india

Updated: Jul 04, 2019 00:03 IST

Nearly three-fourths of five-year-old children and one-fourths of kids aged between 5 and 19 with disabilities in India are out of school, according to a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report.

The UNESCO had commissioned and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences prepared the report titled State of the Education Report for India 2019: Children with Disabilities. The report, which was released in Delhi on Wednesday, called for policy interventions to improve the situation.The report said an analysis of the current situation indicated that an estimated 7.8 million children aged under 19 lived with disabilities in India. “National estimates of the proportion of the population with disabilities is much lower than international estimates leading to questions about the disability measures used In the census.”

The report said the number of children enrolled in school drops significantly with each successive level of schooling and that there are fewer girls with disabilities in schools than boys. “The proportion of children with disabilities, who are out of school, is much higher than the overall proportion of out of school children at the national level. Thus, although the schemes and programmes have brought children with disabilities into schools, gaps remain.” The report said the vision of an inclusive and non-discriminatory education system for children with disabilities has to explicitly state the need for focusing on the education of girls with disabilities.