The Hindu 19.12.2013
Corporation schools to admit more differently abled children
Soon 10 corporation schools here will implement steps to admit more differently abled students.
The Avinashilingam University is among the eight institutions — four each in India, and the U.S. — to bag the Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiate Project that aims at enhancing the opportunities to include children with disabilities in general education. ‘A Sustainable Response to Intervention (RTI) Model for Successful Inclusion of Children with Disabilities — A India-U.S. Partnership’ is worth Rs. 1.5 crore. The Department of Special Education of the four universities here will collaborate with the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, the U.S., for implementing the project.
Coimbatore Mayor S.M. Velusamy launched the project here on Tuesday.
Brian Abery, head of the project, addressed the participants through video chat, and explained how project was being implemented in the U.S. schools. He expressed the hope that the schools in Coimbatore would be able to effectively adapt the system.
Sheela Ramachandran, Vice-Chancellor of the university and project director, said that the RTI was a systematic process to help teachers tailor their institution to students who needed intervention in four phases. The implementation would be done by a team with G. Victoria Naomi, Associate Professor, and Premavathy Vijayan, Head, Department of Special Education, as the coordinators. P. Santhana Krishnan, Director, Research and Consultancy, is the project consultant.
A questionnaire will be provided to representatives of corporation schools to get information about their institutions.
After which, 10 schools will be selected to imoplemetn the project.
After training, coordinators would, in turn, train the teachers of the selected schools. The schools will be monitored for three years.
