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[16 November 2007] – All of Vietnam’s children will be ensured the right to attend school where they live, with or without birth certificate or permanent residential registration, as part of a new policy prepared by Vietnam's Education and Training Ministry. A draft of the Integrated Education Policy was presented at a workshop in Hanoi on 13 November. Its purpose is to improve the quality and effectiveness of the education system for all and provide better access to education for the disadvantaged, especially orphans and minority, street and sexually-abused children, HIV/AIDS patients and drug addicts. The policy stipulates that all barriers, such as costs, discrimination, poverty and bureaucratic procedures, must be removed to ensure children are able to attend school. Disabled children will have the right to change schools and borrow textbooks and education material for free. Poor children will be entitled to social allowances, scholarships and a free school lunch. “The draft of the Integrated Education Policy is a step toward the building of a strategy and action programme that will ensure integrated education for disabled and other disadvantaged children,” said the ministry’s Primary Education Department deputy director Le Tien Thanh. “It is part of the goal to give every child access to appropriate education,” he said. The deputy director said the ministry would soon build a special centre to help disabled and disadvantaged children in every city and province. Each commune would have special teachers for the integrated system and each school would have two such teachers. Further information