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Comments of a Paper on

Need of National Institute in Special Education in Nepal: A Move towards Inclusion in Education

First of I would congratulate Dr. Roj Nath Pandey for capturing a contemporary concerns that needs to be brought out for the wider discussion.
A large number of people are suffering from various forms of disabilities. There is an estimation of 10 percent (2 % according to the CBS 2011,) of the population has various types of disabilities. The state should ensure the right of every individual to live with dignity. But there are a number of challenges and constraints addressing these issues. Education is one of the fundamental rights of an individual to shape the human life. That is why the nation should ensure the equitable access PWD to education without any kind of barriers. In this ground the paper has tried to analyze current situation, issues and challenges and the future directions.
There are still several questions in education sector with regards to the equitable access to quality education that needs to be responded.
•            What are the policy provisions, plans and programmes addressing problems and challenges of disabilities?
•            What is the share of national budget to address disability issues?
•            What are the institutional arrangements?
•            How easily a CWD can get to school (Access) and have an opportunity to learn properly?
•            What are the facilities available in classroom? (Disability friendly infrastructure in educational institutions)
•            How are the CWD treated by the other students and teachers?
•            How far the teachers capable to better teach CWD to ensure the better learning?
Structure and major highlights of the paper
The paper has tried to capture the issues with a discussion in a structure as follows:
•            Background: Political Factor, Economic factor, Social factor, Technological factor Legal factor Environmental factor
•            National Policy and Plan of Action on Disability
•            Disabled People's Organizations in Nepal
•            Development Interventions and Partners in Disability Sector
•            Strategic Direction
•            Mainstreaming Disability Issue as Crosscutting Issue
•            Capacity Building and Organizational Development of Nepali DPOs
•            Key Focused Areas
o            Advocacy and Lobby
o            Need identification
o            Learning and Sharing
o            Communication and Cultural Sensitivity
o            Funding Gaps
•            Challenges Encountered in the Development of Special Education
o            Challenge in identification and diagnostic procedures
o            Challenge in Technical and Vocational Education
o            The scarcity of educational opportunities for students with disabilities
o            Challenge in establishing the family and professional collaboration
•            Conclusion
•            Implication
Strengths of the paper
•            A well-structured paper
•            Historical perspective of the evolution of Disability Movements captured
•            Some facts and figures have been presented to support the discussion on the status of the disable people in Nepal. (Share of disable people 2% - 10%, Access of Disable people to education less than 32 %, access to health facilities, less than 15 %, opportunity of employment less than 23%, etc)
•            Situation analysis linking with socio-cultural barriers
•            The paper has tried to analyze the disability issues in background information with various dimensions like social, political, economic, technological, legal and environmental factors.
•            Gap analysis on legal framework
•            Tried to explore the challenges with regards to development of special education, identification and diagnostic procedures, technical and vocational education, access and opportunities of education
•            Capacity Building Measures among the stakeholders and organizations working for the Disability sector.
•            Strategic directions identified
•            The paper has clearly indicated the limited efforts of the concerned organizations on program interventions to best address the disability issues. Most of the organizations working in this sector are focused only on Advocacy and lobby.
•            Some practical Implications have been suggested
o            Establishing the baseline and measuring progress
o            Minimum standards and accountability mechanisms
o            Capacity development and roll-out of the draft Guidance
o            Improving the quality of data
o            Access and developing disability related policies
Some Areas that are expected to be incorporated in the paper
•            There are a number of policies and strategies developed so far to address the disability. For example Special Education Policy, 1996; Policy developed by the MoWCSW, equity strategy (under finalization), Existing Policies and plans to address the issues and challenges on disabilities have not been properly spell out under the discussion in this paper.  
•            The analysis of gap between policy and practice has not been observed.
•            Development Interventions and Partners have been mixed together but what exactly the development actions carried out have not been spelled out clearly. Similarly, the types of contributions made by the development partners are not clear.
•            Nepal has adopted a mix model of inclusive approach and special education approach to educate the CWD. There is an ongoing debate on inclusive approach and separate program for special need children. What approach, integrated or segregated is suitable in Nepalese context? An intensive discussion is required.
•            There is a bit deviation of the content discussion with that of the title of the paper. It sounds that the topic intends to elaborate something on the need of institutional arrangement at the national level in order to address the burning issues in disability sector. There is inadequate discussion to justify establishing a national level institution take over the lead roles.
•            The contributions and roles carried out in the disability sector by the existing structure has not been analyzed intensively. It could dig out :
o            What is the existing institutional arrangements?
o            What roles has the existing structure carrying out,
o            Whether the institutional arrangements from central to the grass-root level are enough or not,
o            Whether the existing organizational capacity is adequate or not,
o            Whether the mandates to the agencies working in this sector are clear or not,
•            The paper should include the indication of 'how should the the national institution look like?':
o            Structure,
o            roles and mandates,
o            Legal provisions,
o            Resources, for the proposed national Institutions to be discussed intensively,
o            How should the vertical and horizontal linkage between and among the government and non-government agencies
•            What are the International Practices and role of National institution for Special education
•            Inadequate linkage of the discussion with the policy provisions and existing program interventions.
o            The paper missed out to capture the program interventions and efforts made by the government to ensure the access of CWD to education, though it may be inadequate. For example:
            Establishment of the Assessment centers in each district
            Resource Classes             -365
            Special School                         -31
            Integrated Schools             -21
            Training for the resource teachers and special education teachers,
            Disable friendly physical infrastructure development in educational institutions
            Revision of curriculum and textbooks to address the disable issues,
            Printing and distribution of braille textbooks
            Revision of examination guidelines to address the problems of the disable students,  
            Scholarship programmes for the CWDs:
o            More than 70,000 disable students are receiving such scholarship
o            Residential facilities for 6,200 disable children
            Budget allocation for several inclusive, special education programmes (around NPR. 63 million) for the current FY 2071/72
Gaps/Problems/Challenges to be addressed
•            Relevance of the existing curriculum for the students with different types of disability
•            Capacity Development of the resource teachers and special education teachers,
•            Licensing the special education teachers,
•            Bringing out of disable school children into school,
•            Development of learning materials for the disable children especially for deaf, blind, Cerebral Palsy, Intellectual Disable students, etc.

Overall, the efforts made so far to capture the focus of disability concern is appreciated