Why inclusion is failing in classrooms

In India today, an estimated one in 68 children under the age of 10 is diagnosed with autism. Most of these children are enrolled in public or affordable private schools. However, most do not continue in these systems in any meaningful way. Many are moved to special schools, soon become homeschooled, or remain in classrooms without adequate educational support.

Inclusion is present in form, but not in function, in Indian classrooms. Across schools and colleges, the idea of inclusion is often interpreted as physical placement. If a student is enrolled and attends school, the expectation of the amendment of inclusion is considered met. Less attention is paid to whether the student can participate, learn, and make daily progress.

Students on the autism spectrum frequently encounter classrooms that are not equipped to respond to their needs. A child who struggles with communication, transitions, or sensory regulation is often managed through informal adjustments based on the behaviour. These may include simplified or no assignments, limited participation, or temporary removal from the classroom during moments of unadaptability or difficulty. 

A common example is when a student experiences distress during a lesson. The immediate response is often removal from the classroom. While this may address the immediate situation, it does not build the student’s ability to remain and regulate within a learning environment.

Similarly, when a student is unable to complete grade-level work due to a lack of sustained attention to the task, the task is often simplified without a structured plan to build skills progressively, or the student is excused from it entirely.

Over time, such measures tend to become permanent arrangements. 

This affects expectations and changes the narrative and landscape of disabilities. Academic goals are often overlooked early on, given the system’s limited capacity to provide structured testing, interventions, and support. Behavioural challenges are managed in the moment rather than addressed through proactive, consistently trained strategies by healthcare workers or trained staff. As a result, students are present in classrooms but are not always engaged in sustained learning.

The issue is not limited to individual classrooms, but across the nation. At one level, there are institutional discussions, awareness efforts, and general commitments to inclusion. At another, the responsibility for day-to-day support is often placed on individuals with minimal training, such as an anganwadi worker, a shadow teacher without structured guidance, or a parent attempting to assist within the school setting.

These efforts are important toward inclusion but insufficient. Without clear frameworks, bottom-up training, and defined outcomes from that training, support tends to focus on immediate management rather than on the long-term development of the pathways. The result is a narrowing of what is considered achievable for the student with disability, in our case, autism.

This pattern is made complex by broader structural realities. More than 80 per cent of the world’s population with disabilities lives in developing countries. In such contexts, poverty, limited healthcare, weaker social systems, and restricted access to education and employment increase both the risk of disability and the difficulty of overcoming it. India is home to approximately 27 to 28 million persons with disabilities; these factors shape how inclusion is experienced within schools.

How to be inclusive?

Inclusion requires trained individuals to support students with autism and other disabilities as they move toward independence. It takes a while to remove the training wheels for autism. Without this, systems tend to rely on reduced expectations.

Efforts to address these gaps remain limited in scale. We need institutions that can place and train those interested in counselling and psychology, embedding them within classrooms to work directly on inclusion and education for autism.

The focus should be on enabling participation through structured support. It should include breaking down learning tasks, developing communication systems, addressing behavioural challenges through consistent strategies, and tracking progress over time with an individualised educational plan and a grade-level checklist. Students should be moved toward greater independence within mainstream educational settings.

This model is labour-intensive and increases the cost per child, but also reflects the level of investment required for effective inclusion. Without that, inclusion remains limited to basic accommodation.

There is also a question of capacity. India has a large youth population with the interest and potential to contribute to this space, but not enough structured pathways to bring this potential to classrooms. Building such pathways is essential if inclusion is to move beyond isolated efforts.

At present, there is a visible gap between institutional intent, expert understanding and classroom practice. Large-scale discussions and awareness efforts exist alongside minimal, uneven support at the grassroots level. This gap shapes what students experience on a daily basis.
(The author is an entrepreneur in inclusive education sector)