In China, the government has always attached importance to
special education. A series of laws and regulations ensures
disabled people's right to education. Besides schools for special
education, any disabled children capable of adapting to regular
study conditions can enroll at standard elementary and high
schools.??
Today, China has 1,540 schools for special education, with 375,000
students; more than 1,000 vocational training institutes for
disabled people, nearly 3,000 standard vocational training and
education institutes that also admit disabled people; more than
1,700 training organizations for rehabilitating hearing-impaired
children, with over 100,000 trained and in-training children. In
2004, 4,112 disabled students entered ordinary schools of higher
learning. Of disabled children receiving special education, 63.6
percent of total recruitment numbers and 66.2 percent of enrollment
were in ordinary schools or special classes thereof.?
The Law on Vocational Education was issued in 1996. Vocational
education embraces higher vocational schools, secondary skill
schools, vestibule schools, vocational high schools, job-finding
centers and other adult skill and social training institutes. To
enable vocational education to better accommodate the demands of
economic re-structuring and urbanization, in recent years the
government has remodeled vocational education, oriented towards
obtaining employment, and focusing on two major vocational
education projects to meet society's ever more acute demand for
high quality, skilled workers. These are cultivating skilled
workers urgently needed in modern manufacture and service
industries; and training rural laborers moving to urban areas. To
accelerate vocational education in western areas, the Central
Government has used government bonds to build 186 vocational
education centers in impoverished western area counties.
