China has basically realized its educational goals in its
western regions, State Councilor Chen Zhili said on Thursday at a national
meeting.
He said 368 of the 410 most impoverished counties in the western
regions had accomplished their goals to provide nine years of
compulsory education and to make all young and middle-aged people
literate.
While the other 42 had failed to achieve their goals, they had
made compulsory schooling from first to sixth grade available for
children, said Chen. He asked local governments to offer more
support and to make more effort to help those counties catch up
with their counterparts.
In 2004, the government launched a campaign where everyone
living in the country's western regions would be able to receive
compulsory schooling from first to ninth grades by 2007 and to make
all young and middle-aged people literate.
China's western regions are less economically developed compared
with the country's affluent eastern and southern areas.
The central budget has allocated about 10 billion yuan (US$1.33
billion) to build or expand 7,651 boarding schools in the region,
enabling 1.95 million more students to study and 2.07 million to
live on campus, Chen said.
Last year, China exempted students in rural areas of the west
from compulsory educational fees. This year, all students have been
exempted from the various fees pertaining to the nine-year
compulsory education.
Both the central budget and local governments have put in a
total of 11 billion yuan for the establishment of a
distant-learning project that covers 360,000 rural middle and
primary schools. It will allow more than 100 million students to
share educational resources, Chen said.
Quality of teaching has also improved due to diversified
training programs in recent years, he said.
(Xinhua News Agency November 16, 2007)