Karnataka government teachers will soon be trained to handle special children

General teachers in all state government schools will have to handle special children along with normal children from now on.

The Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has directed the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to set up a study centre to train general teachers for handling special children in schools.

Few months ago, a team from the ministry had visited the state and discussed about this with officials of SSA.

According to the officials, the ministry had directed them to set up study centres at block levels to train the teachers. “We are planning to set up study centres in 202 blocks. We are implementing this project under the inclusive education scheme,” said an official.

The officials also said that general teachers are facing difficulty in handling special children at schools. “There is a need for trained teachers to handle special children. But we are not getting that number of teachers. So, as per the direction from ministry, we are training them from this academic year,” the official said.

The training will be called as ‘Multi-Category Teachers Training’ and for that purpose, the SSA is upgrading district and taluk level headquarters as resource rooms. “We will select a minimum of two teachers from each block and train them for 90 days. Our target is to train at least 1 lakh teachers this year,” official said.

Even the education department received many complaints from teachers about the difficulty in handling special children at schools. “We have received complaints from teachers, but we cannot stop such children from coming to schools. This training will definitely help the teachers,” said an official from the department of public instructions.