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Bareilly: A government teacher has shown the way to other districts of the country by getting 650 disabled children admitted in government schools under a campaign. Governments in India are making efforts to ensure education to disabled children. For example, in Uttar Pradesh, where there are the most disabilities, special teachers have been appointed in government primary schools who are specially trained to teach children with disabilities. But even before starting studies, there is a challenge, due to which thousands of Divyangs do not reach the school. That is to identify these disabled students and get them admitted in the school. Deepmala Pandey, a teacher from Bareilly, has made it her goal to overcome this challenge. She is working as headmistress in village Dabhaura Gangapur Primary School in Bhuta development block of Bareilly district. Three years ago, a handicapped child Anmol took admission in his school. This child forced him to think a lot. Deepmala tells that Anmol was mentally handicapped and had a lot of difficulty in speaking. He could not read like a normal child.
I started paying special attention to him. It cannot be said that he has reached equal to other children, but hard work helped him in some way. Connected everyone together, according to Deepmala, he thought a lot about providing education to other children like Anmol and also talked to his fellow teachers. It was because of Anmol that he started a program ‘One Teacher One Call’. Under this, he started adding his fellow teachers. Everyone connected with social media and WhatsApp. Apart from Bareilly, teachers from other nearby districts have also joined them. Soon this number increased to 350. In this model, all the teachers had to take the responsibility of at least one handicapped child and get him admitted in the school. With this effort, 650 differently abled children were admitted to the school.
His initiative was also appreciated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat speech on 27 September and praised this model. Slowly, Deepmala’s ‘One Teacher One Call’ model has now reached many places. She believes that society has a responsibility towards such special children and she is fulfilling them. Deepmala did not stop here. He also started motivating other teachers for training. A workshop on teaching Braille script was organized on 9th January to provide guidance to the teachers for educating the blind students properly. Deepmala, through her efforts, motivated the differently-abled children to go to various competitions and did the work of evaluating them in a different category. Deepmala says that in the beginning there was hesitation that I do not know whether these children will be able to join us or not, but when you talk to the children and try to understand them, then gradually a relationship is formed, which is necessary for the child. How big is the challenge? According to the population of the year 2011 in India, out of the total 121 crore people, 2.68 crore people are disabled. Of these, 56 percent are men while 44 percent are women.
The maximum number of disabled people in the country live in Uttar Pradesh, whose number is about 41 lakh 57 thousand. Of these, the number of children of 0-14 years is more than 10 lakh 91 thousand. According to the report of the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, Uttar Pradesh has about 20.31 percent of the maximum number of children with disabilities (0 -6 years), whose number is four lakh 14 thousand 824. If we look at the educational qualification of Divyangjan living in Uttar Pradesh, then about 21 lakh 66 thousand are literate and more than 19 lakh 90 thousand are illiterate. Out of these, three lakh 42 thousand Divyang are educated below primary, five lakh 30 thousand 368 Divyang are educated more than primary but less than middle, while four lakh 40 thousand 333 Divyang are educated more than middle but less than matriculation. Four lakh 92 thousand 552 are more than matriculation but less than graduate. Less than two lakh Divyangs have completed graduation or more. If we look at the figures of 5-19 year old disabled people in Uttar Pradesh, then there is a total number of 12 lakh 88 thousand 308, out of which seven lakh 62 thousand 506 are going to school while more than three lakh 74 thousand persons with disabilities never took education in school. Is..
