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PART Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture

In order to help mentally or physically handicapped children develop their own possibilities to the full and enable them to live an independent social life. Special schools and classes for the blind, the deaf or the otherwise handicapped have small classes to provide students with careful instruction relevant to the types and degrees of their handicaps as well as to their developmental stages.

In recent years educational authorities have become required: to core with an increase in the ratio of children with serious handicaps and multiple handicaps; to enrich educational programs for children with light handicaps; to increase early childhood education programs so as to enable handicapped children to overcome their handicaps as early as possible; and to enrich vocational education programs and career guidance services which are aimed at contributing to the social independence of handicapped children.

To meet these requirements, the Ministry has been striving: to provide better supervision and guidance to handicapped children and their parents so that they may attend appropriate schools relevant to the types and degrees of their disabilities; to improve the Course of Study for Special Schools; to improve the quality of teachers and other personnel at special schools; to facilitate the independent vocational life of handicapped children; and to increase the public's understanding towards mentally and physically handicapped children. The Ministry also began in 1990 to conduct studies aimed at the improvement of special education for children with light handicaps who are enrolled in ordinary classes in ordinary elementary and lower secondary schools and are given special training in special classes in regular intervals. (These children are taught various subjects in ordinary classes.)

As a large amount of money is required for the education of handicapped children enrolled in special schools and classes, the government pays the parents of these children a subsidy for special school attendance, with a view to alleviating the financial burdens of these parents and encouraging them to have their children attend special schools and classes.