Unaided private schools in the city have told the Delhi high court that they would need government aid and two years’ time for putting in place infrastructure for the benefit of disabled students, saying it is the government’s responsibility to educate disabled children and the burden cannot be shifted to them.
In an affidavit filed in the court, the Action Committee of Unaided Private Schools cited financial constraints and sought financial support and aid from the government, besides seeking time to set up the facilities for the disabled students.
“The government must help private schools, both financially and in kind, so that they can implement the policy for providing education to the children with various kinds of disabilities with proper equipment, adequate infrastructure and the government must decide to reimburse expenses on this account,” the committee said.
The court had on August 6 last year directed the city’s private schools to remove architectural barriers from their premises for free movement of disabled students.
NGO Social Jurist had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), raising the issue of 2,039 unaided private schools and 258 government schools in the city lacking basic facilities for disabled students.
In their response, the schools said many of them had constructed ramps for disabled children and also modified the toilets. Besides the changes in infrastructure, providing buildings with ramps and lifts, classrooms with various educational aids, equipment, apparatus and other material for a disabled-friendly environment would require substantive investment, something which can only be done in phases, the Action Committee of Unaided Private Schools said. It informed the court about the scarcity of qualified special teachers for the disabled and the high cost of hiring such professionals.
The schools said the sorry state of affairs could be explained in terms of the failure of the government to address its responsibility of educating the disabled students.