GR focuses on differently abled students

With a view to provide additional facilities for students with special needs, the Maharashtra government has come out with a resolution wherein such students will be allowed to appear for exams at centres close to their house, and more time, more grace marks, among others has been announced. These facilities will be implemented from this year itself.

Announcing the facilities, education minister Vinod Tawde tweeted, “New GR is released focusing on the difficulties faced (by) special children in exams. This certainly will help Maha’s differently able children!” He added that the facilities would be applicable for students from class 1 to 12.

The list, which has categorised facilities according to the disability of the student, is aimed at providing the students an opportunity to do well in the exams and not lag behind normal students. The categories include blind or low vision, spastic, dyslexic, autistic, hearing impairment, locomotor disability, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and mental illness.

Some of the common facilities include providing exam centres close to the homes of the students, getting 20 minutes extra per hour to attempt the paper, granting of 20 grace marks in case of failure in one or multiple subjects, allowing the use of a writer with the prior permission from the regional board office. The resolution has also attempted to provide technical aids like speaking calculators, computer software (with prior permission from regional board office), voice recording of answers and allowing them the use of computers to type the answers too.

For the science and maths papers I and II, differently abled students will be exempted from written exams and will be allowed to appear for the papers through oral exam. In case of a student not being able to complete a paper due to fatigue, it the onus would be on the exam centre to help him or her complete the paper by providing a writer.

The onus of providing the special facilities have been put on the exam centres and they will not be permitted to turn away any such student on the pretext of not having the facility. The resolution states that the student and their parents will have to inform the exam centre about their disability in advance so that they can get the requisite permissions wherever required from the regional board office as well as arrange for the facilities like typewriter, computer, voice recorder or writer in advance.

The resolution has also said that parents of differently-abled students from class 1 to 9, who would appear for school exams, should meet up with the school authorities and discuss the problem of their child so that the school can arrange for special facilities from class 1 itself.

According to sources close to Mr Tawde, the minister has invited further additions that may have been missed out in the resolution so that they can be integrated in the special facilities too.