Nepal Autism School is a primary school approved by Kathmandu Metropolitan Education Department. We are the first Autism school aiming to address the needs and issues of special children with autism. Nepal Autism School manages essential training program for parents and family members empowering them to address the sensory, communication and other special necessities of their children so that they can understand and embrace autism. Similarly, they can help their children with autism live healthy and independent life.
As sustainable education is our priority we provide need based education on affordable fee structure. We focus on building institutional collaboration with government, non government bodies, province and local government in order to extend financial assistance for sustain able special education for the children with autism. We have been basically using Visual Schedule method, PECS method of teaching and Total communication system in structured classrooms. Total Communication system incorporates words, sounds, gestures etc. This is a part of Universal Design of Learning.We have also designed and implemented Information Communication Technology (ICT) program at our school. We have a well equipped therapy room and sensory ground. We have sensory healing program that makes students overcome their sensory difficulties and this program builds up basic baseline for vocational program as well.
What makes Nepal Autism School different than others?
Since children with autism have problem in communication and sensory areas they do not get admission in mainstream school and we have seen that special centers in Nepal are only focusing on ADL (Activities of Daily Living) but we have visualized abilities in children with autism that they can flourish in academic area. Therefore, we aim to run grade ECD to grade eight. The students get basic sensory program in ECD level and they get academic program alongside ADL program, communication enhancement program, need based sensory guidance and social activities program from grade one onwards. Our ultimate purpose is to transfer our students to mainstream school after grade eight for SEE if they demonstrate natural ability to do well in academic area after developing understanding, communication and cognition from our school program. If the students could not do well in academic area we will transfer them in vocational unit.
We believe basic academic knowledge such as vocabularies, numerical and coding is necessary for vocational activities as well. For example: If we target to teach bakery to our students they must know the quantity of flour they will be using. They must know the concept of time so that they can calculate the time limit they will be putting the bread flour into the oven. Similarly, if we target to teach Bangle making to our students they must be able to follow the given pattern, coding and counting numbers, alphabet reading so the basic academic knowledge is essential for vocational activities as well. Since basic academic knowledge and vocational activities are interlinked we focus on Academic area alongside ADL and Communication to make our students independent in a true manner.