Education

In 2005, China made relatively rapid progress in pre-school education, compulsory education, vocational education, adult education and the education of ethnic minority groups. Statistics show 5.05 million new entrants, besides 15.62 million students and 3.07 million graduating students of regular institutions of higher learning in 2005. Senior secondary schools saw 8.78 million new entrants, 24.09 million students and 6.62 million graduating students. New pupils in primary schools numbered 16.72 million, with 108.64 million students and 20.2 million graduating students.

Education Development in 2005

Free Compulsory Education in Rural Areas

In his government work report made to the Fourth Session of the 10th National People's Congress, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promised that within two years from 2006, tuition and other fees for rural students in compulsory education would be exempted. This will be implemented first in the western regions and then expanded to the central and eastern regions in 2007. For students from rural families with economic difficulties, the government will provide free textbooks and living allowances for boarders. To guarantee the implementation of this policy, the state will increase the allocation for compulsory education by 218.2 billion yuan from 2006 to 2010. This will ease the burden on every student in primary school by an average of 140 yuan and every student in junior secondary school by 180 yuan. The policy will benefit 160 million children of school age in rural areas, who account for nearly 80 percent of the total 200 million primary and middle school students.

National Report on Education for All

The Ministry of Education released the National Report on Education for All in China in November 2005. According to it, China has some 180 million children between the age of six and 14. In 2004, elementary school children numbered 112 million, with the net enrolment rate for school-age children standing at 98.95 percent and the rate of admission into junior middle schools at 98.1 percent, up 3.2 percent over 2000. There were 65.28 million students in junior middle schools, with gross enrolment rate of 94.1 percent, 5.5 percent higher than that of 2000.

Between 2001 and 2004, 8.03 million people became literate, representing an annual average of 2 million newly literate people. The illiteracy rate for the youth and the middle-aged was contained to within 4 percent. The literacy rate for adults ranks among the first among developing countries with large populations. In 2004, the number of schools for special education stood at 1,560, an increase of 29 schools over 2000. Disabled students numbered 372,000 in 2004, almost the same as in 2000. Among them, the number of handicapped children studying at general schools was 243,000, representing 65.3 percent of the total number of students in special education.

The Chinese Government has always attached great importance to education for all, actively promoted the popularization of nine years of compulsory education and the elimination of youth and middle-aged illiteracy, and developed rural education. It aims to offer free textbooks and boarders’ living allowances for all students from rural families with economic difficulties by 2007, free compulsory education in rural areas by 2010 and free compulsory education throughout the country by 2015.