Lunch for rural kids
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China Daily, October 28, 2011
The State Council's decision on Wednesday to provide 16 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) a year from the central coffers to improve nutrition for rural students is a welcome initiative to raise the quality of rural education.
The central government has exempted rural children from tuition and other fees for nine-year compulsory education and provided subsidies for those whose families are in extremely poor conditions since 2007. This has relieved many poverty-stricken families of the burden of paying for the basic education of their children.
However, malnutrition is still a big problem for poor rural students. An investigation conducted by the China Development Research Foundation under the State Council in 2010 found that 12 percent of 1,458 rural kids aged from 10 to 13 were retarded in physical development and 9 percent were underweight because of malnutrition.
In March this year, 500 journalists and a dozen of news organizations initiated an online campaign to collect donations in order to provide poor kids in rural areas with a free lunch. Early in May, the China Social Welfare Education Foundation established a special fund for the project, which raised more than 10 million yuan in nearly a month.
This would be able to provide nearly 20,000 rural kids with a free lunch for a year. But it is obviously far from enough for non-governmental organizations or volunteers to raise the necessary funds to provide more than 100 million rural students with a free lunch.
The new government initiative, which will start on a trial basis this autumn, will benefit 26 million rural students in 680 counties.
As an increasing number of rural kids attend boarding schools in towns, following the closure of many village schools due to the declining number of rural students, many children do not eat lunch because their schools are too far away from their homes and the schools do not have canteens, and because their families are too poor to afford lunch for them.
The State Council's decision indicates that the central government knows that the physical well-being of more than 100 million rural kids has a bearing on the future development of this country and that paying to ensure their healthy development, both intellectually and physically, is an investment in the nation's future.
But while the new measure is to be applauded, we share the central government's concern that the money must be used exactly as intended.
The scandals involving 12 school headmasters in Yongkang, East China's Zhejiang province, who exploited students by taking kickbacks from lunch providers, should be a reminder that supervision must be strengthened to guarantee that the money is spent solely for the benefit of the students.
As the State Council decision requires, accounts of student canteens must be brought into the sunshine.
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