More than 72 million children are not enrolled in schools. Working children, girls and disabled children form the major part of those that are excluded and are most likely to miss out on education entirely . The lives of millions of children are at stake here and who is to blame? Is it the policy makers who have breached upon the children’s right to get quality education or is it the parents who fear that their children won’t be treated right and thus, don’t send them to schools? In reality, many factors are at work and that has kept countless children away from acquiring basic education.

However, the many factors do not justify the fact that these children have to go on without acquiring basic education, considering the right to get education is one of the basic human rights outlined by the United Nations. Exclusion has to be stopped and human rights advocates, educational reformists and other social activists are widely promoting the concept of inclusive education as a way of doing just that.

Inclusive education is based upon the idea that quality education in a classroom be provided to everyone, regardless of their skin colour, additional needs, disabilities, gender, culture, nationality etc. It implies that children with disabilities be accommodated in mainstream schools and children with additional support needs be provided with adequate facilities to support their learning. The onus of accommodating all the students falls on the school and they are required to modify their classrooms accordingly.

Secondly, the concept of inclusive education talks about providing “quality” education. Adjusting everybody in a classroom doesn’t imply that a school deteriorates its educational quality and disadvantages the students studying in an inclusive classroom. It implies that education level be marked to a certain standard and be molded to suit the needs of a diverse classroom. For a classroom to be truly inclusive, it is encouraged that all students learn and participate effectively in the classroom, as opposed to just being accommodated.

The benefits of inclusive education are manifold. Firstly, it allows all children to interact with a lot many other children coming from diverse backgrounds, facilitating the learning process and making it more interesting for the children. This way, children learn to accept each others’ differences and any biases or prejudices they may have are dispelled by team working and learning together with everyone. Making the learning process interesting for children directly increases the attendance in classrooms which is one of the many focus points for schools. Growth in attendance leads to more participation from all the important stakeholders - administrators, teachers, parents and students.

Parents’ participation is important as it helps to assure an unhindered learning process at home and does wonders to the motivation of school going children. For children with additional support needs, gaining attention and assistance at home is very important. While schools should offer facilities so that their needs are met in the classroom, it is equally important for parents to sit with them and help them with their difficulties.

Many teachers shy away from teaching in an inclusive classroom as they perceive it to be an additional burden. However, providing inclusive education in classroom, unlike the popular belief helps teachers as well. For teachers, teaching an inclusive class would
mean learning more skills and acquiring special training, which is likely to broaden the scope of their abilities and increase their professional competency. Also, with the concept of inclusive education being highly promoted globally, the demand for teachers who can handle an inclusive classroom is going to increase drastically.

As stated, inclusive education talks about providing access to education to everyone and not only that, but about maintaining a certain level of educational standard that satisfies basic learning needs. This implies that individuals, regardless of their differences, study in the same classroom and acquire the same education as anybody else. Inclusion as a concept talks less about a physical space and is more about a state of being and a condition. It is a concept that is built upon tolerance and acceptance. This concept serves as an important tool to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, the haves and the haves-not. For children, who study together, learn to live together and in turn, give birth to a tolerant and accepting society which is actually the ultimate goal of providing inclusive education.

Considering the statistics and the number of people that are not even enrolled in schools, providing inclusive education does seem like a distant, unachievable notion. It is certainly a difficult idea to implement what with the presence of deep rooted racisms and other discriminatory sentiments in many societies that don’t let many individuals of our society blend in with the rest. This is especially true for people who suffer from disabilities or require additional support.

The perceptions and attitudes of teachers can also be a hindrance when they would rather devote limited time and effort to teach an exclusive classroom then putting in extra effort and undergoing specialized training to teach a larger, more diverse classroom. Schools that are present in the rural areas and even some urban ones, have a lack of appropriate resources and the will to provide inclusive education.

Moreover, quality is a subjective concept and it is certainly a challenge to maintain a constant level of “quality” in education when you want to impart education to everyone – regardless of their incomes, cast, creed etc. Lack of awareness about inclusion and the increasing commercialism in schools also leads to a lot of people being excluded from gaining a quality basic education.

These reasons do not justify the absence of inclusive education in our classrooms but should rather be used to better identify and overcome challenges so that a true inclusive classroom can come into being.