The Prashasht Mobile App Developed by NCERT has been aiding schools to identify children with several disabilities. For 3,562 students of Delhi Government Schools with suspected disabilities, a detailed assessment is to be conducted. The assessment will be conducted at 14 district resource centres.
Around 5,000 government school students with suspected disabilities will also be assessed at district-level camps. Even private schools have been asked to conduct an assessment of students with suspected disabilities through the parents.
Prashasht is divided into two parts. Part 1 is for use by regular teachers for first-level screening. It contains objective-type items that need to be tick marked, and the resulting data of all the students is to be handed over to the school head.
The questions include if the student has difficulty in walking or needs support to walk/climb stairs, the student has slurred (unclear) speech or drooling, the student faces difficulties while reading such as misplacing the line or skips lines in between, omitting words, adds words, moves the head along the text among others. Depending on the series of questions answered, the disabilities are identified and categorised.
Part 2 is for use by special educators/counsellors/school heads for second-level screening and tentative listing of disabilities in accordance with the 21 categories of disability conditions recognised by RPwD Act 2016. This part of the app has questions depending on the disability the student has been identified with.
Once the process of assessment is completed, schools have specific tasks to perform. “Applying UDID card for students and confirmation as children with special needs,” said the circular issued by Himanshu Gupta, director, Directorate of Education.
The next process is the preparation and implementation of a suitable intervention or remedial plan through the special education teacher concerned.
