Secretary General Foundation for Education & Rehabilitation of Special Children (FRESH) Ashba Kamran has demanded separate allocation of funds for children with Special Education Needs (SEN) in the upcoming budget.
Funds allocated under the head of Special Education in the budget are for the children with Special Needs (SN) and not a single penny is ever allocated to the children with SEN, resulting into more and more drop outs from schools every year, Ashba said in a statement issued here Saturday.
The SEN children are those facing educational/academic disabilities and relate to the psychiatric problems including Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Attention Deficit Disorder (QADD) besides Autism.
Secretary FRESH said highly latest surveys have suggested that 10 to 15 percent of the mainstream school going children is facing learning difficulties in one form or the other. But not a single school in public sector is in place by the federal or the provincial governments to take care of such special children.
According to her, it is an irony that either the private sector mainstream schools expel such children or they get drop themselves due to their slow pace to apprehend the academic concepts. Resultantly, such children either stay at homes or are being left at the mercy of cruel society by the parents.
She further deplored that the private sector is also not showing sense of responsibility by opening up special schools where children with learning difficulties can be trained. She said only the Green Meadows School under the Foundation for Education & Rehabilitation of Special Children (FRESH) is imparting special education and training to such children in its Lahore, Rawalpindi and Sargodha campuses.
Secretary FRESH has urged the government to deal with the issue of children with learning difficulties independently by allocating special funds for SEN children in upcoming budget. The Foundation is available to assist the government out of its professional expertise in the larger interest of children with learning difficulties, she added.
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