[By Zhou Tao/Shanghai Daily]

In an accident on November 16, a nine-seater minivan crammed in 64 passengers. Later a head-on collision with a truck led to the death of 19 preschoolers and two adults. Forty-three students were injured in the crash in Zhengning in Gansu Province in the northwest.

Ten days later, in another accident in Dandong, Liaoning Province, 35 primary school students were injured when the bus carrying them rolled over.

In a tragedy in Lingshi, Shanxi Province, on September 26, seven junior middle school students were killed after a minivan crashed into a truck.

On September 9, in Shaoyang, Hunan Province, a small ferry with a capacity of 14 actually took 48 passengers and sank in a river, killing 12 people, including nine students.

On March 16, an overloaded kindergarten van rolled into a pond, killing four and seriously injuring three children.

Last December 27 in Songjiang Township in Hengyang, Hunan Province, a modified tricycle carrying 20 children to school plunged into a creek, killing 14 children.

These bloody accidents are tragic indeed, but to be fair, the ire against the donation to the small Balkan country may be misdirected, because the safe transport of children to schools is not the concern of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

But anyone seeing pictures of the fatal crash in Gansu - the littered shoes and schoolbags, the pools of blood on the makeshift seats - can find it hard to contain their anger, and feel frustrated for being unable to do anything about it.

According to a survey by the Ministry of Education, currently the number of vehicles conveying kindergarten, primary and middle school students totals 285,000, but only 29,000 met relevant safety standards.

Following the recent accidents, Premier Wen Jiabao said on November 27 that he had directed relevant departments to draw up regulations on school bus safety within one month.

Such regulations are easier drawn up than implemented. Experience shows mere regulations never go very far.

On July 1 last year, China published its first compulsory safety and technical regulations for school vehicles.

Regulations prohibit overloading, require safety belts, at least two emergency exits and black boxes.

As we can see, these standards are strictly ornamental.

The Shandong Business News reported recently that "In Jinan [capital of Shandong Province] none of the school buses could meet the standards."

The China News Service website said the same failings are true of school buses for primary school students in Shanxi Province. In recent years the coal-rich province has become known for turning out a huge number of billionaire coal mine owners.

What our schools lack is funding.

Awash in money

Since the government has little inclination to spend on education, public education becomes a private business with low profit margins. To lower the costs, the operators use second-hand, retired motor vehicles, or even tricycles to convey children, and overloading is generally the norm.

This lack of money should be blamed on chronic shortage of education spending.