‘High Ability’ Students Should Be Included In The Proposed National Education Policy Asserts Experts

• Kaveri starts a Parent Support Group for ‘High Ability’ children
• Parents / Experts meet held at Kannada Sangha’s Dr.Kalmadi Shamarao High School

PUNE: In order to create awareness, train teachers and develop support groups among parents and the social community at large over ‘children with higher ability, Kalmadi High School of Kannada Sangha, Pune launched a ‘Parents Support Group’ through its  Kaveri Gifted Education and Research Center (KGERC) at the school. This initiative will be for parents of gifted and talented children between the ages of 5 to 20 years.

The support group will be operated for and by the parents with the objectives like sharing parenting practices, sharing resources to support talent development, celebrating the child’s achievement and success as a parent, offering comfort, and encouragement to each other, and helping accept the ‘giftedness’.

Malati Kalmadi, Founder Director, KGERC, Dr. Devasena Desai, Associate  Director, KGERC and Dr. Sameena Manasawala, head of Nurturing Domain, KGERC were present during the launch and discussion along with the parents of the ‘gifted children.

Speaking on the topic Malati Kalmadi said, “The proposed national education policy talks about ‘inclusion’ but we only understand that there is a group of children with special needs, whose needs are not fully taken care of as we don’t have trained people with knowledge and experience to deal with them. We want to identify this problem, train teachers, and develop support groups of parents as they are the first people to identify the giftedness in their children. These groups will be of parents, by the parents, and for the parents, which will have experts and mentors who will guide and connect with each other through networking. We are looking forward to working with different education boards like ISCE, CBSE, and SSC to carry out research programs.”

Dr. Devasena Desai said, “The majority of the education system is focusing on average and above average grades and we celebrate only when the child performs well but we never recognize the struggles they go through to portray their talent and potential. Being psychologists we want to focus on socio-emotional stability and make the children understand that we are there for them. The parent support group is important as we have to create a society and for creating a society you need parents who are the real advocates. We all have to work together on this.”

Mrs. Nivedita Kulkarni, the parent leader of this initiative said, “There needs to be awareness among parents as they don’t want to showcase their children as ‘Gifted’. The parents have to train themselves and accept that their children need monitoring. We have to create a platform on social media and train ourselves while supporting each other.”