Students at the Mary Chapman School for the Deaf in Yangon.

WHEN couples decide to have a baby, they will often draw up a plan to give them their new child the best opportunities in life, particularly in education. But even the best-laid plans can be thwarted – for example, children are sometimes born with a disability.

Both the government and private sectors are now helping to provide educational options for parents with a disabled child. These options provide hope for children who previously would have faced a bleak future.

Schools for disabled children in Myanmar are being operated in the mould of non profit organizations; they survive on donations from local sources as well as from foreign donors. This allows the school to keep the admission fee very low.

For blind children, for example, there are two schools in Yangon and one school in upper Myanmar, in Sagaing.

The School for the Blind in Kyeemyindaing township in Yangon and School for the Blind in Sagaing are both run by the Department of Social Welfare, under the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement.

The principal of the Kyeemyindaing School for the Blind, U Lwin Oo, said the school accepts children from age six to 16, who are taught to the fourth standard. After that, they are sent to a normal government school.

The school charges no fees and provides has both day students and boarders, who it provides with both food and accommodation.

The school can accept 200 students a year but it normally has around 100 students, said U Lwin Oo.

“We don’t have a full enrolment and I’m quite sure this is because many people don’t know about us. If this is the case, it is a great loss for [other blind] children,” U Lwin Oo said.

The school also employs vocational training, such as furniture making cane and massage, to children above age 14.

The privately-run Myanmar Christian Fellowship of the Blind, in Yangon’s Insein township, accepts children aged five and above and employs a similar method to the government school: students complete the fourth standard and are then sent to a normal school.

The school charges K15,000 a year for day students and K40,000-50,000 for boarding students, which covers accommodation, meals and tuition.

The blind schools accept new students in May and the school year ends in February.

There are also two schools in Myanmar for deaf children – one private school in Yangon and one government school in Mandalay.

Mary Chapman School for the Deaf in Yangon’s Dagon township accepts children from the ages of five to 18.

At the school, children learn speech reading, finger spelling and sign language. Then the children learn the standard curriculum that is taught in government schools.

Mary Chapman School for the Deaf teaches the children up to sixth standard after which they can continue their education at normal government schools.

Children over 10 years are taught reading, writing and arithmetic and vocational training –tailoring, knitting, book binding, bag-making, cooking and massage.

The school fee is K1,000 a month and K5,000 a month for meals.
For physically and mentally disabled children, there are two schools in Yangon.

The School for Disabled Children in Mayangone Township in Yangon is operated by the Department of Social Welfare, under the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement.

The school accepts both physically and mentally disabled children between the ages of six to 18 and teaches the standard curriculum up to the fourth standard, after which students can transfer to normal government schools.

The school has developed a special curriculum for mentally disabled children that takes into account the extent of their disability and their capacity to learn.

The admission fee is currently K2000 a year but for tthe 2009 academic year, which begins in June, the admission fee will rise K10,000.

Eden Centre for Disabled Children in Insein township, Yangon, is run by a private teacher and the school accepts children who are physically and mentally disabled, from infants to 18 years of age.

Teacher Daw Lilian Gyi said the school’s philosophy is that the younger disabled children enter the education system, the better. “Early intervention is good for the children. So we accept younger children,” she said. Unlike other schools Eden Centre does not teach the normal curriculum but does prepare children so that they can go to government schools.

The school offers physiotherapy, occupational therapy, hydrotherapy and special education classes for the students.