Encouraging Inclusion through Physical Education and Sports

Inclusion through physical education and sport depends on three groups working together — the family, the school and specialist organisations.

1. Role of Family. The family's role in encouraging a healthy, sports-oriented life for a child with a disability is crucial. Families sometimes find it hard to accept the reality and may give up on the child; instead they need to promote awareness and treat a CWSN as an equal. A CWSN often benefits from a structured daily routine in which recreational games and sport play an important part in building a healthy mind and body. Parents should notice the child's particular abilities and seek professional help so that the child can excel.

2. Role of School. The school provides a structured programme in which co-scholastic activities and sport are part of the regular routine. Every school should have trained adapted-physical-education (APE) teachers who give a specially-abled child access to games with adapted equipment and movements. A teacher or coach can help the child move towards competitive sport under bodies such as the Special Olympics or the Paralympics. Schools should provide accessible infrastructure (for example a ramp alongside stairs), run sensitisation programmes so that CWSN are recognised for their efforts, and organise intramural and extramural competitions.

3. Role of Organisations. Some organisations work at the grass-roots level to promote adapted sport. They are responsible for training teachers and coaches and for organising sports events at the Zonal, District, State, National and International levels.

How the three roles connect. None of these roles works well alone. A family that nurtures a CWSN's confidence at home still needs a school with trained APE teachers and accessible infrastructure to turn that confidence into real participation; a school, in turn, depends on specialist organisations to train its teachers and to give a motivated student somewhere to progress beyond its own sports day — a structured route that can eventually lead to Zonal, District, State, National or even International competition under bodies such as Special Olympics or the Paralympics (section 4.1). …