PESHAWAR: The social welfare department has decided to establish `special educational complexes` for the physicallychallenged children at divisional level in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The decision was made recently during a high-level meeting called here to discuss ways to ensure the provision of the best possible academic environment to the children, who have physical disabilities, at their respective educational institutions, officials in the know told Dawn.

The officials said initially, the proposed educational complexes would provide education to the physically-challenged students up to the eighth grade and afterwards, they would be upgraded to the secondary level after the promotion of enrolled students.

They said currently, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had only two high schools for special children, one in Peshawar and the other Kohat.

The officials said money for the initiative would be drawn from the chief minister`s special funds.

They said the planning and development section of the social welfare department had begun developing PC-I for the project.

The officials said the buildings of the special educationalcomplexes would be purposebuilt, which would have proper ramps for wheelchairs as well as IT laboratories and classrooms for special children friendly.

`Each complex for special children will have separate classes for boys and girls. The physically-challenged children, including visually impaired, physically handicapped, deaf and dumb persons, would get education in the special educational complexes while mentally retarded children were excluded from it,` an official said.

When asked about the exclusion of mentally-retarded children from the project, the official said educating such students was very difficult as they needed highly trained teachers, which the department couldn`t arrange for the time being.

`Teaching mentally retarded children is a specialised subject but such subject specialists are hardly available in the province,` he said.

Other officials said the department had also a programme to train teachers of special children but the successive governments had failed to arrange refresher courses for them to improve their performance.

They said there were 39 primary schools for the children with physical disabilities in the province, who left education incomplete by and large due to the non-existence of schools for them.The officials said currently, around 3,000 students were enrolled in such educational institutions.

They said after graduating from primary schools, the physically-challenged students mostly stopped their education as only two high educational institutions were available in Peshawar and Kohat.

The officials said the special children could continue their education only when they left their homes for taking admission in Peshawar and Kohat faraway from their native towns.

They however said special children didn`t take admission in the institutions away from their homes as they faced problems coming to schools in public transports.

A student of the government school for visually impaired students in Nanakpura, Peshawar, said special children, who were eager to continue education, switched over to the schools for normal students by taking admission in the nearest middle, high and subsequently in colleges.

Another visually impaired student said he and many others like him adopted certain methods of their own to learn their subjects.

`We record the teachers` lessons on cassettes and listen to them at home,` he said.

The child said some special children memorised lessons by listening to normal children, who read them out.