Special Education Policy in Nepal: A Critical Review from Policy Theory

Abstract

Purpose: Education policy is considered as a core document developed to ensure the educational rights of all children including the children with disabilities. By considering the fact, every nation design its educational policy to ensure access to basic education for all school-age children. Nepal Government has also been formulating different educational policies to ascertain educational rights of every child including the children with disabilities. Method: However, a group of children are still out of schools and this study was carried out to analyze different special educational policies through the lens of four dimensions of policy theory. For this purpose, the required data were collected from two sources namely primary and secondary sources and then analyzed respectively by applying qualitative data analysis process. Results: The study results indicate that the special education policies formulated before 1996 focused on normative dimension but the policies introduced between 1996 to 2016 emphasized on normative and structural dimensions with clear ideological shift in education. Conclusion: Finally, Inclusive Education Policy-2017 has emphasized highly on constituent and technical dimension and attached value to normative and structural dimensions as before. Thus, currently developed policy has attempted to encompass all dimensions of policy theory.