Education of Deaf Learners through Open Schooling System in India

The main challenges for education of disabled learners are identifying and serving these learners in India and raising the quality of education for them. While inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream education has been challenging due to various policy constraints and gaps in implementation, the paper discusses how National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), India has designed various educational programmes to achieve the three important principles of education policy viz., access, equity and quality. Apart from it’s in-built flexibilities offered by NIOS, wherein learners are provided with due flexibilities and opportunities to learn at their own pace and place to every group of learners through use of Media and ICT support both in academic and evaluation system, NIOS has also developed mechanism of providing learning material in Indian Sign Language at secondary level(10th class) and orienting parents and learners through Indian Sign language dictionary. The paper also raises the debate of importance of advocacy and collaboration with various deaf enabled organisation to promote the education of deaf and hard-of-hearing learners in the country.