The project aims to create inclusive schools where each child is treated with dignity and respect irrespective of their biographical identity. With this strategy, Diksha aims to ensure that inclusive education becomes the norm for the five schools selected for the project. The inclusive education goal involves initiating a process of significant behavioural change amongst the educators and institutional staff; co-creating a sense of community; building a shared responsibility towards nature and the environment; and a collective ownership of what goes on in classrooms, staff room and playground.
Through the project, we aim to address the challenges and barriers to inclusive quality education at the community and school level by raising awareness, building capacity and skills, and initiating an attitudinal shift in the existing school system. The project will adopt the Index for Inclusion, an Inclusive Education Toolkit developed by Prof Tony Booth, University of Cambridge and Prof Mel Ainscow, University of Manchester.
The goal of the project is to make the five participating project schools and learning centres inclusive in their practices and policies. Moreover, the idea is to build a community of educators who prioritize developing inclusive practices in their team, students and the school/centre community.
The anticipated immediate output from these activities will be that the teachers and school staff will gain a deeper perspective on different dimensions of inclusion in education and acquire knowledge of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and national policies implemented in order to make schools inclusive.
In the medium term, one can expect the educators to start practising inclusive educational practices related to issues of empathy, equity, participation, community involvement and the environment in their day-to-day classroom activities. This will lead to the creation of an inclusive culture in the long term, wherein school level guidelines and policies reflect the needs and aspirations of all kinds of learners, who are able to access equal opportunities to study and develop. Over time, the teachers and educators will become role models for the students and the school community, the students will acquire an inclusive approach towards their everyday life and become responsible members of society.
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