Schools come up short for special needs pupils
Thousands of children with special educational needs enrolled at Indian curriculum schools are getting inadequate support, a new report by Dubai’s education authority has found. There are significant shortcomings in terms of extending support to students with special educational needs at one in ten Indian curriculum schools, the 2012- 13 inspections report for Indian and Pakistani schools released by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority ( KHDA) yesterday said.
Out of the 60,000 students attending Indian curriculum schools in Dubai, about 3,113 students were identified by the schools to have special educational needs, which is around 5 per cent of the total enrolment.
“We came across many children with special needs burdened with studying the same material as all other children. This hinders their progress and puts them under lot of stress,” Jameela Al Muhairi, chief of the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau at KHDA, said. “In too many schools, their identification is too slow and inaccurate. Learning difficulties are not accurately identified by staff, and students are not supported effectively in class by mainstream teachers.”
Of the 3,113 students identified, 824 were found to have learning difficulties and 758 had medical conditions or physical disabilities.