An Education Ministry panel on Monday recommended allowing children with mild disabilities to attend school with other children.

The ministry's current policy rules that children with mental or physical disabilities must be schooled separately from others. The panel intends to initiate a revision to that policy in 2002.

If a revision goes through, it will be the first time for educational barriers to be lowered in 38 years, according to members of the panel.

The panel, headed by noted psychologist Hayao Kawai, conforms with the current international trend of "inclusion," in which education is provided to all children, with or without disabilities.

Its interim report says current rigid educational barriers should be reviewed so children with weak vision or hearing impairments can attend ordinary schools. It sites the availability of advanced medical aids that make it possible for children with impaired senses to lead essentially normal school lives.

The report also says that cases of disability should be handled on an individual basis, such as letting a wheelchair user to attend a school equipped with elevators.

The report won support from parents of disabled children, who hope it will take Japan one step closer to the level of some industrial countries where "barrier-free education" is a reality.

Some education experts said that in Japan, the barrier-free system will be better not only for children with disabilities, but also for those without because delayed efforts to develop infrastructure have denied the disabled equal access to public facilities, making them almost "invisible."

A policy of joint education will foster character in those without disabilities by educating them in assisting and living with the disabled, they say.

However, some people were displeased with the report because it does not call for abolishing educational segregation, meaning that children with severe disabilities will still have to attend special schools.

Some municipalities have already started to allow those with physical disabilities to attend schools for other children. In Osaka, the prefectural education board said last week it will accept mentally impaired students at prefectural high schools beginning with the next academic year.