Special education lights up disabled lives

The 14-year-old boy is one of the 90 off-campus students whose physical or mental condition means they cannot attend school. Every Friday, teachers visit them and provide lessons and rehabilitation training in their homes.

Li Hong teaches four students, including Shi, at their homes.

During a 60-minute one-on-one session, she first helped Shi review what he had learned the previous week, and then taught him how to recognize the yuan and judge its denominations. She tried to teach the boy some simple calculations by simulating a shopping experience. 

Since people with autism and cerebral palsy are usually anxious when meeting strangers, the school seldom reshuffles the pairing once the teachers have won their students' trust.

Li Hong and her colleague Li Hua have been visiting their students for nearly six years. Each round trip takes almost four hours and they cover more than 300 kilometers.

Shi is one of the very few students at the school who can express themselves verbally. He said he loves "whatever Ms Li teaches", and addition and subtraction are his favorite subjects. He would like to "work with" computers when he grows up.

His mother, Liu Chengli, discovered that Shi has become very interested in learning and also better tempered since the home tuition started.

She plans to buy him a computer as a way of facilitating his online studies.

"Children must learn some knowledge. Without knowledge, a man is useless," said the 38-year-old mother of two, whose own education finished when she left primary school.

China's regulations on education for the disabled guarantee access to nine years of compulsory education for all school-age children and adolescents with disabilities.

No schools are allowed to decline their appeals for schooling. The requirement is simplified as "full coverage and zero rejection".

In 2016, Fengcheng started sending teachers to provide rehabilitation training or teaching for disabled students who could not attend the school.

Most of the students who require tuition at home live in remote mountainous areas with unknown road conditions and unreliable communications. As a result, the school has doubled the driving premium for the teachers.

Li Hong believes that teaching the students at their own dinner tables is a labor of love. "The meaning of our efforts lies in providing these children with dignity and a guarantee for a decent life," she said.

For students with mental issues, learning difficulties and little or no linguistic ability, Li Hong and her colleagues provide rehabilitation training, such as massages.

By explaining the government's assistance policies, they have also helped some families solve financial difficulties.