The Maharashtra Secondary School Certificate (SSC) results declared this year marked a major milestone for Manjushree Patil, founder-director of the Aatman Academy, Thane, (estb.2011), a first-of-its-kind specialised institution for children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia. The school’s first batch of seven students, who wrote the class X SSC exam of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education, scored between 68-81 percent.

History. Aatman Academy admitted its first batch of three students with learning disabilities two years ago. Since then, aggregate enrolment has risen to 30 students from diverse backgrounds who are taught by 17 specially trained facilitators. The curri-culum, developed in-house by an expert team of three educators led by Patil, an alumna of St. Mary’s Teachers Training College, Pune, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai, and Indian Institute of Professional Studies, Lucknow (Masters in education), addresses the academic needs of each student while teaching them the arts (painting, crafts, music, dance, drama, theatre etc), athletics (yoga, karate), and other subjects.

Manjushree Patil began her professional career in 1991 as a remedial teacher and special educator in Pune’s Shikshan Prasarak Mandali English Medium School (1991-1994). However, after she signed up as a counsellor with the Institute for Psychological Health, Thane in 1999, she became acutely aware of the possibility of practising special education outside the portals of one school. After a couple of consulting stints and in-service training programmes for over 20,000 teachers, she was appointed principal of the Arya Cambridge International School, Thane where she served for two years. Subsequently, realising the pressing need for special education, Patil promoted Aatman Academy in 2011.

Direct talk. “On an average, 10-15 percent of all school-going children countrywide are struggling with learning disabilities. Specialised schools offer effective, research-based instruction to ensure these children are given the attention and opportunity to make significant academic gains. The greatest gift we provide is perhaps a rediscovery of correlation between effort and success.  We believe children with disabilities can learn effectively at their own pace in a cond-ucive learning environment,” says Manjushree Patil.

Future plans. Currently negotiating partnerships with like-minded educators, Patil wants to replicate the Aatman model in Mumbai and across Maharashtra. “I expect Aatman Academy to expand its capacity to 150 students over the next five years. With the growing and urgent demand for specialised schools, additional capacity will be created gradually by rolling out branches of the academy. Given the sensitivity and care required in teaching special needs children, expansion through the franchise model is inadvisable,” says this committed educator.

Sunayana Nair (Mumbai)