Recently when the announcement came to about the ratings of the hotels, people were surprised to see how a relatively less-known hotel group, Lemon Tree had shot up to one of the top positions in the hospitality industry. People were even more surprised to hear how Lemon Tree had leveraged People of Determination to provide better services while at the same time empowering them to go beyond their boundaries. The bold program of an IIM graduate, Patanjali Keswani has set an exemplary model for corporate houses. Lemon Tree’s success proves how people with determination can work alongside the able, benefitting both the business house and society. Along with profit, the inclusive culture has been seen to evoke a culture of beneficence, compassion, empathy, and sharing among the workforce as well as the clients. The business is growing in volumes and social currency too. 

Simply put, the idea of inclusion is that no one should be left behind. 

Inclusiveness as a principle has gained global acceptance, in stark contrast to the pre-millennial norm of conformity and general intolerance towards differences. Governments and businesses worldwide are gradually resonating with it. In the domain of education, regulatory bodies like the Knowledge & Human Development Authority (KHDA), UAE have made inclusive education an important mandate for rating the standard of schools. In India, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to set up an Inclusion panel for children with special needs. 

Inclusion, in the context of school, calls for redesigning the admission policy, the infrastructure, the teaching strategies, the learning experiences for students and the expected outcomes to include all the learners of varying abilities. It calls for providing opportunities to students with disabilities to learn alongside their able peers in classrooms. 

Students with learning and other disabling challenges may not show an overnight turnaround in their performance. In fact, the concept of inclusiveness does not require them to prove themselves in terms of class scores. Nevertheless, it has been observed that including them with other students in class without discrimination can create wonders not only for those students but also for the whole class. By their very presence in class, they would make the teacher more alert and innovative in her class delivery; their fellow classmates develop the qualities of compassion, caring and sharing. On the other hand, we can never truly estimate the exact loss due to the absence of such children in the class. Imagine a school tagging a kid as unfit for class, only to later realize that it missed Stephen Hawking for an alumnus!

Inclusiveness is not just about accommodating the differentially abled. It is about finding ways to empower them to be on par with the rest of the world. Teachers, schools and the larger society need to gear up for this challenging task, and this is where opportunities open up for tech-based, process-based entrepreneurs. In order to educate students of different abilities in the same classroom, schools and teachers need support in designing these various lesson plans, learning kits, lab items, analytics, a range of teaching platforms, kinesthetic kits, etc. The author has personally experienced how children with different learning challenges were all able to improve their academic performance when provided with the right learning skill development.  

A whole new industry is waking up to meet the needs arising from the goals of making education all-inclusive. Major players like Google, Apple, Microsoft have already been coming up with programmes to flip the classroom in favor of learners of all types. A multi-billion dollar industry is on the rise to supply the necessary tools to schools, augmented learning centers and parents who now are willing to withdraw their children from mass education systems unless their child’s specific needs are met with. Many app developers are stepping in to develop tech for students of determination.

The intent is already there – what is required is the initiative with an innovative spirit.