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The 2017 general comment (GC21) to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) on children in street situations, provides a framework of legal guidance for governments developing policies aimed at protecting street-connected children and sets up the rationale for more awareness raising and public education to counter negative and deficit attitudes towards street-connectedness. Within this framework, the media has a role to play in either challenging conceptualisations of street-connected children as out-of-place within the public and predominantly adult domain described by urban streets, or in reinforcing ideological constructions of citizenship and normalised notions of childhood that result in negative stereotypes of these children. GC21 recommends that interventions targeted at street-connected children should be ethically responsible -- adopting child rights approaches aimed at using accurate data/evidence that upholds the dignity of children, their personal integrity, and their right to life. As such, these approaches should also extend to how organisations engage with and utilise the media to represent street-connected children. Focusing on media representations of street-connected children during the six pandemic-affected months of February to July 2020, this paper provides a review of the content of the sources to provide an insight into the structural barriers that face street-connected children because of how they are positioned in society, during the pandemic and in general, and the extent to which the media reinforces or counters the rescue or removal narratives that can lead to inappropriate intervention responses.

The work of school counsellors has become complex with the increasing technological advances and adolescents' dependency on them. There is a surprising lack of study in the Indian context, aimed at school counsellor's challenges in dealing with adolescents' digital use. This paper provides better understanding of the challenges of school counsellors involving adolescents' digital use in Indian schools. Three significant themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) negative aspects of digital use among Indian adolescents, (b) the need to effectively teach how to navigate the digital world and (c) the challenge of integrating technology with traditional counselling approaches to educate adolescents about their digital use. Furthermore, this paper presents implications for school counselling practice and research within Indian context.

Academically gifted students or high potential learners don't feel challenged in regular classrooms. Teachers in schools are also not quipped with pedagogical interventions to meet the advanced learning needs of gifted students. Mentoring is considered an effective method to guide, motivate and optimize learning abilities of gifted students. The present paper discusses the process of developing a mentoring program for 32 gifted students in Science and Math who were selected through a two-tier identification process. Students were selected from three different locations in India and were invited to attend residential mentoring program in University of Delhi, Delhi. Students were administered Wechsler Intelligence Test (WISC) IV, Test of Intelligence and were closely observed during the mentoring session. Statistic analysis of WISC IV composite score and composite observation score indicated high positive correlation between the two scores and 93.75% students scored in top three categories of intelligence as specified in WISC IV score interpretation norm. Detailed qualitative analysis also helped to develop both learning profiles and a specific mentoring program for individual students.

This paper studies mathematics learning gaps within Indian children at two points in time. Dividing them into two groups, better performing and the rest, we investigate the causes of the difference in the average learning gap between them at those two points. We explore this question using the threefold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition at these survey points (collected over a gap of four years). We find that when the children were younger the private schooling effect was the core contributor towards this learning gap. When these children got older, the effect vanished and the gap in average years of schooling, which has magnified during this time between these groups of children, contributes most to this learning gap.

Despite many interventional programmes to improve the well-being of children in different domains, survival, nutrition, health, education, protection and participation of a large number of children in India continue to stay deprived of the opportunities to gain full potential. Who has a major role in the growth and development of a child? Is it a nation or a family? The Ancient Indian and Western Literature had explicitly portrayed a significant role of parents in the appropriate development of a child. Though it is precise to state that the peer group, the school, and the society have equal contributions in making the child's entire personality, the family is considered to be the most influencing one (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). Several aspects of parenting, such as influencing factors, dimensions, styles, approaches, practices, impacts, etc., have been explored and presented in various researches all over the world. No wonder, that parenting is an innate skill, but some parents need information, assistance and guidance to nurture, value and care for the optimum development of their young ones. This paper presents a closer look at parenting and parenting styles by developing a conceptual framework. It discusses policy level work on parenting and present the challenges of parenting in the Indian context. The needs of 21st century children and associated problems with respect to parenting are highlighted in the paper. In conclusion, it is emphasised that the need for balanced interaction and involvement of parents with the kids, guided by various awareness and training sessions delivered at different levels and stages by other organizations is essential. Parenting is directly related to the emotional, physical, intellectual, social and spiritual well-being of the child; therefore, it must be viewed seriously by all the stakeholders. This paper will prompt positive practice among parents and initiate policy level debates on the role of different agencies to promote healthy parenting.

Northeast India is located away from mainland India and has a poor connectivity with the mainland India. Many inhabitants of the region have sociocultural beliefs and practices that are different from the mainstream Hindu and Islamic culture. It has the highest under-five child mortality rate in India and diarrhea is the third leading cause of death among under-five children, previous studies reported low treatment-seeking for diarrhea in the region. The region is also very common in the practice of traditional health remedies. Practicing of traditional remedies is common in the remote and inaccessibility region. The purpose of this paper is to understand the predictors of women's practices in managing childhood diarrhea and the quality of diarrhea management practices by the source of care. The study is based on the unit level data from District Level Household Survey (DLHS-4) and 789 women age 15-49 years were analyze by applying logistic regression analysis to identify the potential predictors of diarrhea management. Continue normal breastfeeding during diarrhea decreases with increasing age of the mother. Seeking care from the government or private health care facilities increases the likelihood of the mother administering of Oral Rehydration Salt (ORS) or Zinc to a sick child. Appropriate diarrhea management practices were found to be associated with seeking care from government or private health facilities as compared to non-treatment seekers; inappropriate practices were observed among mothers who were agricultural workers. In order to improve the quality of diarrhea management practices among the non-treatment seekers, efforts should be made through the Intensified Diarrhea Control Fortnight (IDCF) program to create more awareness among mothers regarding prevention and effective and low-cost diarrhea treatments.

Typically developing children who grow up with siblings with disabilities often have numerous negative experiences owing to many factors such as parental differences in behaviour, lack of time & attention received and many others. This paper aims to analyse themes emerging from interviews with typically developing siblings, their parents and experts from the field of child development and child mental health regarding these experiences.

In this paper we frame children as geological agents, very much part of epoch and biospherical processes, enfolded in Earth system changes. We draw on the experiences of Indian childhoods in a context where the land, water, animals, children's bodies and forests are being shaped by a politics of corporate city building. We analyse how children and young people contribute to Earth system changes and consider the everyday, multispecies consequences of living with anthropogenic urbanism. The paper shows how children's bodies are entangled with human and non-human forces; they are geological agents which challenge, negotiate and have cyclical and rhythmic relationships with land and resources. We argue that time, scale and multispecies vulnerabilities are important reference points in our thinking through anthropogenic processes and thus contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the place of children and young people in the new epoch.

India's "Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009" compels private schools to reserve a proportion of their seats for free for disadvantaged children. Although controversial, it is idealized as an equity measure for inclusion in and through education. This small-scale study, feeding into a larger research project, details children's accounts of their everyday lived experiences at private schools in Delhi. Children reported labelling students by teachers as 'naughty' or academically 'weak' or 'incapable' as a pervasive practice. These 'designated identities' (Sfard & Prusak, 2005) were reinforced by teachers and through peer interactions. They were internalized by participants about their peers and affected how they interacted with them. Peers who were labelled were reported to be stigmatized. Surprisingly, neither caste nor gender were mentioned as explicitly marking participant experiences. The paper also discusses the participatory methods employed in the study as a further contribution to the literature on private schooling. Data are from participatory 'draw-and-talk' sessions conducted with 16 children in 2015-16 from marginalized backgrounds, accessing six different private schools in one catchment area, half of whom secured a free private school seat. Participants were from amongst the first cohorts eligible for the free seats provision.

This paper examines the effect of the Internet on the reading comprehension of children reading together in groups. First, we describe an experiment to determine if children reading together off the Internet from big screens, can read at a higher comprehension level than children reading the same text alone. The results from this small-sample study are then compared to the results from a larger study across many locations in India. We find that children with low reading comprehension levels to start with can read and understand text at a level higher than expected from them, if they are reading together and have the Internet available. Moreover, in the process of doing this kind of 'self-organised' reading, their individual reading comprehension increases. This way of reading may provide a simple and reliable method to improve the reading comprehension of children in their own, or foreign, languages.

The article discusses the airway pressure for infants with meconium aspiration syndrome which includes mechanical ventilation and medical care .

With the recent advances in learning technologies, researchers are exploring the benefits of touch-based applications to reinforce handwriting skills in children with writing difficulties. One of the reasons for writing difficulties is the lack of fine motor skills. Hence, an Android application was developed for children with writing difficulties to enhance their hand dexterity. It has six activities for improving hand-eye coordination, spatial organisation, and pencil/pen grip in children. The design of all these activities is based on the oscillation theory of handwriting. This paper explains the usability evaluation of this Android app and how improvements have been made in the application based on the user feedback. Ten participants have evaluated the initial prototypes in five iterations and the final product was built by considering their feedback. The study shows that the user evaluation approach is effective in identifying the usability issues and in improving the user interfaces and also the functionalities of the software application. From our experience, we suggest that including user researchers and ET researchers along with children in the usability evaluation process is beneficial, especially when the educational software users are children below 15 years of age.

The day-to-day environment surrounding the child influences its physical, social, and emotional wellbeing. The study was conducted to understand how the perception of children and their parents about the outdoor play spaces influences their outdoor participation. Face-to-face interviews with parents, a walk-along interview with children and audit of public open space were conducted in different neighbourhoods in the city of Pune (India) which differed in social and spatial characteristics. This paper suggests a conceptual framework that defines the setting of participation and factors influencing the motivation of participation in the outdoor environment. The quantitative study of parents' interviews and qualitative analysis of children's sketches highlight different aspects like play and mobility range, open space visitation, activities of children, spatial qualities of the open space and perception of children and their parents. The findings brought forth difference in parents and children's perception of risk in open spaces.

Although education is a right, it still remains a distant dream for many of India's children (Where knowledge is poor). It is clear that it is not enough to make laws; they need to be augmented by more efforts. Education should be accessible to all if democracy is to succeed. Many communities and groups like disadvantaged castes and women have been historically excluded from education. Devolution of powers is extremely important to make education accessible to children. The article rightly draws attention to the effects of poverty on children's education. As a teacher, one is continuously made aware of the educational disadvantages and disruptions poor students suffer due to lack of economic stability and social security. Unless we have a strong and universally available state welfare apparatus, the education of the working class children will continue to be sacrificed. In all this, cultural values and pressures also take a particularly severe toll. The wilful complicity of the ruling castes and classes is amply evident as their domination is derived from maintaining economic and cultural status quo. So the implications of all these studies for formulation of effective anti-poverty policies and proper education system in India are also emphasised in this paper.

This paper reports the opportunities and challenges faced by first generation learners, all of whom were designated as being from scheduled tribes and scheduled castes, accessing education in a rural community in the state of Maharashtra, India. The design of the research and the methods used for this child-centred study aimed to generate data to enable reflection on the real-life complexities experienced by children in this situation. Ten case studies based around individual children who shared common experiences were developed. These children had attended the local Zilla Parishad School (Government funded school) in the past and were enrolled at a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) funded school at the time of the investigation. The ten case studies focused on those antecedents, contextual factors, perceptions and attitudes towards education that had shaped the experiences of the children. Their personal circumstances, opportunities and challenges emanating from their social, economic, cultural and political environments are discussed.

Pandemic due to the deadly virus COVID-19 has put the entire world in complete lock-down, that too, for months together. India has locked-down the entire country for more than two months. Schools, Colleges and Universities were to be closed immediately putting everything in halt. Classes were abruptly suspended and examinations were to be postponed indefinitely. Education at all levels got affected hugely. Higher education institutes (HEIs) of India that are embedded with technology blend teaching-learning system, used electronic mode for teaching and learning, i.e., e-learning, immediately after the announcement of first phase of lock-down. Following the trend, some of the primary Schools of the country also adopted the virtual platform for teaching-learning. On this backdrop, it is necessary to unfold whether the stakeholders of primary education are ready for virtual platform of teaching-learning. Thus, the objective of this paper is to establish on the basis of personal interviews among 50 parents of primary School students and 30 primary School teachers.

Elementary education is the most important stage in the learning process. Elementary education constitutes the base for supporting the whole edifice of education. It is absolutely essential that a strong foundation for education is given at this stage. Due to a number of problems and disturbed conditions prevailing in the Jammu and Kashmir State, the progress of elementary education is not satisfactory which requires priority for attention. Some of these problems are low enrolment and participation of girls, education of disadvantaged groups and lack of physical infrastructure. The people in faraway places like Ladakh still engage their daughters in domestic affairs instead of sending them to school. The state which is lagging behind in the field of education as compared to many other states of the same nature needs to be uplifted for the future prosperity of the country. The task of providing compulsory education does not end with enrolment; it is essential that every child participates in the educative process to the required extent and acquires minimum level of learning. The intent of the present research paper is to highlight the school participation and academic success rate of boys and girls at the elementary school level.

This paper explores the evolution of a large multi-stakeholder partnership that has grown since 2011 to scale deep engagement with learning through technology and decrease the digital divide for thousands of underserved school children in India. Using as its basis a case study of an initiative called integrated approach to technology in education (ITE) spearheaded by Tata Trusts in India working in partnership with an increasing number of other organizations, this paper seeks to illustrate what a large multi-stakeholder partnership in education is and how it can work to serve education equitably. In addition to tracing the growth and development of this multistakeholder partnership, the paper examines the ITE-related work partnership against seven characteristics of education-industry/community partnerships re-interpreted in terms of smart partnerships at EDUsummIT 2015.

Existing literatures have discussed both ethical issues in visual research with young people, and the problems associated with applying 'universal' ethical guidelines across varied cultural contexts. There has been little consideration, however, of specific issues raised in projects where visual research is being conducted with young people simultaneously in multiple national contexts. This paper contributes to knowledge in this area. We reflect on our experiences of planning and conducting the International CYCLES project involving photo elicitation with young people in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. While some issues such as varying access to technology for taking and sharing photos and diverse cultural sensitivities around the use of photography were anticipated in advance, others were more unexpected. Balancing the need for methods to be appropriate, ethical and feasible within each setting with the desire for sufficient consistency across the project is challenging. We argue that an 'ethics in context' approach and an attitude of 'methodological immaturity' is critical in international visual research projects with young people.

The history of education in India has been looked into with a view which has been narrow in its expanse, often missing out on many social categories which had a relatively limited, yet important, presence in colonial India. Sufficient attention has been paid to the official policies of the British Indian government (starting from Macaulay's Minute). However, a critical analysis of it is assumed to be provided by the nationalist discourse, which is popularly perceived as almost an antithesis of colonial education. In the entire process, the discussion on education broadly gets limited to two sections--the ruler and the ruled, thereby eschewing the diversity within the realm of those seeking and providing education. In this paper, an attempt will be made to understand the emerging importance of "Europeans and Eurasians" as a social category with a peculiar position in colonial India. Though technically part of the ruling "race", their economic standing was not always congruent with their assumed racial superiority. Termed as "poor whites" their presence in India posed challenges to the British government especially after the 1857 mutiny. Employed in the "communication network" of the British Raj, their presence in postal, railways and telegraph departments was imperative for its successful working. The first part of the paper seeks to explore the making of these European and Eurasian communities in India. An official stand regarding schooling of European and Eurasian children was formulated for the first time through Canning's Minute of 29 October 1860. Analysis of this Minute is vital to understand the very "nature of education" extended along with religious overtones providing these schools with a distinct identity and status. Using archival sources, this paper seeks to explore the "making of distinct schools" for them at hill stations and in the plains. Many of these hill schools still exist and have become a symbol of "modernity". Quite ironically their association with the colonial past provides them with a certain elite reputation in independent India (where nationalism is closely tied to education). Analysis of this opens up scope to investigate the ways in which "modernity" is not only understood but professed and adapted through such an educational setup.

This paper is a study of a Malayalam documentary play "Not Just the Victims" staged by Abhinaya Theatre Research Centre Trivandrum. Along with analyzing the documentary method of the play this study looks at how the theatre group employed the play for "re-educating" the people regarding certain existing norms. The play initiates a discourse in theatre regarding various atrocities happening against woman and children in society. The need for re-educating our parents and educational institutions regarding their out-dated techniques in nurturing woman and children as well as male counterparts is highlighted in this study. Also, the paper investigates how traumatic narratives of victims could make a greater impact on the audience for a change in their attitudes.

In this paper, we argue for a view of analysis as an embodied practice and review others' testimonies of carrying out multimodal ethnography. This review suggests that metaphors are key for communicating what happens to "us" in the course of the research and our subsequent sense-making practices. We identify four metaphors for communicating data collection and analytic practices: "composing," "meandering," "plundering" and "time travel." We then turn to our own multimodal fieldwork with children in middle childhood, to think about the experiences and emergent metaphors that shaped our practice on an international study looking at the relationship between childhood and public life. Children's "play" was instructive in our own formation as multimodal ethnographers. We provide examples of the ways in which children recruited us into their play, the ways in which play taught us about what matters to children, and finally, how we took play into our own analytical practices.

Objectives: Our paper reviews current teaching practices used to support students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the South Asian region, and to what extent these teaching practices reflect key research based effective practices. We have focused our attention on teaching practices at a time when we are witnessing a greater thrust towards achieving inclusive education at both, regional and global levels. Methods: We have used an eclectic approach for the study by employing a scoping review methodology to identify peer reviewed journal articles from South Asian countries. Having identified 10 articles and three dissertations in total from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, we have used a matrix method to present our data against nine best teaching practices for students with ASD. Results: Results from the review indicate three practices (of the nine best teaching practices) were most frequently used. These are assessments, alternative, and augmentative communication systems, and parentimplemented instruction/program. The other six teaching practices were not widely reported. Conclusions: We identify significant implications for practitioners, educators, and teacher education programs within the Asian region and beyond. The use of an eclectic approach in making choices regarding teaching strategies, incorporating varied research based effective teaching practices, and following a systematic and informed approach of assessments -- teaching interventions -- ongoing evaluation are key to supporting students with ASD.

Household income shocks in developing countries are known to have an impact on the education investments for children. In this paper, we explore the effects of various income and expenditure shocks on educational investment and cognitive outcomes of children using three rounds of household-level panel data from Young Lives survey conducted in two southern states of India -- Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. We find that idiosyncratic shocks like paternal health shocks and livestock loss translate into lower inputs of children's education, which reduce their cognitive ability captured through vocabulary and mathematics tests.

Across the globe, the Salamanca Statement has provided the strongest impetus for drawing attention to the education of some of the most marginalised groups. In India, it has had a significant and specific impact on the provision of schooling opportunities for children with disabilities. This paper provides a critical analysis of key developments in national policies and programmes and how these have shaped provision at the classroom level. Drawing on Nancy Fraser's conception of justice as an analytical tool, efforts towards inclusive education in India are explored through the interlinked ideas of redistribution, recognition and representation. Over the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in the numbers of children with disabilities being enrolled in schools, driven by factors including, positive legislation and the increased provision of aids and appliances, etc. However, little attention has been paid to the quality of teaching and learning, experienced by children with disabilities. Instead, efforts remain focused on assimilation into a mainstream system fraught with different challenges. Despite these issues, India is a powerful example of how the vision of inclusive education, as outlined in the Salamanca Statement, is feasible, especially if efforts build on contextual realities.

"Wellbeing" is a key concept in the study of children's lives over time, given its potential to link the objective, subjective, and inter-subjective dimensions of their experiences in ways that are holistic, contextualized and longitudinal. For this reason wellbeing is one of the core concepts used by Young Lives, a 15-year project (2000-2015) that follows the lives of 12,000 children growing up in the context of poverty in Ethiopia, Peru, Vietnam and Andhra Pradesh (India) (see http://www.younglives.org.uk). This paper examines a selection of methods being used by Young Lives to capture aspects of child wellbeing in the context of a range of children's life experiences related to poverty, specific risks and protective processes. It draws on a review of the literature on child-focused methods and on recent experiences piloting three core qualitative methods in the four study countries. The paper reports the development of a methodology that is child-centred, but also acknowledges that every child is embedded within a network of social and economic relationships.

Families in India face many challenges in caring for and educating their children with disabilities. India has enacted a landmark special education law, Persons with Disabilities Act of 1995, which provides schooling and services to all children. For some students with disabilities, however, integrated and special schools are providing schooling. This paper highlights one school, the Bethshan Special School, a private day-school for students with intellectual disabilities. At Bethshan, teachers provide quality academic instruction and job readiness skills for a range of children and young adults, as well as support programs for parents. Concluding this brief examination, several challenges and positive directions for Indian special education and teacher preparation are highlighted. (Contains 3 tables.)

Earlier work, often referred to as the "hole in the wall" experiments, has shown that groups of children can learn to use public computers on their own. This paper presents the method and results of an experiment conducted to investigate whether such unsupervised group learning in shared public spaces is universal. The experiment was conducted with "hole in the wall" (minimally invasive education, or MIE) computers in 17 locations in rural India. Focus groups in each location were tested for computer literacy for 9 months. Results, which are discussed in the paper, show that groups of children can learn to use computers and the Internet on their own, irrespective of who or where they are. Furthermore, such group self instruction is as effective as traditional classroom instruction, whilst this learning is considerably less expensive and is independent of teachers and schools. The results point to a new pedagogy for children's education in those circumstances where schools and teachers are either absent or not effective due to any reason. (Contains 9 figures and 2 tables.)

In developing countries like India, the onus of development lies mainly with the government, which faces the predicament of multiple demands and limited resources. This leads to a situation where even fundamental objectives such as basic literacy for all are not met. On the other hand, there exists a vibrant private sector, which has resources and the desire to undertake social responsibility. This sector is also coming up with innovative approaches to overcome barriers to education and is targeting the have-nots. Minimally Invasive Education (MIE) is one such endeavour. This paper discusses results obtained from Madangir (New Delhi), one of the sites where MIE learning stations were installed. It encourages children to learn on their own, with minimal, or no intervention. Children are provided with free access to computers in an open outdoor location. The informal environment enables children to acquire computer literacy, enhance their academic levels and imbibe other life skills. This project is an illustration of a public-private partnership between the Government of Delhi and NIIT (India's leading private sector corporation offering IT education, training and global IT learning solutions) to overcome digital illiteracy. (Contains 9 footnotes and 5 figures.)

Slavery flourishes in the modern world. In nations plagued by debilitating poverty, individuals unable to afford food, clothing, and shelter may be compelled to make a devastating decision: to sell themselves or their children into slavery. Nowhere in the world is this more common than India. Conservative estimates suggest that there are 10 million bonded child slaves in India alone. Bonded slavery refers to the situation in which a debtor is forced to work exclusively for a creditor in order to repay an advance. There are additional characteristics that are commonly associated with bonded labor but are not essential to its definition. For example, bonded slaves are generally forced to work long hours for six or seven days per week. They frequently receive wages well below those of workers in the same industry who have not taken an advance. This paper discusses India's domestic laws criminalizing bonded labor, its entry into some numerous international agreements regarding bonded slavery, and the four elements of effective bonded labor intervention. (Contains 64 notes.)

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme has been the central focus of the POSHAN Abhiyaan to combat maternal and child malnutrition under the national nutrition mission in India. This paper examined the linkages between utilization of ICDS and underweight among children aged 6–59 months. The study utilized data from two recent rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS‐4 [2015–2016] and NFHS‐5 [2019–2021]). Descriptive analyses were used to assess the change in utilization of ICDS and the prevalence of underweight at the national and state levels. Multivariable logistic regressions were performed to examine factors associated with the utilization of ICDS and underweight. Linkages between utilization of ICDS and underweight were examined using the difference‐in‐differences (DID) approach. Utilization of ICDS increased from 58% in 2015–2016 to 71% in 2019–2021. The prevalence of underweight decreased from 37% to 32% in the same period. Changes in ICDS utilization and underweight prevalence varied considerably across states, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Results from decomposition of DID models suggest that improvements in ICDS explained 9%–12% of the observed reduction in underweight children between 2016 and 2021, suggesting that ICDS made a modest but meaningful contribution in addressing undernutrition among children aged 6–59 months in this period. Key messages: Utilization of ICDS services among children aged 6–59 months increased from 58% (2015–2016) to 71% (2019–2021) nationally. The programme's expansion was prominent in urban areas, showcasing progress across states.The prevalence of underweight among children in India declined by 5 percentage points from 2016 to 2021, but almost one‐third of children are still underweight.Increase in coverage and service delivery strengthening of ICDS explained 9%–12% of the observed reduction in underweight between 2016 and 2021.The findings suggest that optimizing quality of interventions under ICDS can have a modest but meaningful contribution in reducing childhood underweight in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In resource poor settings innovative and bottom-up approaches are required to provide services to people with with disabilities. In this context, the present paper explains a community-based model of manpower development and coordination of services for people with intellectual disabilities in unified state of Andhra Pradesh in India. Women with disabilities from the village were identified, and those willing to be trained to work as community resource persons (CRPs) were selected and given hands-on training in a phased manner. A total of 130 women were trained in five groups of 25-30 per group and were deployed in the community to screen, identify and refer children with intellectual disabilities. The training content included basic stimulation and interface with functionaries of other government departments of health, education and welfare to ensure comprehensive service delivery. Neighbourhood centres (NHCs) were established where the CRPs could meet with families collectively. The results indicated that the CRPs were welcomed by the families. The NHCs established primarily as recreation centres, promoted inclusion and functioned as information dissemination centre. The services provided by the CRPs were owned and monitored by the Women's self-help group and the disability groups thus ensuring sustainability of the model.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are known to have difficulty in social communication, with research indicating that children with ASD fail to develop functional speech (Lord and Rutter, 1994). Over the years a number of Augmented and Alternate Communication (AAC) devices have been used with children with ASD to overcome this barrier and to facilitate communication. This article examines an Indian AAC tool called AVAZ (meaning sound), which is the first of its kind in India. The project reported also looks at the effectiveness of using AVAZ and the use of iPads by children with ASD in the classroom. Additionally, the article examines the suitability of using iPads for all learners in the spectrum. Twenty children between the ages of 4 and 10 years were selected to trial the use of AVAZ. They received three sessions weekly of 45 minutes over a period of 10 weeks. The feedback of the special educators who trained the children was analysed. The findings of this small scale study indicates that the children preferred using the AVAZ app and the iPad to pen and paper. Huguenin (2004) too indicated similar reports in using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in enhancing children's motivation to learn and communicate. The trainers felt it could be used as an educational tool, and many more educational concepts could be added. Research also suggests that ICT can be used as a tool to tutor for educational purpose (Means, 1994). The AVAZ app could be recommended to children with ASD who are included in mainstream schools. This study was conducted at Sankalp, a special school in Tamil Nadu, Chennai.

As documented in this special issue, all over the world hard choices must be made in education, government, business, and medicine. Intelligence tests, used intelligently and with appropriate ethical safeguards, are one tool of many that help make hard choices work out well, or at least better than the next-best alternative (Kaufman, Raiford, & Coalson, 2016). The reliability of intelligence tests is far from perfect. Complaining about IQ tests is the privilege of those who have them. It is probably no accident that intelligence tests were invented in France, not long after a series of reforms from 1881 to 1901 made education free and compulsory for all children (Harrigan, 2001). It is likewise probably not an accident that intelligence testing was then adopted most enthusiastically in the world's wealthiest countries in the midst of similar attempts to raise educational standards. Among the countries featured in this special issue, Greece, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States achieved near-universal education decades ago; Brazil, India, Mexico, Oman, and Peru have done so only within the last 15 years. Once a government takes on the responsibility of educating all of its citizens and then successfully achieves near-universal school attendance, it is confronted with the magnitude of population-wide individual differences in academic aptitude. The most pressing concern has to do with vulnerable children with intellectual disabilities. It is true that every child can learn, but not every child learns best in regular education. In this commentary, the author addresses the relation between universal education and the need for intelligence testing. The article goes on to compare U.S. developments in intelligence testing with those in Oman, Greece, India, Japan, Brazil, Peru, and the Netherlands. It concludes with three themes that emerged among the articles in this issue.