Civic bodies fail special education test

Delhi’s municipal bodies are yet to implement Right to Education Act provisions for disabled children, two years after the law came into force.

Delhi’s municipal bodies are yet to implement Right to Education Act provisions for disabled children, two years after the law came into force. The law requires recruitment of teachers for such children. The now-trifurcated Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which sanctioned 1,790 special educators in 2011, has not hired such teachers to attend to the needs of such children.

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The newly formed civic corporations have failed to meet the minimum requirement of appointing one special educator per school. While the south civic body has 592 schools, the east and north civic bodies have 392 and 775 schools.

The deliberative wings of the corporations have blamed the executive bodies for the delay in recruiting teachers. According to the leader of the north corporation House, Dr Mahender Nagpal, who was also the former chairman of the MCD’s education committee, the officials of the corporations are not serious about speeding up the process.

According to a notification issued by the ministry of human resource development, the provisions of the RTE Act came into force in April 2010. The act’s Section 3(2) of Chapter II says that a disabled child has the right to pursue free and compulsory elementary education. “(But) there are no teachers for special children,” rued an official.

The issue was highlighted at a meeting of the south civic body’s education committee meeting on Tuesday.

Former mayor and nominated member Prithvi Raj Sawhney told officials and councillors that not a single municipal school has these special educators as per the RTE provisions.