, only one in ten had any early intervention, though the years before six are when support changes the most.

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Caste and tribe

SC, ST and disabled students thin out as classes rise

Share of enrolment, primary against higher secondary, U-DISE 2016-17 (%)

National Education Policy 2020, Ministry of Education, paragraph 6.2.1

NEP 2020 cites U-DISE 2016-17: Scheduled Castes are 19.6% of students at the primary level and 17.3% at higher secondary. For Scheduled Tribes the fall is from 10.6% to 6.8%. For children with disabilities it is from 1.1% to 0.25%, a fall of more than three quarters.

The Policy adds that declines are even greater for female students within each group. It names lack of access to quality schools, poverty, social mores and customs, and language as causes for Scheduled Castes, and says tribal children often find school irrelevant and foreign to their lives, culturally and academically (paragraphs 6.2.2 and 6.2.3).

These are 2016-17 figures, quoted in a 2020 policy. They show the shape of the problem; check the latest UDISE+ tables before using them as a current level.

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Gender, religion, migration

Several groups the law names are excluded in different ways

Group	What the evidence or the law says	Source
Girls	Girls were 48.4% of school enrolment in 2025-26. NEP says women make up about half of every disadvantaged group and face amplified exclusion within it	UDISE+ 2025-26, Ministry of Education, PIB release of 7 July 2026; NEP 2020 para 6.7
Transgender children	NEP names transgender students alongside girls for the Gender-Inclusion Fund	NEP 2020 paras 6.2 and 6.8
Religious minorities	NEP says minorities are relatively underrepresented in school and higher education	NEP 2020 para 6.2.4
Minority-run schools	Excluded from the whole RTE Act by a 2014 Constitution Bench; that ruling was referred for reconsideration in 2025	Pramati (2014); Anjuman Ishaat-e-Taleem Trust (2025)
Migrant and urban poor children	NEP lists migrant communities, child beggars and the urban poor among socio-economically disadvantaged groups	NEP 2020 para 6.2
Dalit students in Nepal	Constitutional right to free education with scholarships from primary to higher level	Constitution of Nepal 2015, Art 40(2)

Exclusion has many routes: fees, distance, language, safety, stigma, documents and the timing of seasonal migration. A good diagnosis names the route before choosing the remedy.

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Language

Children taught in a language they do not understand are excluded inside the classroom

40%

Of the global population lacks access to education in a language they speak or understand

UNESCO GEM Report Policy Paper 24, February 2016

The same GEM paper says that in multi-ethnic societies, imposing a dominant language through school has often been a source of grievance tied to wider inequality, and gives Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh as examples.

A child can be enrolled, present every day and still excluded, because she cannot follow the teacher. In much of tribal central India, the north-east and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the school language is the child's second or third language.

What the GEM paper recommends

At least six years of mother tongue instruction, so that early gains last; education plans that recognise home languages (fewer than half of 40 plans reviewed did); and teachers trained to teach in two languages. In Senegal a survey found only 8% of trainee teachers confident about teaching reading in local languages; in Mali, 2%.

Section 9 returns to this with NEP 2020 paragraph 4.11 on the medium of instruction and with classroom methods for multilingual education.

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Section Four

The Constitution and the RTE Act 2009

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Article 21A

Education became a fundamental right in 2002, and a statute gave it content in 2009

The Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act 2002 inserted Article 21A, making free and compulsory education for children aged six to fourteen a fundamental right in the manner the State determines by law. That law is the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (No. 35 of 2009), in force from 1 April 2010.

What the right covers

Elementary education, defined in section 2(f) as Class 1 to Class 8, for every child aged six to fourteen. Pre-school is a matter of 'may' under section 11, and secondary education is outside the Act.

Upheld in full by a Constitution Bench

In Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust v Union of India (2014), five judges held that the 86th Amendment, and the 93rd Amendment inserting Article 15(5), do not alter the basic structure and are valid, and that the RTE Act does not violate Article 19(1)(g).

Sources: RTE Act 2009, ss 2(f), 3 and 11, India Code consolidated text; Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust v Union of India, Supreme Court, 6 May 2014.

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Section 3

Section 3 gives every child a right to a neighbourhood school

Section 3(1), as substituted in 2012, provides that every child of the age of six to fourteen years, including a child referred to in clause (d) or clause (e) of section 2, shall have the right to free and compulsory education in a neighbourhood school till the completion of his or her elementary education. Section 3(2) bars any fee, charge or expense that may prevent the child from completing elementary education.

Definition	Text (RTE Act 2009, as amended by Act 30 of 2012)
s2(d) Child belonging to disadvantaged group	A child with disability, or a child of the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, socially and educationally backward class, or such other group having disadvantage owing to social, cultural, economical, geographical, linguistic, gender or such other factor, as notified by the appropriate Government
s2(e) Child belonging to weaker section	A child whose parent or guardian has annual income below the limit notified by the appropriate Government
s2(ee) Child with disability	Defined by reference to the 1995 Persons with Disabilities Act and the National Trust Act 1999

The words 'a child with disability' in section 2(d) and the whole of section 2(ee) were inserted by the 2012 amendment, with effect from 1 August 2012.

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Section 3(3)

The RTE Act still points to a repealed disability law

Section 3(3) gives a child with disability the same rights to free and compulsory elementary education that Chapter V of the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995 provided. Its proviso lets a child with multiple or severe disability, as defined in the National Trust Act 1999, opt for home-based education.

Section 102(1) of the RPwD Act 2016 repealed the 1995 Act. Section 31(1) of the 2016 Act then provides, notwithstanding anything in the RTE Act, that every child with benchmark disability between six and eighteen has the right to free education in a neighbourhood school or a special school of choice.

What the drafting gap means

A lawyer reading the RTE Act alone finds a cross-reference to a law that no longer exists. The working rule is to read the two Acts together: the RPwD Act's section 31 overrides and extends the RTE Act for children with benchmark disabilities, up to age eighteen. Section 102(2) saves action taken under the 1995 Act.

Home-based education is a legal option, and NEP 2020 paragraph 6.12 keeps it for children with severe and profound disabilities who cannot attend school. It also calls for an audit of its efficiency and effectiveness. Without that audit, home-based education can become a quiet form of exclusion.

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Section 12(1)(c)

Section 12(1)(c) reserves a quarter of entry seats in private schools

Section 12(1)(c) requires unaided schools and schools of a specified category to admit in class I, to the extent of at least twenty-five per cent of the strength of that class, children belonging to weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighbourhood and provide free and compulsory elementary education till its completion. Where the school has pre-school classes, the duty applies at that entry point.

NOTIFY: state defines weaker section income limit and disadvantaged groups

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APPLY: families apply, usually online, for neighbourhood schools

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ALLOT: lottery or rule-based allotment, no screening

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STUDY: free education to Class 8 in the same school

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REIMBURSE: s12(2), the lower of state per-child cost or the fee charged

Because section 2(d) includes children with disabilities, a disabled child can use the 25% quota. Admission is the start. Section 13 bars screening procedures and capitation fees, with fines up to twenty-five thousand rupees for a first contravention involving screening.

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Scale of 12(1)(c)

Section 12(1)(c) reached tens of lakhs of children a year

Children covered under s12(1)(c) of the RTE Act (lakh)

PIB release on Samagra Shiksha, 4 August 2021

The Ministry of Education reported 16.76 lakh children covered under section 12(1)(c) in 2018-19, 21.58 lakh in 2019-20 and 32.67 lakh in 2020-21, in its release on the continuation of Samagra Shiksha.

What the count does not show

It counts seats. It says nothing about experience. Families report hidden charges for uniforms, books and trips, and children admitted under the quota can be seated or treated differently. For a disabled child, a private school without an accessible toilet or a trained teacher turns a legal seat into integration in the Committee's sense, without inclusion.

Source: PIB release on Samagra Shiksha, 4 August 2021. The figures are as reported by the Ministry; state-level data vary widely and some states have reported very low use.

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The courts

Three Supreme Court rulings set the reach of the RTE Act

Case	Year	Holding relevant to inclusion
Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan v Union of India, (2012) 6 SCC 1	2012	Upheld the RTE Act and section 12(1)(c) against unaided non-minority schools, by a majority of two judges to one
Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust v Union of India	2014	Constitution Bench: upheld Articles 21A and 15(5); held the RTE Act ultra vires insofar as it applies to minority schools, aided or unaided, under Article 30(1); overruled the 2012 view on aided minority schools
Anjuman Ishaat-e-Taleem Trust v State of Maharashtra	2025	Doubted Pramati and asked the Chief Justice to consider a larger Bench; held that RTE Act provisions bind all non-minority schools and that in-service teachers must qualify the TET, subject to its transitional directions

As of October 2026 the Pramati reference made on 1 September 2025 is pending. Until it is decided, minority-run schools, including many that serve poor and Muslim and Christian children, sit outside the 25% quota and the Act's other duties. Sources: judgments as published on indiankanoon.org.

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RTE and inclusion

The RTE Act opens the door, and other laws shape the room

What the RTE Act does well

It makes schooling a justiciable right, bans fees and screening, sets pupil-teacher ratios and infrastructure norms in its Schedule, creates School Management Committees with parents (section 21), and gives disadvantaged children a route into private schools. It treats children with disabilities as a disadvantaged group from 2012.

What it leaves to other laws

It stops at Class 8 and age fourteen. It says little about how teaching changes for a child who learns differently. Reasonable accommodation, accessible buildings, Braille and sign language, special educators and the five-yearly survey of disabled children come from the RPwD Act 2016, which is the next section.

A practitioner working on a disabled child's admission should cite both Acts: the RTE Act for the neighbourhood school and the bar on screening, and the RPwD Act for what the school must do once the child is there and for the right to free education up to eighteen.

Section 21 School Management Committees must include parents of disadvantaged and weaker-section children in proportion. A parent of a disabled child on the committee is often the most direct route to a ramp or a resource teacher.

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Section Five

The RPwD Act 2016

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The Act

The RPwD Act 2016 gives effect to the CRPD in Indian law

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (No. 49 of 2016) received Presidential assent on 27 December 2016. Its long title says it is an Act to give effect to the CRPD. It replaced the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995.

Specified disabilities in the Schedule, as NCERT counts them

RPwD Act 2016, Schedule; NCERT PRASHAST 2.0 brochure

40%

Threshold for a benchmark disability, s2(r)

RPwD Act 2016, s2(r)

6-18

Ages for free education for children with benchmark disabilities, s31

RPwD Act 2016, s31(1)

Minimum reserved seats in government and aided higher education, s32

RPwD Act 2016, s32(1)

Chapter III: Education

Sections 16, 17 and 18 apply to all children with disabilities, with or without a certificate. They set duties for every educational institution funded or recognised by government.

Chapter VI: Benchmark disabilities

Sections 31 and 32 apply only to persons with a benchmark disability, certified at not less than 40%. Free education to eighteen and higher education reservation sit here.

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Two definitions

Inclusive education and reasonable accommodation are defined in the Act

Inclusive education, s2(m)

A system of education wherein students with and without disability learn together and the system of teaching and learning is suitably adapted to meet the learning needs of different types of students with disabilities.

Reasonable accommodation, s2(y)

Necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments, without imposing a disproportionate or undue burden in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise of rights equally with others.

NEP 2020 paragraph 6.10 quotes the section 2(m) definition word for word and says the Policy is in complete consonance with the RPwD Act. The two definitions work together. Section 2(m) describes the system; section 2(y) describes what one child is owed inside it.

Note the qualifier in section 2(y): 'without imposing a disproportionate or undue burden'. General Comment 4 accepts that resources count in judging that burden (paragraph 28), weighs them across the resources of the whole education system (paragraph 30), and bars using the burden to evade the duty (paragraph 18). A school that says it cannot afford a scribe for a Class 10 board exam will find that hard to show.

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Section 16

Section 16 lists eight duties of every funded or recognised institution

Section 16: the appropriate Government and the local authorities shall endeavour that all educational institutions funded or recognised by them provide inclusive education to the children with disabilities and to that end shall:

Clause	Duty	A check a monitor can make
(i)	Admit without discrimination; equal sports and recreation	Any refusal in the last year?
(ii)	Make building, campus and facilities accessible	Ramp, rail, accessible toilet
(iii)	Reasonable accommodation to individual requirements	Written record of what was provided
(iv)	Individualised support in environments that maximise development	A plan for each child
(v)	Education for blind, deaf or deafblind persons in the most appropriate languages and modes	Braille, ISL
(vi)	Detect specific learning disabilities early and take pedagogical measures	Screening in early grades
(vii)	Monitor participation, progress and completion of every student with disability	Records by child
(viii)	Transport for children with disabilities, and attendants for those with high support needs	Escort allowance used

'Shall endeavour' is softer than 'shall'. Clause (vii) is the hook for data: it makes tracking each disabled child's progress a statutory duty.

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Section 17

Section 17 tells government how to build the system

(a) A survey of school-going children every five years to identify children with disabilities and their needs; the first within two years of commencement
(b) An adequate number of teacher training institutions
(c) Train and employ teachers, including teachers with disability, qualified in sign language and Braille, and teachers trained for intellectual disability
(d) Train professionals and staff to support inclusive education
(e) An adequate number of resource centres at all levels of school education

(f) Augmentative and alternative communication, Braille and sign language
(g) Books, learning materials and assistive devices free up to age eighteen for students with benchmark disabilities
(h) Scholarships for students with benchmark disability
(i) Changes to curriculum and examinations: extra time, a scribe or amanuensis, exemption from second and third language courses
(j) Research to improve learning; (k) other measures

Ask a district or state for its section 17(a) survey. A five-yearly count of children with disabilities, with their needs, is the baseline every inclusion plan needs. Source: RPwD Act 2016, s17.

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Section 31 and choice

Section 31 offers a choice that the CRPD Committee would phase out

Section 31(1): notwithstanding anything contained in the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009, every child with benchmark disability between the age of six to eighteen years shall have the right to free education in a neighbourhood school, or in a special school, of his choice. Section 31(2) adds a duty to ensure access to free education in an appropriate environment until eighteen.

The case for choice

Many parents of deaf or deafblind children choose special schools because that is where sign language users and trained teachers are. Article 24(3)(c) of the CRPD itself speaks of environments that suit communication needs. Taking away the only school that signs, before ordinary schools can, would harm deaf children.

The case against a permanent dual system

General Comment 4, paragraph 40, says sustaining two systems is not compatible with progressive realisation of Article 24. If special schools stay the default for some disabilities, ordinary schools never build the capacity, and the 'choice' is no choice for families who live far from a special school.

A defensible position for a practitioner: keep choice open now, and measure each year whether ordinary schools are becoming able to serve the children who currently need to go elsewhere.

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The Schedule

The Schedule groups the specified disabilities into five families and an open clause

Group in the Schedule	Conditions listed	Classroom questions it raises
1. Physical disability	Locomotor disability (leprosy cured, cerebral palsy, dwarfism, muscular dystrophy, acid attack victims); blindness and low vision; deaf and hard of hearing; speech and language disability	Access, seating, print size, sign language, alternative communication
2. Intellectual disability	Including specific learning disabilities (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, developmental aphasia) and autism spectrum disorder	Pace, structure, explicit teaching, assessment format
3. Mental behaviour	Mental illness	Attendance flexibility, counselling, a calm space
4. Chronic neurological conditions and blood disorders	Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, haemophilia, thalassemia, sickle cell disease	Absences for treatment, safety in play, catch-up support
5. Multiple disabilities	Including deaf blindness	Intensive, individual support
6. Any other category	As notified by the Central Government	Watch for notifications

Source: RPwD Act 2016, the Schedule (see clause (zc) of section 2). The list brings specific learning disabilities, autism, mental illness and blood disorders into the classroom's legal frame, so a school has duties towards children it may not think of as disabled.

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Enforcement

The Supreme Court has been supervising special educator posts since 2016

Rajneesh Kumar Pandey v Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 132 of 2016, is a continuing case on the appointment of special educators for children with special needs. The Supreme Court's daily orders of 18 November 2025 and 12 February 2026 go state by state through affidavits on posts, qualifications and pay.

What the orders record

On 12 February 2026 the Court noted Telangana's affidavit: 602 Bhavitha centres under Samagra Shiksha, each with two resource persons on purely contractual terms because no sanctioned posts existed, paid on a 60:40 Centre-State share. It asked the Union for the essential qualifications for special educators at each stage.

The 2021 judgment and the 2026 orders

The judgment of 28 October 2021, (2021) 17 SCC 1, told the Centre to notify pupil-teacher norms for special teachers, create permanent posts and fill them on a regular basis, and held that special teachers must be qualified and registered with the Rehabilitation Council of India. The order of 5 May 2026 records about 4,900 vacant special educator posts in Uttar Pradesh. Whether they must also pass the TET is unresolved: on 28 April 2026 the RCI said the TET is not one of its qualifications and the Court let states that prescribe it continue recruiting; on 28 July 2026 it said, prima facie, that Bihar's TET demand for contractual special teachers went beyond Bihar's own 2023 Rules.

The lesson for programme staff: an inclusion plan that runs on contractual resource persons is fragile, and the courts now treat regular, qualified posts as part of the right. Sources: Supreme Court judgment of 28 October 2021 and records of proceedings of 18 November 2025, 12 February, 28 April, 5 May and 28 July 2026 in WP(C) 132/2016, via indiankanoon.org.

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Section Six

NEP 2020 and Samagra Shiksha

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NEP chapter 6

NEP 2020 chapter 6 is titled 'Equitable and inclusive education: learning for all'

Paragraph 6.1 calls education the single greatest tool for achieving social justice and equality. Paragraph 6.2 groups the children the system has left behind as Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Groups (SEDGs).

SEDG category in paragraph 6.2	Examples the Policy gives
Gender identities	Particularly female and transgender individuals
Socio-cultural identities	Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs and minorities
Geographical identities	Students from villages, small towns and aspirational districts
Disabilities	Including learning disabilities
Socio-economic conditions	Migrant communities, low income households, children in vulnerable situations, victims or children of victims of trafficking, orphans including child beggars in urban areas, and the urban poor

The SEDG frame is wide, in the spirit of Salamanca's paragraph 3. Its risk is that everything becomes a priority. Chapter 6 then gives specific measures for some groups and general ones for others, so read which group each paragraph actually funds. Source: National Education Policy 2020, Ministry of Education, paragraphs 6.1 and 6.2.

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Targeted measures

NEP proposes funds, zones and boarding schools for disadvantaged groups

Gender-Inclusion Fund (6.8)

A fund available to States for priorities the Centre sets to help female and transgender children reach and stay in school: sanitation and toilets, bicycles, conditional cash transfers, and community interventions for local barriers. Similar Inclusion Funds are proposed for other SEDGs.

Special Education Zones (6.6)

Regions with large populations from educationally disadvantaged SEDGs are to be declared Special Education Zones, where all schemes and policies are implemented to the maximum with additional effort. Aspirational Districts are named as a related category.

Boarding and girls' schools (6.9)

Free boarding to the standard of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas where students come from far; Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas to be strengthened and expanded up to Grade 12.

What works, by group (6.5)

Bicycles and walking groups for girls; one-on-one tutors, peer tutoring, open schooling and technology for some children with disabilities; counsellors and social workers for the urban poor.

Source: National Education Policy 2020, Ministry of Education, paragraphs 6.5 to 6.9.

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Children with disabilities

NEP paragraphs 6.10 to 6.12 set the policy for children with disabilities

Paragraph 6.10 gives the inclusion and equal participation of children with disabilities the highest priority, from the Foundational Stage to higher education. Paragraph 6.11 says schools and school complexes will get resources for:

Special educators with cross-disability training
Resource centres where needed, especially for severe or multiple disabilities
Barrier-free access as per the RPwD Act
Assistive devices, technology-based tools and accessible, language-appropriate materials such as large print and Braille
NIOS modules to teach Indian Sign Language, and other subjects in it

Paragraph 6.12: choice and home-based education

Children with benchmark disabilities keep the choice of regular or special schooling. Home-based education remains available for children with severe and profound disabilities who cannot attend school, who must be treated as equal to any other child. The Policy calls for an audit of home-based education and guidelines based on it.

Paragraph 4.22 adds that Indian Sign Language will be standardised across the country, with national and state curriculum materials for deaf students. Source: National Education Policy 2020, Ministry of Education, paragraphs 4.22 and 6.10 to 6.12.

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Learning disabilities and culture

NEP names early identification and a change of school culture

Specific learning disabilities (6.13)

Most classrooms have children with specific learning disabilities who need continuous support, and the earlier it begins the better. Teachers are to be helped to identify them early. PARAKH, the proposed National Assessment Centre, is to set guidelines and tools for assessment and certification from the foundational stage to entrance exams.

Teacher education (6.14)

How to teach children with specific disabilities, including learning disabilities, is to be an integral part of all teacher education programmes, with gender sensitisation and sensitisation towards all underrepresented groups.

All the above policies and measures are absolutely critical to attaining full inclusion and equity for all SEDGs, but they are not sufficient. What is also required is a change in school culture.

National Education Policy 2020, paragraph 6.19

Paragraph 6.19 also commits to recruiting more high-quality teachers and leaders from SEDGs, and paragraph 6.20 to removing biases and stereotypes from the curriculum.

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Samagra Shiksha

Samagra Shiksha is the main central scheme that pays for inclusion in schools

Samagra Shiksha was launched in 2018 by merging Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan and Teacher Education into one scheme from pre-school to Class 12. On 4 August 2021 the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved its continuation from 2021-22 to 2025-26.

Rs 2,94,283 cr

Total outlay, 2021-22 to 2025-26

PIB release on Samagra Shiksha, 4 August 2021

Rs 1,85,398 cr

Central share of that outlay

PIB release on Samagra Shiksha, 4 August 2021

Interventions, one of which is Inclusive Education

PIB release on Samagra Shiksha, 4 August 2021

1.16 m

Schools covered, government and aided

PIB release on Samagra Shiksha, 4 August 2021

Where inclusion sits

The fifteen interventions include Gender and Equity and Inclusive Education as separate lines, alongside access, foundational literacy and numeracy, teacher salaries and RTE entitlements such as uniforms and textbooks.

Status as of October 2026

The approved period ended on 31 March 2026. States are approving their shares for the next phase: Madhya Pradesh's cabinet approved Rs 36,006.22 crore for Samagra Shiksha from 2026-27 to 2030-31 in September 2026 (Indian Masterminds, 16 September 2026).

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Inclusive Education component

What the Inclusive Education component of Samagra Shiksha pays for

Provision (2021 revision)	Detail	Reported reach
Student-oriented support for CWSN	From pre-primary to senior secondary level	Not stated in the release
Stipend for girls with special needs	Rs 200 per month for 10 months, in addition to the student component	3.79 lakh (2018-19), 3.22 lakh (2019-20), 3.52 lakh (2020-21)
Identification camps	Annual camps at block level at Rs 10,000 per camp	Not stated
Block Resource Centres	Equipped for rehabilitation and special training of CWSN	Not stated
Special educators	Financial assistance for special educators	23,183 (2018-19), 24,030 (2019-20), 22,990 (2020-21)
Out-of-school youth aged 16-19	Up to Rs 2,000 per child per grade for SC, ST and disabled children to complete secondary via NIOS or state open schools	Not stated

The number of special educators supported, around 23,000 a year, is the figure to hold against the Supreme Court's supervision in Rajneesh Kumar Pandey. Source: PIB release on Samagra Shiksha, 4 August 2021.

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Section Seven

What the data shows

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UDISE+

UDISE+ is the school census, and its 2025-26 report is the latest

The Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) collects school-level data on schools, teachers and students; individual student records began in 2022-23, as the 2025-26 report notes. The Ministry of Education released the UDISE+ 2025-26 report on 7 July 2026.

58.2%

Schools with ramps and handrails, 2025-26

UDISE+ 2025-26, Ministry of Education, PIB release of 7 July 2026

48.4%

Girls' share of enrolment, 2025-26 (48.3% in 2024-25)

UDISE+ 2025-26, Ministry of Education, PIB release of 7 July 2026

7.0%

Secondary dropout rate, 2025-26 (8.2% in 2024-25)

UDISE+ 2025-26, Ministry of Education, PIB release of 7 July 2026

51.9%

Retention rate at secondary level, 2025-26 (47.2% in 2024-25)

UDISE+ 2025-26, Ministry of Education, PIB release of 7 July 2026

Read the ramp figure carefully

A ramp is the most basic accessibility item, and 41.8% of schools still lacked one with handrails in 2025-26. A ramp alone does not make a school accessible: toilets, classrooms on upper floors and playgrounds matter as much.

Read the retention figure carefully

Retention at secondary level rose to 51.9%, which still means that about half of a cohort does not stay through the secondary stage in the way the indicator measures. Disaggregate before celebrating.

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CWSN in UDISE+

Schools report far fewer children with disabilities than surveys find

22.1 lakh

CWSN enrolled, Foundational to Secondary stage (pre-primary to Class 12), 2025-26

UDISE+ 2025-26 report, Ministry of Education, Table 5.11

0.89%

CWSN share of total enrolment of 24.72 crore, 2025-26

UDISE+ 2025-26 report, Ministry of Education

The same table shows about 7.1 lakh CWSN at the Middle stage (Classes 6 to 8) and 5.2 lakh at the Secondary stage (Classes 9 to 12), and boys at 57% of CWSN enrolment. In 2024-25 the count was 21.5 lakh.

The gap with prevalence

Census 2011 put disability at 2.21% of the population and the NSS 76th round at 2.2%. UNICEF's functional estimate is about one child in ten worldwide. A school share below 1% means that many disabled children are either out of school or enrolled without being identified. Both are inclusion failures, and they need different responses.

Source: UDISE+ 2025-26 report, Ministry of Education, Table 5.11 and the national summary; UDISE+ 2024-25 report for the earlier year. The 2025-26 report also finds CWSN-friendly toilets in 40.1% of schools.

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Three sources

Census, NSS and UDISE+ measure different things

Source	Latest round	How disability is identified	Best used for
Census	2011 (next reference date 1 March 2027)	Household reports against listed disability types	District counts, literacy and attendance of disabled persons
NSS	76th round, July to December 2018	Survey questions on specified disabilities, with detailed follow-up	Prevalence, causes, schooling history, special school use
UDISE+	2025-26	School records of children identified as CWSN by type	Enrolment by level, school facilities, year-on-year change
DHS / NFHS	NFHS-6, 2023-24 (fact sheets May 2026); wealth tables here use NFHS-5, 2019-21	Not used for disability in this deck	Attendance by wealth, residence and sex
ASER	2024	Household test of reading and arithmetic	Whether enrolled children are learning

No single source answers the question 'how many disabled children are out of school in my district?' A good situation analysis triangulates: the Census or NSS for the expected number, UDISE+ for those enrolled, and a local door-to-door survey under RPwD Act section 17(a) for the rest.

When two sources disagree, ask first whether they use the same definition and the same age band before deciding which one is wrong.

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Enrolled and learning

High enrolment and low learning can sit side by side

98.1%

Children aged 6-14 enrolled in school, 2024

ASER 2024 national findings, Pratham

23.4%

Std III children in government schools who can read a Std II text, 2024

ASER 2024 national findings, Pratham

16.3%

The same figure in 2022, after school closures

ASER 2024 national findings, Pratham

Why this belongs in an inclusion deck

General Comment 4 defines inclusion by participation and achievement as well as attendance. If three quarters of Class 3 children in government schools cannot read a Class 2 text, the ordinary classroom is already failing many children who have no disability label at all.

The opportunity

Teaching at the right level, structured reading and clear feedback help children who are behind for any reason, including undiagnosed learning disabilities. Inclusion and foundational learning are one agenda in practice.

Source: ASER 2024 national findings. ASER figures are from a household survey of rural children; the 2018 value for the Std III indicator was 20.9%.

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Year on year

UDISE+ shows small gains between 2024-25 and 2025-26

Selected UDISE+ indicators, 2024-25 and 2025-26 (%)

UDISE+ 2025-26, Ministry of Education, PIB release of 7 July 2026

Between 2024-25 and 2025-26 the secondary gross enrolment ratio rose from 68.5% to 71.7%, retention at secondary level from 47.2% to 51.9%, and the share of schools with computers from 64.7% to 69.9%. The preparatory dropout rate fell from 2.3% to 1.8%.

What the release does not break down

The press release gives national averages. It does not report these indicators for children with special needs, Scheduled Tribes or girls separately. For an inclusion analysis, ask for the state and district tables by social group and CWSN status.

A national average can rise while the groups this deck is about stand still. Disaggregation is the first question to ask of any good news. Source: UDISE+ 2025-26, Ministry of Education, PIB release of 7 July 2026.

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The early years

Inclusion has to start before Class 1

10.1%

Persons with disability aged 3-35 who ever attended a pre-school intervention programme

NSS 76th round (July to December 2018), NSS Report No. 583, MoSPI

77.4%

Three-year-olds enrolled in some pre-primary institution, 2024

ASER 2024 national findings, Pratham

Most children aged three now attend an anganwadi or a pre-primary class: 77.4% in 2024, up from 68.1% in 2018 (ASER 2024). Among persons with disabilities aged 3 to 35, only one in ten ever had pre-school intervention (NSS 2018).

What the law and policy say

RTE Act section 11 lets governments provide free pre-school education. NEP 2020 paragraph 6.10 asks for children with disabilities to take part fully from the Foundational Stage. RPwD Act section 16(vi) requires early detection of specific learning disabilities.

The anganwadi is the first place many developmental delays could be noticed. A district plan that links anganwadi workers, the PRASHAST screening in schools and Block Resource Centres catches children years earlier than a Class 3 referral.

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Missing data

What the official data still cannot tell you

How many disabled children aged 6-18 are out of school, by district and disability
Whether enrolled CWSN attend, and how many days
Learning levels of CWSN against their classmates
How many schools have an accessible toilet that is usable, open and clean
How many teachers can use Indian Sign Language or Braille

Why these gaps persist

Disability is identified late and unevenly; certificates lag; school staff record what they can see; and most learning assessments are not designed with accommodations, so disabled children are left out of the sample or the test.

A programme can fill some gaps itself: a baseline using the Washington Group teacher module (Section 11), attendance tracked by child, and a facility audit that checks use as well as presence.

When collecting such data, treat disability information about children as sensitive. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, whose duties apply with the 2025 Rules from 13 May 2027, exempts research and statistical processing that meets the conditions in section 17(2)(b); programme monitoring that identifies children needs its own lawful basis and consent process.

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Section Eight

Neighbours' laws

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Ratification

Every South Asian state is now party to the CRPD

Country	Signed	Ratified or acceded	Main domestic disability law
India	30 Mar 2007	1 Oct 2007	Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016
Bangladesh	9 May 2007	30 Nov 2007	Rights and Protection of Persons with Disabilities Act 2013
Maldives	2 Oct 2007	5 Apr 2010	Not covered in this deck
Nepal	3 Jan 2008	7 May 2010	Act Relating to Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2074 (2017)
Pakistan	25 Sep 2008	5 Jul 2011	ICT Rights of Persons with Disability Act 2020, and provincial laws
Afghanistan		18 Sep 2012 (accession)	Not covered in this deck
Sri Lanka	30 Mar 2007	8 Feb 2016	Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act No. 28 of 1996
Bhutan	21 Sep 2010	13 Mar 2024	Not covered in this deck

Source: UN Treaty Collection, CRPD status page, read 6 October 2026. Ratification makes Article 24 binding in international law; how far it binds domestic courts depends on each country's constitution.

Bhutan's ratification in March 2024 completed the region. Sri Lanka took nine years from signature to ratification.

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Bangladesh

Bangladesh's 2013 Act names both inclusive and integrated education

The Rights and Protection of Persons with Disabilities Act 2013 (Act No. 39 of 2013, dated 9 October 2013) replaced Bangladesh's earlier disability law. Its definitions separate three kinds of schooling, translated here from the Bangla text.

Section	Term	Meaning (translated)
2(2)	Inclusive education (ekibhuto shiksha)	Students with and without disabilities studying together in educational institutions
2(25)	Integrated education (shomonnito shiksha)	Education in mainstream schools under special arrangements suited to the type of disability
2(19)	Special education (bishesh shiksha)	Education by residential or non-residential institutions run under special management by type of disability, similar to the mainstream curriculum

Section 16(1)(h)

A right to take part in inclusive or integrated education at all levels, subject to suitable facilities being available in the institution.

Section 33

No head of an institution may refuse admission solely because of disability where the person is otherwise qualified; a complaint lies to the relevant committee, which may direct admission.

Source: Bangladesh Code, bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd, Act No. 39 of 2013 (Bangla text).

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Nepal

Nepal puts disability and mother tongue education in its Constitution

Constitution of Nepal 2015, Article 31

Every citizen has the right to compulsory and free basic education and free education up to secondary level (31(2)). Physically impaired and financially poor citizens have the right to free higher education as provided by law (31(3)). Visually impaired persons have the right to free education through Braille (31(4)). Every community has the right to education in its mother tongue up to secondary level (31(5)).

Act Relating to Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2074 (2017), section 21

No admission fee may be charged to a person with disability (21(3)). Government shall provide education through more than one means, such as Braille or alternative scripts, sign language, information technology and peer learning (21(6)). Private institutions must provide free study to a number of students with disabilities set by government (21(13)).

The Act was published in the Nepal Gazette on 15 October 2017 (Act No. 25 of 2074) and amended in 2018. Article 40(2) of the Constitution separately guarantees free education with scholarships for Dalit students from primary to higher level.

Sources: Constitution of Nepal 2015, English text via constituteproject.org; Nepal Law Commission English text of the 2017 Act, via the ADB Law and Policy Reform portal.

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Pakistan

Pakistan's federal capital law promises inclusive education and keeps special schools

Article 25A of the Constitution of Pakistan obliges the State to provide free and compulsory education to all children aged five to sixteen, in a manner determined by law. The ICT Rights of Persons with Disability Act 2020 (Act No. XXXV of 2020, assented to on 22 September 2020) applies in the Islamabad Capital Territory.

s9(1) Equal rights of access to government and private institutions, without discrimination
s9(2) Free education from pre-primary to higher education
s9(4) No denial of admission on ground of disability
s9(5) Discrimination or abuse at a place of education is illegal and punishable

s9(3) Special institutions for moderate to severe disabilities, in addition to equipping general institutions for inclusive education
s9(6) Inclusive education focused on personality, creativity and capabilities
s9(7) Reasonable and appropriate accommodation, including hostels
s9(8) Teacher training facilities for teaching students with various disabilities

Section 1(2) limits the Act to the Islamabad Capital Territory, so it works as a model for the provinces. Check the provincial law where you work. Sources: Constitution of Pakistan, Art 25A; Gazette of Pakistan, 24 September 2020.

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Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's 1996 Act bars discrimination in admission, and little more on schooling

Sri Lanka's Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act No. 28 of 1996 set up a National Council for Persons with Disabilities. Its education provision is short. Section 23(1): no person with a disability shall be discriminated against on the ground of such disability in recruitment for any employment or office or admission to any educational institution.

What the Act provides

A non-discrimination rule for admission, a rule against restrictions on access to public places in section 23(2), and a route for complaints. It predates the CRPD by a decade and does not define inclusive education or reasonable accommodation.

What has changed since

Sri Lanka ratified the CRPD on 8 February 2016, which brings Article 24 and General Comment 4 into its reporting obligations to the CRPD Committee. Check for any newer law or amendment before citing the 1996 Act as the whole picture.

Sources: Act No. 28 of 1996, text hosted by UN DESA; UN Treaty Collection, CRPD status page, read 6 October 2026.

For practitioners, Sri Lanka is a reminder that ratification and domestic law move at different speeds. Advocacy can cite both.

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Side by side

Four laws compared on five questions

Question	India (RPwD 2016)	Bangladesh (2013)	Nepal (2017)	Pakistan ICT (2020)
Defines inclusive education?	Yes, s2(m)	Yes, s2(2)	No separate definition in s21	No; s9(6) describes its aims
Bars refusal of admission?	Yes, s16(i)	Yes, s33	Fees barred, s21(3); discrimination barred, s21(5)	Yes, s9(4)
Reasonable accommodation?	Yes, s2(y), s16(iii)	Yes, s16 rights list	Yes, for vocational and continuing learning, s21(9)	Yes, s9(7)
Keeps special schools?	Yes, choice in s31	Yes, special and integrated education defined	Separate provision allowed, s21(10)	Yes, s9(3)
Free education age range	6-18 for benchmark disability, s31	Not covered here	Free higher education in government institutions, s21(1)	Pre-primary to higher, s9(2)

No country in the region has followed General Comment 4 paragraph 40 to a single system. All four keep special or integrated tracks beside inclusive ones. The differences lie in how far each law pushes ordinary schools to change.

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Section Nine

Classroom practice

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Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning plans for variety from the start

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework from CAST, a US non-profit. Its idea comes from building design: a ramp built at the start serves wheelchair users, parents with prams and delivery workers, and costs less than one added later. In a lesson, options built in from the start serve the children you expected and those you did not. CAST released UDL Guidelines 3.0 on 30 July 2024.

Principle	The question it asks	Example options (Illustrative)
Multiple means of engagement	Why are learners interested, and what keeps them going?	Choice of topic for a project; local examples; short goals with feedback
Multiple means of representation	How is information presented?	Spoken and written instructions; pictures and objects; text read aloud; key words in the home language
Multiple means of action and expression	How can learners show what they know?	Oral answers, drawings, models or writing; a scribe or speech-to-text; more time

CAST states the goal of UDL as learner agency that is purposeful and reflective, resourceful and authentic, strategic and action-oriented. Source: CAST (2024), UDL Guidelines version 3.0, udlguidelines.cast.org.

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UDL in an Indian classroom

One lesson, planned with UDL for a mixed Class 4

Illustrative. A government school in rural Jharkhand, Class 4, 38 children. The lesson is on measuring length. Two children speak Santali at home, one has low vision, one is suspected of dyslexia and several are below grade level in reading.

Before UDL

The teacher reads the textbook page, writes three sums on the board and asks children to copy and solve them. The child with low vision cannot see the board. The children with weak reading cannot follow the word problems. The Santali speakers sit silent. Six children finish.

With UDL

Children measure the classroom door with string, hand spans and a ruler, in groups. The teacher names the units in Hindi and Santali. Word problems are read aloud and drawn. The child with low vision has a large-print sheet and sits in front. Children may answer by speaking, drawing or writing. Twenty-nine finish.

None of these changes needs a special educator or new money. They need planning time and a teacher who expects variety. That is why UDL belongs in pre-service training.

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Differentiation

Differentiated instruction adjusts content, process and product

Differentiated instruction starts from the same learning goal for the class and varies how children reach it. Where UDL builds options into the lesson for everyone, differentiation responds to particular children the teacher knows. The two work together.

What can vary	Meaning	Example from a Class 6 science lesson (Illustrative)
Content	What material a child works with	A simpler text with diagrams for some; the full chapter for others
Process	How the child makes sense of it	Pairs with a stronger reader; a hands-on experiment; a short video with captions
Product	How the child shows learning	A labelled poster, an oral explanation or a written answer
Learning environment	Where and how the class is arranged	A quiet corner; seats near the board; group tables
Pace	How long a child has	Extra time for some; extension tasks for those who finish early

Differentiation fails when it becomes permanent tracking: the 'slow group' that never gets the full content. Regroup often, keep the same goal and check whether every child reached it.

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Mother tongue first

NEP 2020 asks for the home language as the medium of instruction to at least Grade 5

Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language.

National Education Policy 2020, paragraph 4.11

What paragraph 4.11 adds

This applies to public and private schools. High-quality textbooks, including science, will be made available in home languages. Where they are not, the language of transaction remains the home language wherever possible, and teachers are encouraged to use a bilingual approach with bilingual materials.

Neighbours

Nepal's Constitution gives every community the right to education in its mother tongue up to secondary level (Article 31(5)). The UNESCO GEM paper of 2016 recommends at least six years of mother tongue instruction so that early gains last.

'Wherever possible' is the policy's escape clause. In a classroom with five home languages and one teacher, the practical answer is multilingual education that uses the children's languages as bridges, which is the next slide.

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Multilingual education

Mother tongue based multilingual education builds a bridge, step by step

HOME LANGUAGE: oral work, stories and first reading in the child's language

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ORAL SECOND LANGUAGE: the school language spoken, through songs and talk

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READING IN BOTH: transfer of decoding skills to the second script

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SUBJECTS IN BOTH: concepts taught bilingually, assessment allows either

Why the bridge works

Children who learn to read in a language they speak learn what reading is. That skill transfers to a second language. Children who start in a language they do not speak often learn to copy and recite without comprehension.

What it needs

Teachers who speak the children's languages, or community assistants who do; graded reading material in those languages; and assessment that does not penalise answers in the home language in the early grades.

The sequence above is an Illustrative summary of the common model. NEP 2020 paragraph 4.12 says children pick up languages very quickly between ages 2 and 8 and asks for early reading and writing in the mother tongue, with reading and writing in other languages from Grade 3.

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Assistive technology

Assistive technology ranges from a pencil grip to a screen reader

Need	Low-tech option	Higher-tech option	Legal hook
Low vision	Large print, bold-lined paper, seating near light	Magnifier, tablet with zoom, screen reader	RPwD s17(g) free devices to 18
Blindness	Braille slate and stylus, tactile diagrams, abacus	Braille display, talking books, screen reader	RPwD s16(v); CRPD Art 24(3)(a)
Deaf or hard of hearing	Visual timetables, seating to see faces, ISL	Hearing aids, captioned videos, sound field system	RPwD s16(v); NEP para 6.11
Physical disability	Pencil grips, slant boards, adapted seating	Adapted keyboard, switch access, voice input	RPwD s16(ii), (iii)
Speech and communication	Picture boards, gesture, symbol cards	Speech-generating device or app	RPwD s17(f)
Reading difficulty	Coloured overlays, audio of texts, reading rulers	Text-to-speech, speech-to-text	RPwD s16(vi), s17(i)

The table is Illustrative. Begin with what the child and family already use. A device that stays in a cupboard because nobody was trained to maintain it, or because the school has no power for charging, has cost money and changed nothing.

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Individual education plans

An individual education plan turns rights into a weekly routine

Individualised education plan (IEP)

A written plan for one learner that records strengths and needs, sets a small number of goals for a term, lists the accommodations and support to be provided and by whom, and says how progress will be checked. General Comment 4, paragraph 33, calls for such plans to identify reasonable accommodation and specific support for individual students.

Who the child is: strengths, interests, how she communicates
Present levels: what she can do now in reading, maths and daily routines
Three to five goals for the term, written so anyone can check them

Accommodations: seating, materials, time, format of tests
Support: who does what, and how often (class teacher, special educator, family)
Review: a date, and what will count as progress

Indian law does not use the term IEP. RPwD Act section 16(iv) requires necessary support, individualised or otherwise, and section 16(vii) requires monitoring each student's progress. An IEP is the simplest way to show both.

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An IEP, worked

A one-page IEP for a Class 3 child

Illustrative. Anjali, aged 8, Class 3, government primary school in Pune district. Moderate hearing loss in both ears, uses a hearing aid that often needs a battery. Loves drawing. Reads 15 Marathi words a minute; class average around 40.

IEP part	Entry for Anjali (Illustrative)
Goal 1	Read a Class 2 Marathi passage at 30 words a minute by the end of term
Goal 2	Use 50 Indian Sign Language signs for classroom routines, with two classmates learning the same signs
Accommodations	Front seat facing the teacher's face; key words written on the board; videos with captions; spare hearing aid batteries kept at school
Support	Special educator from the Block Resource Centre visits weekly; class teacher spends 10 minutes daily on reading; mother practises words at home
Assessment	Oral tests replaced by written or drawn answers where hearing affects the result
Review	Six weeks; reading rate checked monthly and recorded

Notice that Anjali stays in her own class throughout. The plan changes how the class works for her, which is the definition in RPwD section 2(m).

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Exams and climate

Examinations and classroom culture decide whether inclusion lasts

Examinations: RPwD Act section 17(i)

Government shall make suitable modifications in the curriculum and examination system for students with disabilities, such as extra time for completing the paper, the facility of a scribe or amanuensis, and exemption from second and third language courses. Board exams are where many disabled students leave school, so schools should apply for these accommodations early.

Classroom climate

Peer tutoring, cooperative group work and clear rules against teasing help every child. NEP paragraph 6.20 asks the curriculum to teach respect for all persons, empathy, tolerance and inclusion. Bullying of disabled children is often missed because the child cannot report it in the school's language.

A short daily routine helps: a predictable timetable on the wall in words and pictures, a buddy for each child who needs one, and two minutes at the end of the day for children to say what was hard. These cost nothing, and they help children with autism, anxiety or hearing loss the most.

Exam accommodations need paperwork. Keep the child's certificate and school records ready well before the Class 10 board registration deadline.

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Section Ten

Teachers and support staff

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Every teacher

Inclusion depends on the ordinary class teacher

A special educator may visit a school once a week. The class teacher is there every day. NEP 2020 paragraph 6.14 makes teaching children with specific disabilities, including learning disabilities, an integral part of all teacher education programmes, and RPwD Act section 17(b) to (d) requires teacher training institutions and training of teachers and staff.

What a class teacher needs to know

How to plan with options (UDL); how to spot a child who is struggling and record what she sees; basic accommodations; a handful of sign language and Braille basics; when and how to ask for specialist support; how to talk with families.

What a class teacher needs to have

Time to plan; a manageable class size; a special educator or resource person who answers questions; materials in accessible formats; and a headteacher who backs accommodations when other parents complain.

Training is necessary and insufficient. Teachers trained in a three-day workshop and sent back to a class of 60 with no support usually return to the old way of teaching within weeks. Plan follow-up classroom visits as part of any training budget.

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Specialists

Special educators, resource teachers and therapists each have a role

Role	What they do	Where they sit in India
Special educator	Plans with class teachers, teaches specific skills (Braille, ISL, reading support), writes and reviews IEPs	Block Resource Centres and school clusters; the subject of Rajneesh Kumar Pandey v Union of India
Resource person (contractual)	Similar work, often itinerant across many schools	Common under Samagra Shiksha, for example Telangana's Bhavitha centres
Therapists	Physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy	Block camps, district hospitals, NGOs; rarely in schools
Sign language interpreter	Interprets lessons for deaf students	Very rare in ordinary schools
Counsellor	Mental health, behaviour and family support	NEP para 6.5 names counsellors and social workers for urban poor areas

Special educators in India must be registered with the Rehabilitation Council of India; in Rajneesh Kumar Pandey (2021) the Supreme Court held that special teachers must be qualified and registered with the Council. Ask any programme hiring special educators to check registration.

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Models of support

Four ways to organise specialist support, with trade-offs

Model	How it works	Strength	Weakness
Itinerant	One special educator visits many schools on a cycle	Reaches remote schools at low cost	A visit every few weeks is too thin for high support needs
Resource room	A room in a school where children spend part of the day with a specialist	Intensive help, equipment in one place	Can become a separate class by another name
Co-teaching	Class teacher and special educator teach the class together	Changes the ordinary classroom	Needs time, staff and good relationships
Cluster resource centre	A hub for several schools with specialists and devices	Pools scarce skills; NEP para 6.11	Distance and transport for children

Most districts use a mix. The question to ask is whether the model changes what happens in the ordinary classroom, or only removes the child from it for a while. General Comment 4's test of inclusion, structural change to content and teaching, applies to support models too.

This table is a teaching summary with no ranking implied. Choose the model by the children's needs, the distances and the staff a district can recruit and keep.

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Screening

PRASHAST gives schools a common disability screening checklist

NCERT developed PRASHAST, a disability screening checklist and mobile app for schools covering the 21 disabilities under the RPwD Act 2016, because no uniform screening checklist for schools existed. Version 2.0 generates a school-level report that can be shared with authorities to start certification under Samagra Shiksha guidelines.

Part 1 for regular teachers, part 2 for special educators
Available on Android and iOS; e-book in Hindi and English
Data intended to feed disability certification through assessment camps
Described by NCERT as statistically standardised

NCERT's own warning

The brochure states that PRASHAST should not be used for certification or labelling. Screening flags a child for a closer look. It does not diagnose. A teacher who tells a parent 'the app says your child is disabled' has misused it.

Source: NCERT, Central Institute of Educational Technology, PRASHAST 2.0 brochure.

Screening without support afterwards raises expectations and can harm a child through a label with no service. Budget for what happens after the flag.

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Families

Families are part of the support team

What families bring

They know how the child communicates, what calms her and what she can do at home that she never shows at school. They also carry the cost of every missing service: travel to camps, lost wages, the hours of home teaching.

What schools often get wrong

Meeting families only when there is a problem; using jargon; asking a mother to stay in class all day as the child's aide; and treating a refusal of home-based education as lack of cooperation.

Invite the family to write the first draft of the 'who the child is' part of the IEP
Use School Management Committee meetings (RTE Act section 21) to discuss access as well as funds
Connect families to disabled persons' organisations and parent groups in the district
Explain certificates and entitlements in the family's language, with a written note

NEP 2020 paragraph 6.12 says technology-based orientation and learning materials for parents and caregivers will be given priority, while stating that the education of children with disabilities is the responsibility of the State.

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Building a workforce

Planning teachers for inclusion is a district-level task

Illustrative worked example. A district has 1,800 government schools in 60 clusters. UDISE+ shows 3,600 CWSN enrolled. NSS-based prevalence suggests many more children are unidentified.

Step	Calculation or decision (Illustrative)
Current specialist staff	45 contractual resource persons, about 80 enrolled CWSN each, spread over 40 schools each
Target ratio	One special educator per cluster as a first step: 60 posts
Class teacher training	Two teachers per school trained in UDL and screening: 3,600 teachers, with follow-up visits by the cluster special educator
Equipment	Cluster resource kit with Braille materials, hearing aid batteries, picture boards and a tablet
Cost lines	Map each line to Samagra Shiksha's Inclusive Education component and the state budget

The numbers are invented for teaching. The method is the point: start from children, then staff, then training, then equipment, and make each line traceable to a budget head.

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Section Eleven

Measuring inclusion

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Why measure

What gets counted gets planned for

SDG indicator 4.5.1 asks for parity indices by disability status as data become available. RPwD Act section 16(vii) asks every institution to monitor participation, progress and completion of each student with disability. Neither is possible without a way to identify disabled children that is consistent across schools, districts and countries.

The problem with yes or no

A question such as 'Is this child disabled?' depends on stigma, on whether the family has a certificate and on how the interviewer asks. Counts vary wildly between surveys and between districts for reasons that have nothing to do with children.

The functional answer

Ask about difficulty with specific activities, with graded answers. The Washington Group on Disability Statistics and UNICEF built question sets on this approach, based on the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health.

Section 2 described the ICF. This section shows how its logic becomes survey questions that a programme can use in a baseline.

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WG Short Set

The Washington Group Short Set uses six questions for adults

The Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WG-SS) is a set of six questions for national censuses and surveys, developed, tested and adopted by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics. It covers seeing, hearing, walking or climbing steps, remembering or concentrating, self-care and communicating.

How the answers work

Each question has four graded answers: no difficulty, some difficulty, a lot of difficulty, cannot do at all. The graded scale lets an analyst set a severity threshold and report it, instead of forcing a yes or no at the interview.

Why it is not enough for children

The Washington Group recognised that the Short Set does not apply to children under five and may miss many children with developmental disabilities above that age. That is why it built the Child Functioning Module with UNICEF.

Sources: Washington Group, WG-SS and CFM pages, washingtongroup-disability.com (read October 2026); response categories as printed in the WG/UNICEF CFM questionnaire (19 March 2020).

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Child Functioning Module

The Child Functioning Module asks about the areas that matter for children

The WG/UNICEF Child Functioning Module (CFM) was finalised in 2016. It has two versions, for children aged 2 to 4 and 5 to 17, both answered by the mother or primary caregiver. It is part of UNICEF's Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, and a joint statement in March 2017 recommended it for SDG data disaggregation for children.

Age group	Areas of functioning assessed
All ages (2-17)	Vision, hearing, mobility, communication or comprehension, behaviour, learning
Ages 2-4 only	Dexterity, playing
Ages 5-17 only	Self-care, remembering, focusing attention, coping with change, relationships, emotions (anxiety and depression)

The 5-17 questionnaire has 24 items (CF1 to CF24). Functioning items use the four-point difficulty scale. The two emotion items ask how often the child seems very anxious or very sad: daily, weekly, monthly, a few times a year or never.

The emotion questions matter. A child who is very anxious every day may hold no certificate and still need accommodation at school.

Sources: Washington Group, CFM page; WG/UNICEF CFM ages 5-17 questionnaire.

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Teacher version and IEM

Two newer modules bring measurement into schools

CFM Teacher Version (CFM-TV)

Developed after the 2016 CFM, with a teacher as respondent, for use in Education Management Information Systems and school-based surveys. It has 20 questions for children aged 5 to 17 covering seeing, hearing, mobility, fine motor skills, communication, learning, remembering, concentrating, accepting change, controlling behaviour, making friends, and anxiety and depression. It was tested in 2022-2023.

Inclusive Education Module (IEM)

A WG and UNICEF set of questions on the environmental factors that affect school participation, applicable to all children whether or not they have a disability. It has five modules, the first two on the child's educational background. Testing showed the best way to find barriers was to ask about the school environment for all children.

For India, the CFM-TV is the closest fit to UDISE+. A state could pilot it in a few districts beside the existing CWSN categories and compare who each method identifies. Sources: Washington Group, CFM-TV and IEM pages, read October 2026.

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Categories or functioning

Medical categories and functional difficulty answer different questions

Impairment categories (UDISE+, RPwD Schedule)

Tell you what kind of specialist support or device a child may need, and link to entitlements that require a certificate. They depend on diagnosis, which is scarce in rural areas, so they undercount, especially for learning disabilities, autism and mental illness.

Functional difficulty (WG, CFM)

Tells you how many children face difficulty in each area, in a way that can be compared across places and time, and supports SDG 4.5.1 parity indices. It does not give a diagnosis or decide entitlements.

A practitioner needs both. Use functional questions to find children and to compare attendance and learning between those with and without difficulty. Use categories to plan specialist services and help families obtain certificates. Never use a functional screen as if it were a certificate, and never treat the absence of a certificate as proof that a child needs nothing.

General Comment 4, paragraph 30, is the legal anchor here: reasonable accommodation may not be conditional on a medical diagnosis.

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A baseline, step by step

How to run a functioning baseline for an inclusion programme

ADAPT: translate the CFM using WG translation guidance; test with 10 families

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SAMPLE: all households in programme villages, or a random sample of them

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ASK: CFM questions to the caregiver, plus school status and class

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LINK: match children to school records and learning tests

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REPORT: out-of-school and learning gaps by difficulty, sex and social group

Practical points (Illustrative)

Train enumerators to read the answer options aloud every time, as the questionnaire instructs. Use the version for the right age band. Keep the data on functional difficulty apart from names in the analysis file.

Consent and data protection

Explain the purpose to caregivers, seek the child's assent where age allows, and store the data securely. The DPDP Act 2023 research exemption in section 17(2)(b) applies, from 13 May 2027, only when its conditions are met. Programme lists used to deliver services are personal data processing in the ordinary way.

A baseline of this kind turns 'we do not know how many disabled children are out of school here' into a number with a method behind it, which a district officer can act on.

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Indicators

A short set of indicators for an inclusion programme

Dimension	Indicator (Illustrative)	Data source
Access	Out-of-school children with functional difficulty, aged 6-18, per 1,000	Door to door survey with CFM questions; RPwD s17(a) survey
Attendance	Average days attended by children with and without difficulty	School registers by child
Participation	Share of CWSN with a current IEP reviewed in the last term	School records
Learning	Reading and maths levels of children with and without difficulty	Accommodated learning assessment
Environment	Schools with a usable accessible toilet, ramp and at least one trained teacher	Facility audit with observation
Transition	CWSN moving from Class 8 to Class 9, and from Class 10 to Class 11	UDISE+ student records

These follow General Comment 4's emphasis on participation, accessibility, attendance and achievement. Compare children with and without difficulty in the same schools: the gap is the measure of inclusion.

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Section Twelve

A practitioner's toolkit

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School audit: building

School audit checklist, part 1: getting in and getting around

Is there a ramp with handrails at the main entrance, and is the path to it clear?
Can a child using a wheelchair reach every classroom she needs, the toilet, the water point and the mid-day meal area?
Is there an accessible toilet, and is it open, clean and used?
Is lighting adequate for a child with low vision at every desk?
Are the blackboard and charts at a height and contrast a child can read?
Is there a quiet space a child can use when overwhelmed?

Why each question

Each item maps to RPwD Act section 16(ii), which requires buildings, campus and facilities to be accessible. UDISE+ asks whether a ramp exists; 58.2% of schools had ramps with handrails in 2025-26. The audit asks whether it works, which no national dataset records.

Walk the route a child would walk, at the time she would walk it, and in the rain if you can. A ramp that ends at a step, or a toilet used as a store room, will show up only this way.

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School audit: teaching

School audit checklist, part 2: teaching and support

Does every child with an identified need have a written plan reviewed this term?
Do lessons offer more than one way to take in information and to answer?
Can at least one teacher use basic Indian Sign Language or Braille where a child needs it?
Does a special educator visit, and how often, and what did the last visit change?
Are exam accommodations (extra time, scribe, language exemption) applied for in time?

Are children taught in a language they understand in the early grades, or with bilingual support?
Are assistive devices in use, charged and repaired?
Is teasing of disabled or minority children addressed when it happens?
Are children with disabilities included in sport, assembly and trips (RPwD s16(i))?
Do teachers know how to request support from the Block Resource Centre?

Observe one full lesson and talk to three children before scoring this part. Teachers' answers about their own practice are useful and incomplete.

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School audit: data and governance

School audit checklist, part 3: records, families and governance

Records

Are CWSN recorded in UDISE+ by type? Is attendance tracked by child? Are reading and maths levels recorded for CWSN as for others (RPwD s16(vii))? Is there a list of out-of-school disabled children in the catchment, from the s17(a) survey or a local one?

Families and governance

Does the School Management Committee include parents of disadvantaged children (RTE s21)? Has it discussed access in the last year? Do families know about the girls' stipend, free devices and exam accommodations? Is there a written way to complain about a refused admission?

Score	Meaning (Illustrative scale)
0	Not in place
1	In place on paper only
2	In place and partly used
3	In place, used and checked in the last term

Report scores by item. A single total hides the item that keeps a child out.

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Decision table

A decision table for common situations

Situation	First action	Legal basis to cite
Private school refuses a disabled child under the 25% quota	Written complaint to the district education officer; record the refusal	RTE Act s12(1)(c), s13; RPwD Act s16(i)
Government school says the child should go to a special school	Ask for reasonable accommodation in writing; involve the special educator	RPwD Act s16(iii), s31(1) (choice belongs to the child and family)
Board exam without scribe or extra time	Apply to the board early with the certificate	RPwD Act s17(i)
Deaf child with no sign language support	Request ISL support and materials from the Block Resource Centre	RPwD Act s16(v), s17(c),(f); NEP para 6.11
Adivasi children not following lessons in the state language	Bilingual materials and a community language assistant	NEP para 4.11
Child at home with severe disability, no visits	Ask for home-based education with a plan and review	RTE Act s3(3) proviso; NEP para 6.12

Escalate in steps: school, block, district, then the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities or the courts. Keep copies of every letter.

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Worked example

Worked example: one block, one year

Illustrative. An NGO works with the education department in a block of Nandurbar district, Maharashtra, with 210 government schools and many Bhil and Pawra children. The goal for the year is to reduce the number of out-of-school children with functional difficulty.

FIND: door-to-door CFM questions in 40 villages; 260 children with difficulty, 70 out of school

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FIX THE SCHOOLS: audit 40 schools; ramps, toilets, seating; bilingual reading materials

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SUPPORT: IEPs for 120 children; weekly visits by 3 special educators

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COUNT: attendance and reading levels each term, compared with other children

End of year (Illustrative)

45 of the 70 enrolled; attendance gap narrowed; reading gap unchanged. The team learns that teaching, more than access, is now the binding constraint.

What the example teaches

Finding children is cheap compared with teaching them well. Budget the second year for teacher support and classroom practice.

ImpactMojoInclusive Education 101www.impactmojo.in

Common mistakes

Six mistakes that recur in inclusion programmes

Design mistakes

Counting enrolment as success. Spending most of the budget on identification camps and devices with no classroom change. Running everything on contractual staff who leave when the project ends.

Practice mistakes

Treating a screening flag as a diagnosis. Placing children in ordinary classes with no support, which General Comment 4 calls integration and not inclusion. Leaving out children whose difficulty is invisible: learning disabilities, mental illness and chronic illness.

Each mistake has a simple counter. Measure learning and transition as well as enrolment. Ring-fence money for teacher support. Push for regular posts and use the Rajneesh Kumar Pandey orders when talking to the state. Use PRASHAST as NCERT advises. Plan support before admission. Use functional questions so that hidden difficulties are counted.

A useful habit: at every review meeting, ask which child the programme has not yet reached, and why.

ImpactMojoInclusive Education 101www.impactmojo.in

Where next

Inclusive education connects to disability rights, to child rights, to the politics of language and caste and to the measurement of learning. These ImpactMojo 101 decks take each strand further.

Disability Inclusion 101: disability rights and inclusion across sectors
Child Rights 101: the CRC, the RTE Act and child protection laws
Education Policy 101: how school systems are governed and financed
Foundational Literacy & Numeracy 101: teaching every child to read and count

Education & Pedagogy 101: classroom methods and how children learn
Caste Studies 101: caste, exclusion and the law
Survey Design 101: building questionnaires such as a CFM baseline
Data Protection & the DPDP Act 101: handling children's disability data lawfully

Start with the three-part school audit in this section on one school you know, then read Disability Inclusion 101 for the wider rights picture.

ImpactMojoInclusive Education 101www.impactmojo.in

Inclusive Education 101 · Complete

Change the school,
then count who is still outside.

Inclusion is measured child by child: who is enrolled, who is learning, and who the system has not yet reached. Explore the rest of the ImpactMojo 101 Series, free forever.

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