Andhra Pradesh government’s Samagra Siksha, Kerala-based NGO Chakshumathi and Anantapur-based Rural Development Trust (RDT) have come together to make all the 46,000 government schools in the State inclusive pedagogy-ready by March 2025. As part of the masterplan, Chakshumathi and RDT have so far trained 400 government teachers in digital inclusive pedagogy. This programme will be launched across in the State on May 8.
The spadework for the programme was done by RDT-run Inclusive High SchoolinAnantapur, where digital inclusive pedagogy has been doing wonders for the first batch of six visually impaired girls who are attending their Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations without any scribe.
The State government made all arrangements at Rapthadu Zilla Parishad High School (examination centre) in the district to enable these Children With Special Needs (CwSN) to get a digitally converted question paper that supports a screen-reading software.
Director of Chakshumathi Ram Kumar Manoj told The Hindu that under phase-1 master training programme to be launched on May 8 in Anantapur, a new batch of 400 master trainers would be created in 26 districts. These trainers would in turn train school assistants in government schools till May 2024.
In the first phase of training teachers in inclusive pedagogy, 12 districts have been selected—Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Parvathipuram Manyam, Visakhapatnam, Anakapalli, Alluri Seetharama Raju, Kakinada, Konaseema, East Godavari, Eluru, West Godavari and Krishna. Mainstream teachers who attend these on-site workshops join Chakshumathi learning management system (LMS) to undergo a certificate course for 14 days to 3 months on digitally accessible teaching pedagogy and inclusive awareness to identify the needs of CwSN and support them.
The phase-2 master training programme for creating 200 master trainers from the remaining districts will begin on May 25 for school assistants (special educators). The path ahead is creating accessible digital ecosystems in State schools. The digital ecosystem to be created from July 2023 to December 2024 includes ‘born accessible digital educational content; creating State born accessible multimode LMS; digital environment creations in classrooms; Internet and Wi-Fi installations; and online secure examinations and assessments.
Mr. Ram Kumar explained that ‘born accessible content’ was nothing but content accessible to people with special needs as well. It applies to all content that is created by the State for children.
Visit by Consul General of Spain
Upon learning about the initiative, Consul General of Spain in India Fernando Heredia Noguervisited the school on Monday to witness the arrangements and the way the visually impaired students were attending their examination. “The beauty of this inclusive pedagogy is [that] children irrespective of their status ... learn the lessons at the same time from the same teacher, and it is probably happening only in India. In Spain also we have different trainers in a single school for children with different needs,” he said.
