China's Compulsory Education to Cover More Disabled Children

Chinese education authorities on Thursday vowed more efforts to enable access to compulsory education for the 80,000 registered disabled children of school age who are not currently receiving equal schooling as their peers.

Various measures including allowing them to learn in regular classes will be implemented by the Ministry of Education, Xinhua learned from the ministry.

China had 378,800 disabled students attending the country's 1,853 schools for the disabled by the end of 2012, according to the ministry.

It added that the ratio of disabled children receiving compulsory education reached 72.1 percent by the end of last year, representing an increase of 10 percentage points compared with the ratio in 2008.

Chinese central and local governments have invested more than 5.4 billion yuan (about US$879.92 million) in building or renovating 1,182 schools for the disabled in the country's underdeveloped central and western regions, the ministry said.

The central government also allocated 120 million yuan as special subsidies for education of the disabled in the regions.