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China to pump US$2.4b to rural schools
By Cui Ning (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-05-31 05:37
The government is ploughing billions of yuan into rural education over the
next four years in a bid to level the educational playing field.
Internet-based teaching and learning networks will boost the minimal
resources currently available in China's countryside, where the use of computers
is still rare.
Half of the money will be used to build new schools and bring old
accommodation more up to date in remote and poor central and western regions.
The Ministry of Education made the pledge yesterday at a news conference in
Beijing.
"The nine-year compulsory education law is basically being adhered to all
over the country, but rural areas still lag behind better-developed urban areas
because of the long-standing disparity in economic development," said Jiang
Peimin, in the Department for Basic Education.
He said that by 2007, students in poor areas will be exempted from textbook
fees and get government subsidies to help them finish their nine years'
compulsory studies (six years in primary schools and three years in junior
middle schools).
At least 80 per cent of school-age students in the country live in rural
areas, the ministry's statistics indicate.
"Bridging the educational development gap between rural and urban areas
cannot be achieved overnight," Jiang said. "But we must make unremitting efforts
to solve this problem in the long run."
The ministry will implement a supervision system to ensure that teaching
conditions in rural areas improve, said Zheng Fuzhi, the ministry's official in
charge of nationwide educational development.
Regional education departments will have to recruit more teachers for rural
schools, and teachers in cities will also rotate around rural areas to help ease
the shortage, Zheng said.
Xuzhou, a city in East China's Jiangsu Province, already sends teachers into
rural schools for between six months and two years, says Song Nongcun, an
official with the Xuzhou Educational Department.
The ministry also called on schools in cities to accept the children of
migrant workers in line with the equality principle.
(China Daily 05/31/2005 page2)
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