Inclusive education shines as a cornerstone of equity and opportunity, embodying a universal aspiration championed by the United Nations (UN). Recognizing its transformative importance, our study investigates factors influencing Children with Special Needs (CWSN) enrollment at the higher secondary level in India, focusing on school infrastructure availability, school expansion, specially trained teachers, pupil-teacher ratio (PTR), government scholarships, and NGO interventions. Using UDISE+ and INDISTAT data from 2015 to 2022, we applied advanced econometric techniques, including PCA for composite variable creation and a two-stage system GMM for empirical analysis. Our findings reveal that school infrastructure, specially trained teachers for CWSN, government direct cash benefits, and NGO rehabilitation programs significantly enhance CWSN enrollment at this level across India. However, a higher PTR adversely impacts enrolment. Interestingly, school expansion showed an insignificant effect, highlighting that mere availability of higher secondary schools does not promote CWSN enrollment. Further, we observe that availability of school infrastructure, followed by trained teachers are a major determinant of CWSN enrollment at higher secondary level across India. We also found that civil society has a higher influence on CWSN enrollment than direct cash benefits provided by the government. The study concludes with policy suggestions to foster educational inclusion.
Tiwari et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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