Tang Quan often plays alone in front of a school gate, waiting for his older brother to leave his classes. The 12-year-old Tang (not his real name), from a small village in Leizhou county, Zhanjiang in western Guangdong Province, lost his hearing in a fire when he was 4 years old.

"He goes to school with his brother every day, but he is too shy to attend classes. Every child in the school is physically normal," said his older sister Tang Ruqing.

He has never attended a class because no special classes exist for handicapped children, his sister said.

Official statistics show that some 97,000 school-aged disabled children, many of whom live in rural areas, do not have access to school education in Guangdong Province.

"Without efficient education, they will remain illiterate," said Tang Zhenghao, a member of the Leizhou committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Tang has been working with a disabled persons' association for six years. He said Leizhou has about 2,000 physically handicapped children aged 6 to 14, of which 70 percent live in rural areas.

"But the county, with a population of about 1.5 million, has no special schools," Tang said.

According to relevant regulations, a county or a city with 1 million people or more should have at least one special school for handicapped children.

Only 60 handicapped children in Leizhou are offered education in Zhanjiang city, while others have only two options -- either not go to school or attend schools with their non-handicapped counterparts in the county, according to Tang.

For the past three years, Tang has submitted proposals to the local county political consultative conference, asking that special schools for the handicapped be built.

"In response, local authorities have said they have no plans to build special schools due to tight financial budgets," Tang said.

However, Guangzhou officials say that since 2005 they have taken measures to improve educational opportunities for disabled children by allocating as much as 150 million yuan to expand two special schools in the city.

(China Daily March 4, 2010)