Supplying school buses for all primary and middle school students in China would cost 460 billion yuan (US$72.6 billion), a State Councilor claimed at the weekend.

An overloaded van taking 12 students home plunged into a 60-meter deep valley in rural southwest China on Saturday.[Photo/yunnan.cn]

Councilor Liu Yandong told a conference on Saturday that this would be difficult to provide in a single sum, reported Beijing Youth Daily.

Instead, Liu said online distance learning will take some of the strain off school bus services.

A series of fatal school bus accidents over the past few months has led to calls for good-quality bus services for every pupil in China.

On the day Liu addressed the conference, six people - including four students - were killed and eight injured when an overloaded van carrying 12 students plunged into a 60-meter valley in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

One of the eight injured students died in hospital yesterday, bringing the death toll to seven. Two of the other seven hospitalized students remained in a serious condition.

Liu told the conference that, according to education ministry data, there are 150 million primary and middle school students in China, and at least 1.5 million school buses are needed to serve them all.

Buying and maintaining this number of buses would cost 460 billion yuan - too much for the government to provide in a single sum - but online distance learning may help reduce the need, the newspaper reported Liu as saying.

She also said that the State Council is working with the education ministry and other government administrations to tackle problems with school buses.

Draft regulations on school bus safety were made public by the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, in response to public anger over poor management and lax supervision.

Under these, school buses would be given priority by traffic police and allowed to use lanes designated for public buses. Vehicles following buses would have to stop and wait while students get on or off.

The draft also has clauses on quality, equipment and license issues.

Liu's speech prompted heated discussion online, with some web users questioning the accuracy of government calculations, and others calling for public transport to help out and the number of official vehicles to be cut.

One web user on a sina.com forum asked: "If the budget is so unacceptable to the government, why don't they rent buses from public transport systems?"

"The problem would be easily solved if government officials spend less on purchasing cars for their offices," claimed another netizen.

A new policy has limited purchase cost of vehicles for government use to cut the expenditure on vehicles.

Meanwhile, of 285,000 school buses in service in China, only 10 percent meet technical standards issued last year, according to Xinhua news agency.