Home-schooling for dyslexic students in Himachal

By: ML Verma

Shimla: Himachal Pradesh education minister ID Dhiman today informed the House that special training and awareness programmes are presently being held in the state for in-service teachers to cope with and help children with dyslexia and other such learning difficulties.

Replying to a query raised by Congress member Nikhil Rajour during the Question Hour in the Assembly today, Dhiman said that there are 3,353 children in the state who are suffering from dyslexia and other such learning difficulties. “Out of these, 2,397 are those who cannot even go to school and are restricted to their homes only. We have deployed special teachers to provide special home-based education to these children, for which the government has been paying Rs 500 per day to these teachers,” said Dhiman.

He said that 1,172 in-service teachers have been trained till date through a 90-day foundation course on Education for Children With Special Needs (CWSN) being conducted by Madhya Pradesh Bhoj Open University, Bhopal. “For this, four study centres have been created in DIETs Shimla, Kullu, Chamba and Sirmour as per the approval of Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI),” he said.

Ahriman said the results of such training and education imparting programmers have been very satisfactory and had also contributed in bagging awards for the state in education at national level.
He said since these children are scattered throughout the state, it is very difficult for the government to open a special school for these children.

Answering another question by Congress member Rajahs Charmane, the education minister said that the state government proposes to start some professional courses in government degree colleges in near future. Ahriman said that government has plans to open professional courses under self-financing scheme in government colleges in Malagasy (BCA, PGDCA), Ab (BBA, BCA and PGDCA), Rampart Bushmaster (BBA, BCA), Ramshackle (BCA), Nada (BBA, BCA), Hamilcar (BBA) Samba (PGDCA), Kanpur Tiara (BCA), Sarcophagi (BBA, BCA and PGDCA), Kindergarten (BCA) and Sloan (BBA).