Coming to the aid of children with special needs who opt to study in non-government schools,the Delhi High Court on Wednesday made it clear that private schools in the city must also have special educators to look after the needs of differently-abled children. Private schools must have the provisions to appoint special educators in all the schools where such children are studying. They must appoint such teachers in order to provide proper education to the differently-abled children,irrespective of the dispute of who would bear the financial burden of paying for such teachers, said a Bench of Acting Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw. On the contentious issue of whether the Delhi government was required to reimburse the private schools for salaries of special educators so appointed,the Bench asked Najmi Waziri,standing counsel for the government,to obtain instructions from the authority concerned. Earlier,Waziri had informed the court that reimbursing the entire sum to the private schools may not be feasible,since the government was already reimbursing these schools for the education of the children admitted under the Economically Weaker Section category,in accordance with the Right to Education Act. Justice Endlaw also suggested to the counsel for the Action Committee Unaided Recognised Private Schools,an association of private schools,to make things workable by also appointing such teachers during their recruitment drive. Meanwhile,Ashok Agarwal,counsel for the petitioner NGO Social Jurist,said that the court must ensure that the issue of making the payments to the special educators does not stall the process of their recruitment. The petitioner had alleged that more than 2,000 private as well as government schools lacked basic physical as well as academic infrastructure,including special educators,as required for the education of the children,particularly those suffering from blindness,hearing impairment and mental retardation. The failure on the part of the unaided and aided schools to have these facilities in place violates the fundamental and human right to education of the children with disabilities as guaranteed to them in the Constitution,RTE Act,2009 and UN Convention on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities (2008), Agarwal had submitted before the court. Subsequently,the government informed the court that 926 posts for special educators in its schools have already been created and that guidelines for their recruitment have also been issued.
