School Building Design and Construction in India : By Arcmax Architects and Planners, Call +91-9898390866 or +91-9753567890
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Life is full of opportunities and creating an appropriate environment to make the best of it is the ideal way to deal with challenges. During the process of making such an environment, there come a lot of obstacles that need to be overcome. School Education creates one of such environments and it is absolutely remarkable in terms of the development of the entire community regarding all aspects. The benefits of accessibility of education to society are significant. But, the challenges faced by a person with a disability are more if compared. The system needs to look into the requirement of making education accessible with ease to each and every people regardless of disabilities. To make this possible it is important to Design and build the school in a manner that will make it reliable for everyone. This will enable persons with disabilities to experience the same glory of education that others are privileged to have. The needs of different strategies required in order to build such a school will be the prime motive to initiate the project. Therefore the Ministry of urban development, the Govt. of India, and the universal design for learning took a major step by creating an infrastructure to create a barrier-free environment for every student.
The main aim is to explore the availability of universal design in the present educational setup.
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A questionnaire was developed by keeping all the guidelines by the ministry of urban development, department of education and UDL into consideration. The main motive of this questionnaire was to find out how much the present infrastructure and methods used in school were accessible by the children with special needs. This questionnaire had many categories that contained many points to make the study and its implementation more effective in the real world. The need for awareness in this topic was fulfilled by creating such an efficient questionnaire in the education world.
RESULTS
In this study, 20 schools were included amongst which, 4 were preschools and 16 were from Kindergarten till Higher Secondary.
Let us have a look at the observations acquired in various categories.
a) Main entrance: Main entrance was made available to all the schools with a clear width of at least 1000mm and the height of the door handle at 1000mm. The entrance was made identifiable to make it easy to access. The negatives are that none of the schools had handrails & ramps and 75% of schools had a slippery landing surface which makes creates room for thoughts as it is extremely dangerous in many situations.
b) Parking: Parking was made available to all the schools but it was not efficient as only 10% of the school parking was actually accessible!. The study showed that 70% of schools had an accessible path of travel from the drop area to the main entrance. The lack of efficiency and proper accessibility to people was the main issue with the parking category.
c) Reception and Information counters: All the schools had the accessibility of identifiable reception and 90% had them at a height of 800mm, to 100mm. The issue arrives when it was known that 75% of the reception were illuminated and non of the school had a pictographic map and loop induction installed at the counter.
d) Doors: 75% of schools have a door that can be operated without much effort and 70% have sufficient space inside the latch side of the door. Although only 5% had automatic doors at the entrance which creates the required ease for students with special needs and also none of the doors with spring closure had an extra pull handle and a hand ware lower than 800 mm.
e) Corridors: Schools had no protruding object which cannot be detected by a cane. 90% of schools had corridors at least 1500 mm wide. 85% had space for maneuvering a wheelchair through doors along its length. 80% of the schools had obstacles that were identified by low vision. Only 10% of the schools had required ramps or lifts to cope with the level difference. the data showed that none of the schools had obstruction mounted above a minimum height of 2200 mm.
f) Stairs: 70% of schools had stairs 1200 mm wide and 35% had an emergency stair clearly identifiable. The major problem with this was that none of the schools had continuous handrails on both sides of stairs and step edges marked with different colours or textures which was much needed. No schools had warning blocks installed at the beginning and end of the flight which was again a matter of concern.
g)Toilets: All schools had hot water pipes covering and flushing arrangement at a lower height which are easy to operate. Although only 20% had accessible toilets for PWD which was too less. The big issue was that the toilets were not easily identifiable in any school and did not have sufficient space to maneuver a wheelchair.60% of schools had water closet at a height between 450 mm. and 480 mm. but did not had a grab bar near the water closet which was again a drawback in this category. The lower edge of mirrors positioned at a height not exceeding 1 mm. in 40% of schools. The issue arrives when only 30% of schools had an emergency alarm in toilets and only 25% of schools had floor material skid proof, well-drained, and water proof in toilets which was again a crucial need.
h) Drinking water: Only 55% of schools had Drinking water tap accessible and 40% of schools had easily maneuver. The good thing is that there were no schools where the drinking water area was found dry.
i) Signages: Only 15% of schools had wall-mounted signs and maps info panels at ht. between 900 mm. to 1800 mm. No schools had an international symbol of accessibility and directional signs indicating the location of an accessible facility. The need for indicators made it an important matter to look after.
j) Public telephones: 30% of schools had no public telephones accessible to wheelchair users and 80% of schools had telephone areas with knee spaces of 750 mm. Only 55% of schools had a telephone at a ht. of 800 mm. to 1000 mm.
k) Flexibility in education: All the schools had visual clues, schedules, background, knowledge, illustrative vocabulary, working with a partner, reading aloud highlighting phrases, multimedia for understanding, flexibility in the use of tools to access information, and flexible grouping strategies. 90% of schools used dictating responses for representation and 80% of schools gave choice in means of expression. The drawback is that none of the school had signs and symbols, text to speech instruments build in glossaries, and build in language translation. Only 20% of schools had resources person for children with special needs. Only 4% of schools were having children with special needs. 45% of schools had easy-grip tools. Only 10% of schools had a caption on television.
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Pre-Primary to secondary education:
1) For pre-primary and nursery schools with population up to 2500, the land area required for the building is 0.08ha and should be located near a park.
2) For primary ( class 1 to 5) and senior secondary ( class 6 to 12),the required land area is 0.80 ha and 1.80 ha respectively, with a play field area of 18m*36m for primary level schools and 68m*126m for senior secondary schools. Also there should be a parking area for senior secondary schools.
3) For integrated schools with and without hostel facility (class 1 to 12) with population ranging from 90000 to 100000 and for school with disabilities ( class 1 to 12) with population of 45000, the school should have building area, play field area, parking area and should be located near a sport facility.
4)For integrated schools having hostel facility (class 1 to 12) with population ranging from 90000 to 100000, the school should have building area, play field area, parking area, residential area and should be located near a sport facility.
5) For school for children with intellectual and development disabilities with population of 1000000, the school should have area of 0.20 ha and the location of pre-primary /nursery school should be located near a park and non-noise polluting zone.
Higher education:
1) For college with population of 125000, the college should have building area, play filed area, residential and parking area
2) The University campus should have residential area, sports and cultural activities, parks and landscape including green belt.
Technical education:
1) For technical education centre (A) with population of 1000000, the centre should include 1 industrial training institute (ITI) and 1 polytechnic.
2) For technical education centre (B) with population of 1000000, the centre should include 1 industrial training institute (ITI), coaching centre.
Professional education:
1) For Engineering college with population of 1000000, the area should be 6.00ha
2) For Medical college with population of 1000000, the college should have area of site including space for general hospital.
3) For Nursing and paramedic institute with population of 1000000, the college should have plot area per institute ( subject of Nursing Council of India/Ministry of Health Norms).
The physical barriers along with all the drawbacks in the above categories make the education system less reliable and efficient in many terms. In addition, teachers also need to understand the need for effective teaching with the use of required materials. The lack of availability and infrastructure should never become a barrier to the education system.
The study made it very clear about the need for various facilities in the existing Schools and Education system. The need for awareness in various departments requires proper attention so that education never becomes difficult for anyone, may it be persons with disabilities. The study highlighted the requirement which needs to be taken into consideration while resolving the loopholes present in the education system. The primary and secondary education should modify its designs so that more numbers are benefitted from it. There is still room for improvement after eradicating all the barriers in education in all schools.
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