Disabled students face challenge of finding writers for SSC exam

Disabled students appearing for the Class 10 board exam are finding it difficult to get writers for themselves and are appealing for writers on social media

PUNE: Disabled students appearing for the Class 10 board exam are again facing the challenge of finding writers for themselves so much so that many of them are appealing for writers on social media. Whereas according to activists and social workers, the responsibility of allocating writers for these students ought to be with their respective schools or colleges in order to make the process easier for them.

Disabled students appearing for the Class 10 board exam are finding it difficult to get writers for themselves and are appealing for writers on social media. (Getty Images/iStockphoto (PIC FOR REPRESENTATION))

Of the total 1,625,555 students appearing for the Class 10 or Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exam in March and April this year, 8,121 are disabled . Of the 8,121 disabled students, 1,273 – which is the second-largest number of students after Mumbai – are from the Pune divisional board.

Vinay Pandhare, whose disabled son will be appearing for the Class 10 board exam this year, said that the parents of these children face multiple challenges. “My son Pratik has epilepsy and we have been trying to find a writer for him for the past two months. There are many such students who are in need of writers. However, schools do not provide us with writers. And we are forced to arrange writers. I have approached many students who are in Class 9 but they have exams during the same time so many of them have refused. There should be a system wherein students and their parents do not have to struggle to find a writer,” said Pandhare.

Archana Deshpande of Team Vision Foundation, an NGO which works for blind students said that the parents of these children are unaware of the rules regarding writers. “Many parents do not know the rules. As long as a person is not a teacher or blood-relative of the child, he or she can be the writer. Many parents are unaware about it. Technically, schools should arrange writers but parents can find help from others to get writers,” she said. Class 9 students are serious about the exam and can be good writers, Deshpande said.

“But sometimes, Class 8 students are not very serious about being writers. So many special students face problems during the exam. Parents should keep all of this in mind while selecting a writer,” she said.

Clarifying further, Sharad Gosavi, chairman, Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE), said that writers can be from Class 9 or 8 but not Class 10 or above for Class 10 students. “We have made provisions that the schools themselves should get writers and ease the process as a whole for students,” Gosavi said.