Special education is designed for students with special needs, and addresses the individual differences and needs. It also denotes an education system provided to students who have mild to severe mental or physical disabilities. Common special needs include learning disabilities, communication disabilities, emotional and behavioral disorders, physical disabilities, and developmental disabilities. Students with these disabilities are likely to benefit from additional educational services, different approaches to teaching, and use of technology.

It is customized to address each individual student’s unique needs, and individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials, accessible settings, and other interventions desig-ned to help learners with special needs achieve a higher level of personal self-sufficiency and success in school and community than would be available if the student were only given access to a typical classroom education.

If you look at typical schools, they usually do not have any infrastructure to address these handicaps, and

neither can they afford to adapt

infrastructure to make it friendlier to these handicapped students. And, furthermore, enhancing the facility or making the facility disabled-friendly is just one brick in the wall, it has to be supported by the myriad of adaptations and enhancements in the whole education system.

It is a fundamental human right of any child to have access to education irrespective of his or her physical or mental condition. Education system, currently in practice, is a plural, all inclusive education system where the needs of the group of students precede the individual need of a particular student. However, some students do require individualized education as he or she is somehow incapable to cope with this group education system due to his or her physical or mental disabilities. The special education system designs and adapts education methodologies to suit each individual student to include them into the mainstream education system which otherwise would be unavailable due to their handicap.

Dr Basnet is a physiotherapist involved in special education and rehabilitation for disabled children.

hr.serc@gmail.com