China's 'Education for All' effort fruitful in 30 years

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-10-09 22:07

BEIJING - Of major events in China over the past three decades, most Chinese would list the resumption of National Examination for the Entrance of University as number one.

In December 1977, 5.7 million Chinese participated in the national exams, the first since the catastrophic Cultural Revolution (1966-76). One year later, the country's reform, opening up and modernization drive was launched.

Over the past three decades, millions of students have graduated from colleges of various kinds, to form a high-quality workforce for the country. And China has developed into one of the largest economies in the world.

According to official figures, the country's higher educational institutions enrolled about 53.86 million students from 128 million participants of national college entrance examinations over the past three decades.

In the meantime, the government has stepped up effort to develop compulsory and secondary education, to improve the quality of the country's citizens. Over the past 30 years, more than 100 million students have graduated from professional schools of different kinds. In 2007, Chinese professional schools had 80 million students in training.

As of 2000, China had reached its goals to ensure nine-year compulsory schooling for children and to eliminate illiteracy among young and middle-aged citizens.

The great success in the economic reforms has fed back to the country's educational field as the government has increased investment and adopted more favorable policies in education, with greater importance attached to rural education.

In 2003, a remote educational program was launched to cover 360,000 rural elementary and middle schools involving more than 100 million rural students.

In 2004, the central government invested 10 billion yuan (US$1.45 billion) to build more than 8,300 boarding schools in rural areas.

   Previous page 1 2 Next Page  

   Previous page 1 2 Next Page