For 5% of children: How can disabled children receive nine-year compulsory education?

For five percent of the children

　　Zhou Hao spent 6 years in the kindergarten, from 3 to 8 years old, and studied 3 times in the big class.

　　This child with first-degree visual disability has not experienced primary school life.

When he was in the big class for the second time, his mother found him a special education school for blind children.

The school is in Nanshan District, Chongqing City, and Zhou Hao's home is in Qijiang District. The two places are more than 80 kilometers apart.

　　Zhou Hao still does not have the ability to take care of himself by living in the school independently, and he needs parents to rent houses around the school and accompany him for a long time.

His family members have their own jobs in Qijiang, so they can't get away.

I have a younger brother who was just born in the family, so renting a house and attending school will also create additional financial pressure.

After 5 days in school, Zhou Hao returned to the kindergarten.

　　In the eyes of the family, the kindergarten may be the only place where Zhou Hao can be accepted.

Until May of this year.

Zhou Hao's mother received a call from the People's Procuratorate of Qijiang District. The staff on the other end of the phone asked if Zhou Hao had received compulsory education.

　　During that time, more than 200 guardians of disabled children between the ages of 6 and 16 in Qijiang District of Chongqing received such calls one after another.

Among the calls made, it gradually emerged that these children did not receive compulsory education.

In the district, some children with disabilities who reached the age of compulsory education did not enter school; some children who applied for postponement or suspension did not return to school for a long time.

In addition, for disabled children who cannot go to school, the school has not been able to provide door-to-door education or distance education as required.

These questions were finally assembled into a procuratorial proposal, which was delivered to the Qijiang District Education Committee on July 1.

　　This is the first procuratorial recommendation in Chongqing for the violation of the right to education of disabled children, and such recommendations are rare across the country.

The latest statistics from the Education Commission of Qijiang District show that the compulsory education enrollment rate of disabled children in the district is 95.25%.

Compared with other places in the country, this proportion is not high-the latest statistics from the Disabled Persons' Federation show that in 2020 the national compulsory education enrollment rate of disabled children will reach more than 95%.

This means that this time, Qijiang District People's Procuratorate is looking for children who are less than 5%.

On the afternoon of September 16, parents of Qijiang District Special Education School picked up their children one after another.

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　　The road to elementary school was not easy for Zhou Hao.

When he was born, his eyes began to drain continuously.

The doctor diagnosed that he had a tumor in his eye, and he needed to have his eyeball removed immediately and undergo chemotherapy.

He was only two months old at that time, and the intensity of chemotherapy was unbearable.

Moreover, chemotherapy costs 60,000 yuan, which is not a small sum.

The doctor recommends that parents take their children home for conservative treatment, so as not to "empty people and money."

　　After returning home, Zhou Hao's eyes no longer shed pus, only crying day and night.

Slowly, one of his eye sockets was empty, and the other eyeball continued to shrink.

　　His family didn't expect much of him, and initially sent the child to kindergarten, but hoped that he would not stay at home all the time.

But letting him sit in the classroom to learn knowledge like an ordinary child is something his family can't expect.

　　No community or school took the initiative to contact them to learn about their children's education, nor did they take the initiative to go to the surrounding primary schools to ask whether Zhou Hao should be enrolled.

　　The special education school in Qijiang District, Chongqing City where he works-Qijiang District Special Education School.

Every June, the enrollment guide for this school will be sent to the district education committee, which will be issued by the education committee to all streets, towns and schools in the jurisdiction, and then the staff of each place will notify the school-age disabled children in the jurisdiction.

　　Zhou Hao and his family have not received the admission notice.

The Qijiang District Special Education School also does not provide blind education. Currently, the school only provides special education for deaf-mute children, intellectual and physical disabilities.

　　Braille textbooks and professional teachers for blind education and special education schools in Qijiang District are currently vacant.

The dean of the school said that the school currently does not have the hardware conditions for enrolling blind students. There are currently no barrier-free passages and barrier-free toilets in the school, but iron handrails are installed on the sides of each aisle.

In the enrollment process in previous years, no blind students came to the school to sign up, and there were very few telephone consultations. The school has never recruited professional teachers for blind education.

　　Unable to find a suitable school, Zhou Hao could only stay in the kindergarten.

When he is not going out, he himself plays with a toy that can sing and read poems in the bedroom.

He can knock the nursery rhymes sung in the toy on the keys of the toy piano.

　　Zhou Hao's keenness and talent for music alleviated part of his family's worries about the future.

A few years ago, my family bought a piano online for 3,000 yuan.

From then on, Zhou Hao became the best and the only person in the family who knew the piano.

He knows which keys to play, he can restore toys and kindergarten songs; he can also squat under the piano himself, groping to adjust the piano's sound level.

Chen Zhengwei's wheelchair was fixedly placed in front of the wooden table.

Suggest

　　Zhou Hao's plight was noticed by Kang Rui, an assistant prosecutor of the People's Procuratorate of Qijiang District.

In April this year, during a public interest litigation inspection, Kang Rui started a conversation with the person in charge of the Qijiang District Special Education School and learned that there are only more than 100 disabled students in the school, and there are no blind students.

Kang Rui was puzzled. Qijiang District, which has a permanent population of nearly 800,000, could not have children with visual disabilities. How can these children receive nine-year compulsory education?

　　The public interest litigation department where Kang Rui works and the juvenile procuratorial department set up a joint case-handling team to obtain a list of all school-age disabled children and adolescents in the district from the Qijiang District Disabled There are 597 people in total, more than five times the number of students in special education schools.

According to the information provided by the Disabled Persons’ Federation, they screened a group of nearly 200 people in the survey list and decided to focus first on children with severe disabilities at the first and second levels. They guessed that it would be more difficult for this group of children to go to school for education.

Subsequently, six people spent a full week calling the guardians of these children to verify whether they were true to the preliminary investigation.

　　A 14-year-old boy with a third-degree mental disability has been accompanied by his grandmother in the primary school in the primary school for six years.

At the beginning of Xiaosheng, the middle school teacher refused to enroll on the grounds of missing the registration time, and has been out of school at home.

　　A girl with a second-degree physical disability cannot go to the toilet or walk independently.

I have been accompanied by my grandmother for 3 years in school.

The aging grandmother could no longer hold the grown-up girl, so she finally left the school.

When I first left school, the teacher came to send the teacher, two hours a week to send the teacher, later, gradually became one and a half hours.

　　The Qijiang District Education Commission also stated in the investigation that some disabled children and teenagers did not receive compulsory education because their parents felt that their children were already disabled and there was no need to receive education.

　　Some parents of deaf-mute children stubbornly believe that the child looks normal, “it’s not allowed in special schools. It’s too strange to learn from those children and learn those sign languages.” "Before I go, I can yell with my mouth. After learning it, I won't say anything, just compare it with my hands."

　　In a procuratorial proposal sent to the Qijiang District Education Committee on July 1, the Qijiang District People’s Procuratorate put forward a 5-point procuratorial proposal for the current situation of the five percent of children whose education rights have been impaired.

One of the points pointed out that increasing the recruitment and training of special education teachers, especially teachers of education for the blind. They believe that "even if no one can enjoy it right now, there is no guarantee that children in need will no longer appear."

　　During the initial investigation of more than 200 phone calls, the procuratorate also discovered more than 10 disabled children who had returned to Qijiang local hospital from other places for rehabilitation. Because they were studying in other places, they had not received education for many years.

These children generally followed their working parents to other places in their early years and attended local schools.

Unfortunately, an accident happened while studying and became disabled children.

In order to enjoy more preferential policies, they can only choose to return to the Qijiang local hospital where their household registration is located.

Some children live in the hospital for a long time for rehabilitation; some children leave the hospital without going to school at home.

　　In response to this situation, the joint case handling team emphasized the implementation of dynamic monitoring in the procuratorial proposal.

The Board of Education needs to improve a mechanism for dropout information and status recommendations to keep abreast of their enrollment status in a timely manner.

　　After receiving the procuratorial proposal, the Qijiang District Education Commission immediately established a rectification and reform leading group, and calculated that in the 2021-2022 school year, there were 666 disabled children and adolescents of the appropriate age in the district, and 79 students who were not enrolled in compulsory education waiting to be placed, and within two months The children are placed one by one.

At the same time, they also have a list of 48 school-age disabled teenagers studying outside the district.

Admission

　　After receiving a call from the People's Procuratorate of Qijiang District, Zhou Hao's mother received calls from the Education Commission and the Subdistrict Office in the next few months.

　　In September, Zhou Hao, who was eight and a half years old, finally officially became a freshman in Beidu School in Qijiang District and began to receive nine-year compulsory education in regular class.

　　Studying in regular classes is to allow some special children and adolescents to study in ordinary classes.

According to the "Statistical Bulletin of the National Education Development in 2019", there are about 794,600 special education students in schools in my country, of which more than 390,000 students are in regular classes.

　　However, the Qijiang District Procuratorate found that the teaching effect is difficult to guarantee during the implementation of the regular class.

Zheng Shitao, a visually disabled teenager in the first grade of Dongxi Middle School, has been studying in regular classes since elementary school.

He couldn't see at all with his left eye. He was near-sighted at 8000 degrees in his right eye. He chose the leftmost corner of the first row of the classroom.

Unlike other classmates, Zheng Shitao does not need exams or homework. Sometimes he will take the initiative to "protest" to the teacher that his homework has been forgotten to correct.

More often, he just lay on his desk and had nothing to do.

　　In June 2020, the Ministry of Education issued the "Guiding Opinions on Enhancing Compulsory Education of Disabled Children and Adolescents in Regular Classes."

According to the different types of students' disabilities, these resource classrooms can provide them with education and teaching, rehabilitation training facilities and equipment.

At present, in Qijiang District, which has 52 primary schools and 52 general middle schools, only 9 schools have established special resource classrooms.

　　In addition to studying in regular classes, some disabled students rely on teachers to send them home.

However, many schools will also report to the Board of Education that in Qijiang, where the mountain area is more than 70%, some students have long journeys, and the one-way trip takes more than one hour. The cost is high, and it is difficult to guarantee the transportation and the personal safety of teachers.

　　Chen Zhengwei, who suffered from "muscular atrophy" since childhood, has been unable to stand on his legs since the second grade of elementary school. He got on a wheelchair and left the school.

After his mother divorced his father in the early years, he left Qijiang, and his father also went out to work. He could only live with his aunt in the countryside.

　　After the leave of school, Chen Zhengwei remembered that the teacher came several times, every few months, there would be three or four people chatting with him at home, the content has been forgotten, and the time of the last visit has also been forgotten.

　　Most of the time, there are only two people in the family, Auntie and him.

Aunty got up at 8 o'clock in the morning. The first thing she did was to help him turn over. The bed on which Chen Zhengwei slept was made of wooden planks. His back was gradually shrinking, and his body twisted to the right into a curve.

　　With three layers of cotton on the bed, he would still be woken up by pain at night.

Then he would be carried into a wheelchair and pushed by his aunt to a wooden table just one meter from the bed.

At first, there was a computer on the desk. When he just dropped out of school and returned to his aunt's house in the countryside, his father was worried that he would be bored and moved.

As the muscles atrophy, his arms can no longer be lifted to the table to type on the keyboard.

The computer was removed and replaced with a mobile phone.

When his aunt went out to do farm work and left him alone at home, he could only play games on his mobile phone.

　　In the room where Chen Zhengwei stayed all year round, there was the smell of feces and endless flies.

To use the toilet, he needs to push his wheelchair through two rooms to the hut next to the dam.

In fact, he can't push the wheelchair anymore, so he can only call his aunt to go home and help every time.

Sometimes my aunt continued to be busy with farm work in the middle, and Chen Zhengwei would stay in the hut for more than an hour.

More often, he can only excrete in his pants.

Chen Zhengwei rarely drinks water during the day.

At 7 or 8 every night, he waited for his aunt to come home before he had his first bite of rice.

　　The teacher of Yangcha Elementary School where Chen Zhengwei attended before leaving school reported that he did not return to school in the new semester of September 2017. The school called to find out the situation and said that he could provide home delivery.

Teachers will be sent home once a week as required, with at least two class hours each time.

My aunt refused on the phone, saying that there was too much farm work at home, she didn't have time to accompany the teacher, and there was no need for her child to receive education.

After each semester began, the school teachers organized to visit Chen Zhengwei at his home, emphasizing that the child needed education, but was rejected by his aunt.

　　Teachers in Qijiang District Special Education School often encounter parents who resist sending them home.

Parents feel that no matter whether it is sending education, rehabilitation, or warmth, the status quo cannot be changed, and children do not need to learn.

They can only send meat, rice, and oil every time they go to the door to send them home, and parents' attitudes start to change slowly.

　　Different from the teaching content of ordinary schools, special education teachers send teachers to the door, and more are to teach some rehabilitation things, or to do home training and life guidance for these disabled children.

The teacher will go to the children’s home, teach them how to wash their socks, how to cook with a rice cooker, and take the children out to the surrounding shops to learn how to shop and cross the road home safely.

　　A parent once took the initiative to write an agreement to the teacher who sent the teacher voluntarily to give up the child’s home.

In the view of the joint case handling team, the agreement itself is invalid. It is both a right and an obligation for minors to receive nine years of compulsory education, including disabled children and adolescents.

　　However, the practical problems faced by these 95% of children who did not drop out of school were ultimately not presented in this procuratorial proposal.

This is the regret of the joint case handling team, and it is difficult for them to come up with suitable suggestions.

　　(All names are pseudonyms except for Kang Rui in the text)

　　Intern Gong Ayuanwen and photo source: China Youth Daily