Project Inclusion

Sri Aurobindo Society

Project Inclusion

Strengthening inclusive education by supporting mainstream teachers with identification, sensitization, and teaching methodologies using scalable tech

Delhi, India

IND

Nonprofit

An estimated 240 million children worldwide have disabilities, with many excluded from education systems [UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children, 2023]. Teachers often lack the capacity and skills to teach children with disabilities and need training on Inclusion. 25% of teachers in 48 middle- and high-income countries reported a high need for professional development on teaching students with special needs [UNESCO GEM 2020]. Our own study of 20K+ government teachers across fourteen Indian states (2016–2020) found that fewer than 1% of in-service teachers scored 50% or less on questions related to inclusive education, [Internal Training Needs Assessment, Project Inclusion]. Also, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities commended India’s disability laws, such as RPwD but noted implementation gaps affecting persons with disabilities [Committee on Persons with Disabilities reviews India, press release, 2019] Meanwhile, India has only 120,000 special educators registered with the Rehabilitation Council of India [The Hindu, India, 2024], to serve an estimated 7.8 million children with disabilities [UNESCO 2019]. This mismatch leaves mainstream teachers unsupported in managing diverse learning needs, contributing to dropouts, misdiagnoses, and learning failure.

Project Inclusion is a mobile-first platform that enables government school teachers to identify, support, and take action for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities, and improve their learning, within their own classrooms. The platform includes a multilingual training course, aligned with national standards. It begins with a live webinar and transitions into a self-paced learning management system. The platform includes periodic assessments, which teachers must pass at benchmark scores to move forward. Special educators also use this course to build cross-disability orientation. Three-tiered grade-specific screening system: Basic, Advanced, and Profiler guides early observation, deeper assessment, and case-building. An in-app report generation tool develops structured student profiles for teachers. Teachers receive UDL-based interventions and consult experts during scheduled “office hours,” including psychologists, special educators and others. The platform is available in eight Indian languages and includes school and district-level dashboards for admin. Built for low-resource areas, it works on basic smartphones and in low-bandwidth environments. We are now developing parent-facing screening and training modules, and in parallel, bettering remediation, developing offline remediation centers, and seeking to develop AI-powered nudges and predictive tools to help teachers respond in real time and optimize support pathways.

For inclusion to be delivered at scale, PI leverages low-cost, multi-lingual, user-friendly mobile technology to transform how teachers support children with learning differences and neurotypical peers, embedding early identification, structured support, system-level tracking into daily school routines. Primary beneficiaries: - Over 9.5 million school teachers [UDISE, 2022] in India lack formal training on disability-inclusive practices. PI equips them with tools, confidence & step-by-step workflows to identify and support children with learning differences within their classrooms. Impact 250Mn students in India, including neurotypical students [UDISE+] - School principals and administrators responsible for implementing inclusion lack monitoring tools. We provide real-time dashboards for tracking teacher engagement, student referrals, and implementation trends, turning inclusion from policy into actionable school-level practice. - Children with neurodevelopmental disabilities, estimated at 12% of Indian children aged 2–9 [Arora et al., PLOS Medicine, 2018]. They are identified early, supported inside classrooms, and no longer invisible in the system. Future phases will include remediation support for the broader 7.8 million children with disabilities [UNESCO], Secondary beneficiaries: - Parents, gain awareness & confidence to advocate for children. - Special educators receive better referrals, structured case data & collaborative engagement with general teachers. - Policy makers and national councils use system-generated data to scale inclusive education effectively.