Special Education In India

An Individualized Education Program (IEP) is a written statement of the educational program designed to meet a child’s individual needs. Every child who receives special education services must have an IEP.

The IEP has two general purposes:

• to set reasonable learning goals for your child; and
• to state the services that the school district will provide for your child

It includes:

• Documentation of student’s present / current level of performance.
• Indication of specific services and type of programme to be provided including the time lines for delivering of services.
• Annual goal.
• Short term objective.
• Procedures and schedules for evaluating goals and objectives.
• Format of an IEP include two parts

Demographic Data- Comprise of child’s name, age, sex, education, mother tongue, address, parents name, education, occupation and income.

Associated Condition- Some children may have additional / associated conditions with the specific Impairment. For Ex. A child with Mental Retardation may have Visual Impairment or hearing loss or a child with Learning Disorder may have Vision of hearing problems, mental retardation or cultural factors.

General Background Information- This section covers the child’s family background, birth and developmental history, school history and occupational history. This information is written very briefly focusing on educationally relevant details only.

Documentation of present level of performance (Assessment)- An important component of IEP planning focuses on the child’s current level of performance.

Setting Goals- Once the assessment is through there is a setting up of Annual Goals (Content which we expect a child will be able to achieve over a period of one academic year) and Short Term Objectives (derived from the goal which a teacher expects her students to achieve from over a period of short duration).

Goal- Content, which is expected of students to achieve over a period of time.

Task Analysis- Specific statement of what task/ activity to be taught.

Current Level- Performance of the student with reference to the task/ activity is noted under the current level.

Specific Objectives- It comprise of statement, which specifies what the student learns (Content), what the student does with the content (behaviour), how well the student does it (criteria), under what circumstances the student does it (condition) and after what period of teaching the student will achieve the a task (duration).

Materials/ Learning Aids- learning Aids make the teaching learning process more effective and meaningful. It should be such which suits the learning needs of an individual student mode of learning.

Procedure- It describes how the task/ activity will be taught. It includes the strategies to be employed and reinforcers to be used to make learning effective.

Evaluation- Here the student’s achievement is rated in a particular task against a set criteria after teaching.