Impact Story: Ritham Special School - Empowering Children with Special Needs to Lead a Dignified Life

In 2004, Ritham Special School started its operations with only four children. Currently, it has an enrollment of more than 85 students. The founder, Mr. P. S. Kathiresan, is a retired headmaster from Tamil Nadu who was awarded 'Best Teacher' by both the Central Government and Tamil Nadu state government. He, along with his son, Mr. K. Venkataramanan, conceptualized and started ‘Ritham Special School'.

The trust provides special education, physiotherapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy to intellectually challenged children as well as children with multiple disabilities like autism, Down's syndrome, and cerebral palsy. This is a daycare center, wherein a van picks up the students and drops them back at their doorsteps.

Begun as a special school only, it is now growing with an early intervention center, vocational training center, sheltered workshop, learning center, outpatient department, and autism treatment center.

They are also working towards making effective special education available to the rural, poor, and underprivileged special students, similar to the ones available to the children residing in the urban area for the past 20 years continuously.

The main object of the Trust is to develop confidence in the minds of all types of physically and mentally challenged children and motivate them to face daily activities without any help. The Trust works for all students irrespective of caste, creed, colour, language, sex, and religion.

Children attending the school are mostly from economically backward families. Many do not get adequate attention to their problems from their families due to the ignorance of their parents. They are usually mildly to severely affected children. The children show remarkable improvement in all aspects after they start attending school.

The education and training of these children differ significantly from that of normal children. Their syllabus has to include self-dependence, etiquette, conversation, everyday activities, etc. While chalking out their syllabus, their level of I.Q. and behavioural problems have to be considered. Their home environment is also required to be weighed while chalking out the syllabus. Since there is no safe method to teach these children, each child is in a class by themselves, requiring special attention.

They work closely with the community and educate parents about child rights issues, government schemes for special children, etc. Ritham focuses on gender issues and educates female children and their parents about maturity and menstrual hygiene and how to safeguard them from sexual abuse.

The goal is to prevent children from being a burden to their families and to educate them to be able to support themselves.

Case study:

One student, Sri S. HariPrasath, initially did his schooling in English medium. Since his teacher found him having difficulty in learning, he was recommended special education at our special school in 2006. The specialist teacher fully evaluated him and found out that he had a moderate learning disability. Accordingly, they framed the syllabus based on his reading and numerical skills. Every three months, the student was evaluated, and the syllabus was reframed accordingly. Since he was taught in such a way that he easily understood, there was speedy progress in his learning ability. The teacher noticed significant progress in his learning in all three evaluations and kept on framing the syllabus accordingly. Due to this strenuous effort, there was significant progress in his writing, reading, and recitation skills. The student subsequently passed the standard 8th public examination with good marks. In parent-teacher meetings, the student expressed his willingness to appear for the 10th standard public examination. Hence, it was decided in the teachers' meeting to train him to appear for the 10th standard exam based on the syllabus.