Intellectually Disabled Girl Has to Move from Chiba to Tokyo to Attend High School

By Barrier Free Japan, extract from The Tokyo Shimbun

March 4 2025

CHIBA/TOKYO – In August 2024, Ms. Koyuki Hamano, 16, an intellectually disabled girl who was a resident of Chiba City, was rejected from the Chiba prefectural high school entrance examination, and asked the prefectural government to cancel her rejection, the Chiba District Court rejected her request to be provisionally obligated to enroll in the school.

On February 4, Hamano’s parents held a press conference in the city and announced that they have given up on the idea of continuing her education in the prefecture, terminated the trial, and that she will enroll in a Tokyo metropolitan high school from April.

Hamano is intellectually and physically disabled due to Rett syndrome, an intractable disease caused by a genetic mutation. She was the only one who took the entrance examination for a prefectural high school with a maximum capacity of four students with intellectual disabilities, but was not accepted. In October of last year, Ms. Hamano filed a lawsuit against the prefectural government, claiming that the principal used his discretion in failing to admit her without fully understanding her disability, despite the fact that the entrance examination regulations state that “the number of candidates for admission shall be limited to the number of openings available.”