Despite statutory guarantees, children with disabilities remain among the most excluded in Indian schools. Identify the bottlenecks and suggest measures.

The RPwD Act, 2016 requires government-funded and recognised institutions to provide inclusive education (Sec 16). It also requires them to identify children with special needs (CwSN) and train teachers (Sec 17) [1]. Yet children with disabilities make up a disproportionate share of out-of-school children [2]. The failure lies in delivery, not in the law.

Bottlenecks

• Identification stops at the school gate: Sec 17 mandates surveying only school-going children [1]. Teachers use PRASHAST inside schools [3], so it misses children who never enrolled or who dropped out. In 14 countries, children with disabilities formed 15% of the out-of-school population [2].
• Validation bottleneck: under PRASHAST's two-part checklist, special educators must validate the children teachers flag [3]. Only 32,196 special educators were funded under Samagra Shiksha in 2023-24 [4]. In Rajneesh Kumar Pandey v. Union of India (2021), petitioners estimated that Uttar Pradesh alone needed 73,888 [5].
• Fragile cadre: education is on the Concurrent List. States recruit while the Centre funds through yearly Samagra Shiksha approvals [4], which leaves posts contractual and unstable.
• Shallow training: a 30-minute module has sensitised more than 72 lakh teachers [3]. Sec 17, however, requires training in sign language and Braille and resource centres [1].
• Data gaps: reports count how many children were screened, not how many went on to validation, certification and support. Nearly half of low- and middle-income countries lack adequate data on disability in education [2].

Measures

• Permanent posts: notify norms for special teachers and fill posts on a regular basis, as the Supreme Court directed [5].
• Search for out-of-school children: extend Samagra Shiksha's block-level identification camps [6] to homes and communities.
• Tiered training: treat the module as an entry point and follow it with certified courses in Braille, sign language and lesson adaptation, supported by block resource centres [1].
• Pipeline dashboard: publish State-wise PRASHAST figures from flagging through validation to certification [3], to find where children get stuck.
• Safeguards: consent and data-privacy protocols so that screening does not become labelling.

Strong laws, digital tools and whole-school sensitisation [3] are in place, but there are too few staff and too little data to turn them into results. A permanent special-educator cadre, outreach beyond schools and accountability for outcomes can achieve this. That would fulfil the promise of Article 21A and SDG 4.5 of equitable education for every child.