Roadmap for Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities: An Analysis of the New Education Policy, 2020

The Indian education system is one of the largest in the world, with 149,000 schools, 950,000 teachers and over 265 million students. It is thus unsurprising that some of the most important constitutional and policy decisions (Articles 15 (5) and 15 (6); 86th Amendment Act, 2002 and Right to Education Act, 2009; New Education Policy (NEP), 2020 respectively) have been regarding education. Despite its successes—the most recent of which is the NEP, a visionary and transformative document—the education system in India continues to be plagued by several problems. This paper seeks to address the persisting problem of inclusion in education by focusing on children with disabilities (CWDs) in the context of NEP 2020. It will evaluate the provisions regarding special education in NEP by gauging the successes and gaps of the same. The paper aims to provide a roadmap that adheres to the end-goals of NEP, on how to bring CWDs into the fold of mainstream education more effectively. The methodology will be as follows: an analysis of published research and best practices, as well as a deep dive into the existing policies on education and persons with disabilities (PwDs) to ascertain broad parameters based on which a roadmap will be constructed. These parameters will then be cross-referenced with NEP 2020 and available data (if any) to provide a suggestive frame of reference/roadmap on how to improve inclusive education outcomes through the NEP. The results of this paper may provide useful insights on the meaningful inclusion of CwDs in education to researchers and policymakers.