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Unit 25: Policies and Provisions: Constitutional Provisions for Group of Children with special learning needs

and appliances that can promote their physical, social and psychological well being by enhancing Notes
their educational potential. The scheme provides aids and appliances to locomotor disabled, visually
disabled, hearing disabled, mentally disabled and multiple disabled.

25.6 Initial Experiments on Integrated Education in India

The early attempts to include CWSN in regular schools were through Project Integrated Education
for the Disabled (PIED) and District Primary Education Programme (DPEP).
25.6.1 Project Integrated Education for the Disabled (PIED)
The first pilot project on integrated education in India came in the form of Project Integrated Education
for the Disabled (PIED). PIED launched in 1987, was a joint venture of MHRD and UNICEF. This
project was implemented in one administrative block each in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,
Nagaland, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Mizoram, Delhi Municipal Corporation and
Baroda Municipal Corporation. In these ten blocks, 6000 children with special needs were integrated
in regular schools.

25.6.1 District Primary Education Programme (DPEP)
The success of PIED led to the inclusion of the component of Integrated Education of the Disabled
(IED) in DPEP, a scheme launched by the Government of India for the development of elementary
education.
25.6.2 Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)
A recent initiative of the Government of India to Universalise Elementary Education is Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan (SSA). SSA is a response to the demand for quality basic education all over the country.
However, UEE cannot be achieved unless children with special needs are also provided access to
education. Hence, education of CWSN is an essential part of the SSA framework.

At present, IED in DPEP is going on in 242 districts of 18 states. In these states,
approximately 6.21 lakh children with special needs have been enrolled in regular
schools with adequate support services.

25.7 Summary

• The early history of special education started with the hearing handicapped as early as 1555
when the Spanish monk Pedro Ponce de Leon (1520-1584) taught a small number of deaf children
to read, write and speak and learn academic subjects.
• The first school for the deaf in Great Britain was established in 1767 in Edinburgh by Thomas
Braidwood. Braidwood's method combined oral and manual method teaching alphabets and
signs.
• In France, Michel del' Epee (1920-1789) who established the first school in Paris in 1755, and
Ambroise Sicard (1742-1822) were developing sign language.
• Education of children with mental retardation began with the attempt by a French physician Itard
(1775-1835) to educate an 11 year old boy who had been found living as a savage in the woods. This
was documented in the book "The Wild Boy of Aveyron". Edward Seguin (1812-1880) followed the
technique in France and United States and Maria Montessorie (1870-1952) in Italy.
• Decroly (1871-1932) in Belgium developed a curriculum for mentally retarded children early in
the 20th century and established schools throughout Europe.
• In 1839 the first blind and mentally retarded (MR) child was enrolled in the Perkins Institute for
the Blind in the USA.

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