Teachers involved in compulsory education in China's most populous
province of
Henan
will not need to worry about their salary being paid late because
of the shortage of funds in schools, as they will be paid by state
finances from January 1 next year.
This will be one of the important steps in China's basic education
reform which is expected to draw mammoth state financing. In
addition to teachers' incomes, the reform will include new
curriculum arrangements and education quality evaluations,
according to a decision issued by the
State Council earlier this year.
The nine-year compulsory education system has been implemented in
most parts of the country, while at the same time, the goal to
eliminate illiteracy among young and middle-aged people has been
realized.
China has shifted the focus towards experimenting in new methods to
improve the quality of compulsory education by relieving students
of the examination burden and stressing quality-oriented
education.
To
pilot the reform, 20 million students in Henan Province have got
the chance ahead of their peers elsewhere to enjoy new curriculums
with information technology and social practice courses.
The courses are not only designed to arouse students' interests but
also to develop their all-round abilities.
Currently, China has over 200 million primary and middle school
students, who are benefiting from compulsory education. The number
accounts for one sixth of the country's total population. The
Chinese government has highlighted basic education as a primary
area in the country's infrastructure construction and educational
cause.
China's basic education covers preschool education, the nine- year
compulsory education, special education for disabled children and
illiteracy-elimination education. By the end of last century, the
compulsory education had reached 85 percent of the Chinese
population, reducing the country's rate of young and middle-aged
illiterate adults to below 5 percent.
However, the level of China's rural education varies from region to
region. The fact that the funds used in compulsory education cannot
be ensured, especially in rural areas, is the most prominent
problem in the current basic education system.
The Ministry of
Finance plans to pool 5 billion yuan to improve the basic
education in impoverished rural areas in the next five years.
In
order to deal with the unequal school fees, the country has asked
impoverished counties to implement unified fee standards and costs
for textbooks in compulsory education.
The Chinese government has also appropriated 3 billion yuan to
renovate run-down school buildings in rural areas in the next two
or three years.
China has set 2010 as the time to achieve the basic education goal,
which is to lift the country's basic educational level up to the
standard of the world's relatively developed countries.
(Xinhua News
Agency October 28, 2001)