With registration for this year's college entrance examinations
looming, physically disabled students are breathing a sigh of
relief due to a new governmental policy, which will relax limits on
physical exams for newly recruited college students.
"Now I can just go ahead and do my best on the exams. I don't have
to worry that my healthier classmates will have the upper hand at
the recruitment because of my disability," said Zhang Yan.
The 18-year-old boy, who will be graduating this year from a high
school in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province,
lost an eye due to a wrong diagnosis as a child.
Zhang's mother called Peking University to
ask if her son's eye problem would make it difficult for him to
gain acceptance to the university's esteemed bio-chemistry
department, and was relieved to find out that admittance would be
based "fairly" on academic scores.
"The university official answering the phone quoted the new policy
and said my son was at the same level of other students," the
mother said.
The new guideline, jointly published on Tuesday by the Ministry of
Education, the Ministry of Health and the China Disabled Persons'
Federation, clearly stipulates that no student may be rejected
by a school merely on the basis of having a physical
disability.
Schools may advise disabled students on choice of major if their
decision will affect future employment opportunities, however the
final decision is still up to the student, according to the
guidelines.
Sources with the China Disabled Persons' Federation called the new
guidelines a step forward, saying the measures will help level the
playing field between disabled students and their healthy
counterparts in the college entrance examinations, as there have
been cases in the past where schools accepted healthy students with
lower scores over disabled students.
(China Daily March 13, 2003)