A student with confirmed visual impairment has completed the multi-tiered…

Concept: Under the inclusive-education component of Samagra Shiksha, read with the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, support for a child with a disability is organised as a sequence of stages that a school works through:

1. Identification — locating children with disabilities through household and child-tracking surveys and through school enrolment records.

2. Screening — a school-level instrument such as PRASHAST, filled in by the class teacher, which makes a preliminary observation of the child's difficulties and refers the child onward.

3. Assessment and certification — examination by a team of qualified professionals, usually at an assessment camp, leading to a disability certificate and a UDID card.

4. Provision — individualised educational support: an Individualised Education Plan prepared with the special educator, together with the aids, appliances and assistive devices that the assessed need calls for.

Reasonable accommodation and classroom support are not withheld while the earlier stages are still in progress; what certification adds is a formal record of assessed need, on which the scheme's individualised planning and its funded supply of aids and appliances are built. Once the certificate is in hand, the school's task therefore shifts from finding and assessing the child to delivering that individualised provision.

Application: In this item the impairment is confirmed, the multi-tiered assessment process is complete and certification has been received, so the identification, screening and assessment stages are closed. The step the school must now ensure is provision: develop an Individualised Education Plan and provide aids or appliances. The plan records the child's learning goals, classroom accommodations, teaching adaptations, special-educator support and evaluation modifications such as extra time, a scribe or an alternative question format; for a visual impairment the devices typically include braille books and a braille slate, magnifiers, large-print or audio material and screen-reading software.

Cross-check: Placing each of the other measures on the same sequence shows which stage it belongs to and why it is not the step now due.

• Waiting for household survey data: the household and child-tracking survey belongs to the identification stage, where children with disabilities are located and brought into school. This child has already been identified, assessed and certified, so waiting on survey data withholds provision that is already due.

• Conducting only behavioural checklists each term: a behavioural checklist is a progress-monitoring instrument for observed conduct and participation. It records how the child is doing, but supplies neither the individualised plan nor the assistive devices that access to the curriculum requires.

• Referring the student for repeat PRASHAST screening annually: PRASHAST is a pre-assessment screening instrument — it records a preliminary observation of a child's difficulties and refers the child on for examination by qualified professionals. Running it again on an already assessed and certified child repeats a stage whose result is already on record.