Disabled kids let down by SA school system
A Human Rights Watch report has shown that nearly 600 000 children living with disabilities are excluded from South Africa's education system.
The report released yesterday found that children with disabilities in five out of nine provinces face some form of barrier, the first of which is often being classified according to their disabilities from a young age.
The organisation's Elin Martinez says there is no schooling at all for many children living with disabilities.
Martinez says government's 2001 policy on special needs education provided a good outline when it was launched, but its rollout has taken much longer than expected.
''Aspects are adjusting the compulsory age limit so that children with disabilities do not need to be dropped out of the system when they reach 15.
''Even such foundational aspects are not there yet though the government claims to have done a lot. Even the fact that they don't know how many children with disabilities all requiring assisted education is already a good indication that the plan cannot be monitored at the moment,'' she said.
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