Learning for all? Ableism, education policy, and the 'global learning crisis' in India

Abstract

Large-scale assessments reveal the ‘global learning crisis’. Yet, many children with disabilities are excluded from such assessments. The global learning crisis is critiqued for narrowing the educational landscape. Drawing on concepts of ableism and the DisHuman child, this paper sets out to examine ableism within education policy by explicating the assumptions of normativity and how boundaries between the normal and the ‘aberrant’ are preserved and maintained. Through critical discourse analysis of the post-Sustainable Development Goals education policy landscape in India, the paper examines the 2018 Samagra Shiksha Integrated Scheme for School Education Framework for Implementation, the 2020 National Education Policy, and the 2021 National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat. The paper identifies three processes that underlie the construction of disability and difference in Indian education policy: constructing urgency as a crisis of quality; assessing deviations in quality; identifying and mitigating difference to achieve quality. The DisHuman child calls on us to both trouble and disrupt ableist norms within educational policy and grapple with how policies aid access to services, rights, and entitlements that may be crucial for the everyday participation of disabled children.