Review of third and fourth periodic reports of China

Dear Committee members,

In advance of the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s (“the Committee”) upcoming review of the third and fourth periodic reports of the People’s Republic of China, Human Rights Watch made our first submission on December 3, 2012 highlighting areas of concern as you consider the Chinese government’s (“the government”) compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (“the Convention”). In this follow-up submission, we would like to draw your attention to a number of issues regarding the education of children with disabilities in China that are inconsistent with articles 23 and 28 of the Convention. This submission is based on the findings in a recently-published Human Rights Watch report, “‘As Long as They Let Us Stay in Class’: Barriers to Education for Persons with Disabilities in China.”

1.      Discrimination and exclusion from mainstream schools

The Chinese government has an impressive record in providing primary education for children without disabilities, achieving near-universal compulsory education for such children. But according to official statistics, the rate for children with disabilities is much lower: about 28 percent of such children should be receiving compulsory basic education but are not.

Across China, children and young people with disabilities confront discrimination in schools. Mainstream schools deny many such children admission, ask them to leave, or fail to provide appropriate classroom accommodations to help them overcome barriers related to their disabilities. While children with mild disabilities are in mainstream schools where they continue to face challenges, children with more serious disabilities are excluded from the mainstream education system, and a significant number of them receive no education at all.

Discrimination against children and young people with disabilities permeates all levels of education in the mainstream system. Schools sometimes deny enrollment outright, but they are often more subtle, convincing the parents to take their children out of the schools with a variety of arguments. Schools sometimes place conditions on parents, such as requiring that they accompany their children to and in school every day, before they allow their children to study in the schools. While Chinese laws and regulations contain provisions prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability, the provisions are often vague, fail to precisely define discrimination, and do not outline effective redress mechanisms.

The Chinese government also does not have a clear policy on “reasonable accommodation” in mainstream schools — defined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) as “necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden.” In interviews for the report, parents told Human Rights Watch of carrying their children up and down stairs to classrooms or bathrooms located upstairs several times a day. Students with hearing impairments said they could not follow along because the teachers walk around while teaching and do not to provide written notes, and there is no sign language instruction in most schools. They told Human Rights Watch that students who are blind or who have limited vision are not provided with magnified printed materials or tests. Some mainstream schools exclude students with disabilities from the examination system; they do not get graded and their progress is not otherwise evaluated. In some rural areas, the government’s policy of consolidating mainstream schools in recent years has had a negative effect on students with disabilities, as schools to which they are assigned are further away and provide no transportation.

Teachers find that the burden of supporting students with disabilities rests entirely on their shoulders, as they are provided with little support to ensure reasonable accommodations in the classrooms. There is no staff support to assist the teachers, who often have to teach large classes of 30 to 60 students. Training for teachers and administrators in mainstream schools is limited and little funding goes to ensure that such schools are adequately resourced to educate these students. There is also little incentive for teachers to provide support to students with disabilities because doing so does not impact their performance ratings or prospects for promotion.

As a result, many students with disabilities literally find themselves sitting in classrooms without being able to follow the curriculum. This leads to failing performance and declining confidence, which only reinforces the effects of existing discrimination. A large percentage of students with disabilities eventually drop out of school or move to special education schools. Once in the special education system, there is little hope of their being able to cross back to the mainstream school system. Families with children with disabilities should have a choice in selecting the most appropriate educational settings for their children, but currently do not have a meaningful choice.

2.     Limited access to higher education

Children with disabilities rarely stay in school beyond junior middle school, and for those who aspire to do so, choices are limited. The Chinese government maintains a system of physical examinations for secondary school students who wish to enter mainstream institutions of higher education. During this process, people with disabilities are required to declare their disabilities, and the results of the medical exams are sent directly to the universities. The government also has guidelines (Guidelines for the Physical Examination of Students in Recruitment for Ordinary Higher Level Educational Institutions) advising higher education institutions to bar or restrict access to students with what they refer to as certain physical and mental “defects.” Under each disability or illness, the guidelines list fields of study for which applicants may be denied admission based on their disability and fields of study for which they are “advised” not to apply. Many of the qualifications requirements appear irrelevant to the subject, while some others are not essential to success in the subject if the students are given accommodations and support. For example, people with visual impairments, depending on the severity of the impairment, can be denied admission to a dozen academic fields, including sports training, and are advised against applying to dozens of other fields including law and ecology. In addition, students who are blind have very limited access to mainstream universities, as the government fails to readily provide Braille or electronic versions of the gaokao, the university entrance exam.

While there are vocational schools for people with disabilities as well as higher education institutions in the special education system, they tend to focus on training for skills and professions that are traditionally reserved for people with disabilities, for example, massage training for the blind and visual arts training for the hearing impaired.

3.      Lack of information and outreach to parents of children with disabilities

Parents play a pivotal role in determining whether a child with disabilities is brought to school and whether the child can overcome the barriers in the system. However, many parents lacked essential information about their children’s educational rights and options. While almost all of the children Human Rights Watch interviewed had disability cards issued by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF), a quasigovernmental disability body, the CDPF has not effectively reached out to parents about their children’s education, let alone helped them identify and remove barriers in mainstream schools. The CDPF and the Ministry of Education, which oversees education, also fail to proactively address discrimination and ensure that reasonable accommodation is provided in mainstream schools.

4.     Draft amendments to Regulations on the Education of People with Disabilities fail to ensure inclusion

In February 2013, the Chinese government announced amendments to the 1994 Regulations of Education of Persons with Disabilities in China. Although the amendments to the disability regulations have some positive elements, such as requiring mainstream schools to develop individualized educational plans for students with disabilities, the revisions failed to make adequate progress on making mainstream schools inclusive as required by international law. The amendments continue to reinforce a parallel system of segregated special education schools and do not remove the obstacles to regular schools for children with disabilities. The amendments also fail to clearly stipulate that local governments and schools must provide “reasonable accommodations” to help students overcome barriers related to their disabilities in mainstream schools.

5.      Suggested questions and recommendations

Human Rights Watch suggests that the Committee asks the Chinese government the following questions:

1. What actions has the Chinese government taken to raise the enrollment rate of children with disabilities, especially in rural areas?
2. Why does the Chinese government maintain a system of physical examinations for university applicants as part of the enrollment process?
3. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recommended in October 2012 that the Chinese government “reallocate[s] resources from the special education system to promote the inclusive education in mainstream schools.”
   1. Can the Chinese government provide figures respectively on its spending on the special education system and its spending on the mainstream system specifically dedicated for the education of children with disabilities in the past year?
   2. For the latter (spending on the mainstream system specifically dedicated for the education of children with disabilities), please provide details of how funds were allocated and the purposes they were used for.

Human Rights Watch also requests that the Committee urge the Chinese government to adopt the following recommendations:

1. Revise the 1994 Regulations of Education of Persons with Disabilities in China to bring them in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Specifically, the new regulations should state clearly that the Chinese government’s overarching goal in the education of people with disabilities is full inclusion at all levels of education and set forth specific actions authorities should take to ensure reasonable accommodation of students with disabilities in mainstream schools.
2. Develop a time-bound, strategic plan to move towards an inclusive education system that delivers quality education, with specific indicators to measure access to education for children with disabilities.
3. Immediately repeal the Guidelines for the Physical Examination of Students in Recruitment for Ordinary Higher Level Educational Institutions because they allow disability-based discrimination in higher education.
4. Provide financial and other resources, including adequately trained staff, to mainstream schools so that they can ensure the provision of reasonable accommodation to pupils and students with disabilities.
5. Establish an independent body made up of independent disability experts and representatives of children with disabilities and their parents to monitor the educational system’s compliance with relevant laws and regulations and to receive complaints about discrimination and lack of reasonable accommodation at mainstream schools. The body should be charged with making recommendations for reform.
6. Improve the early identification of disabilities in children and provide more comprehensive and regular individualized health and educational assessment for children with disabilities beyond simply issuing disability cards, which only note broad and simple disability categories.

We hope you find these comments useful and would welcome an opportunity to discuss them further. Thank you for your attention to our concerns, and with best wishes for a productive session.

Sincerely,

Sophie Richardson

China Director