At the beginning of the new millennium, more than 88 crore adults in the world were illiterate, about 11 crore children were not going to school, discrimination against women and girls was common, and quality of learning for crores of children and adults was not satisfactory. In April 2000, representatives of 164 countries, including India, met in a conference of the World Education Forum at Dakar, Senegal, to discuss and consider these issues. This document reaffirms the goal of education for all as laid out by the World Conference on Education for All (Jomtien, Thailand, 1990) and other international conferences. It commits governments to achieving quality basic education for all by 2015 or earlier, with particular emphasis on girls’ education, and includes a pledge from donor countries and institutions that "no country seriously committed to basic education will be thwarted in the achievement of this goal by lack of resources". Major barriers to the provision of quality education for children with disabilities in all educational contexts include the lack of early identification and intervention services, negative attitudes, exclusionary policies and practices, inadequate teacher training, particularly training of all regular teachers to teach children with diverse abilities, inflexible curriculum and assessment procedures, inadequate specialist support staff to assist teachers of special and regular classes, lack of appropriate teaching equipment and devices, and failure to make modifications to the school environment to make it fully accessible. These barriers can be overcome through policy, planning, implementation of strategies and allocation of resources to include children and youth with disabilities in all national health and education development initiatives available to non-disabled children and youth.
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