(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-21 20:46

China has decided to draw 300 million yuan ($40 million) of lottery funds to support 300,000 poor senior high school students in 22 western and central provinces and regions, sources with the Ministry of Education said here Friday.

"It is the first program in which the Chinese government gives financial support to senior high school students," said Zhang Baoqing, former vice minister of Education and executive director of the China Education Development Foundation.

The foundation, a non-profitable organization, was entrusted to implement the program.

Each student to receive subsidy will undergo a strict approval procedure to ensure they are qualified and the final name list will be made public to ensure the transparency of the program, Zhang said.

The fund will go directly to the schools and be handed over to each student.

The Ministry of Education will strive to enable each eligible student to get their money at the Spring Festival, a traditional Chinese festival which falls on February 7 next year.

China has made unprecedented efforts to boost education at all levels in the past year, as the central government put in more than 30 billion yuan to financially support four million college students and 16 million occupational school students.

China exempted rural students in western regions from compulsory education fees in 2006 and the exemption policy was expanded to the central and eastern regions in 2007. A total of 150 million rural Chinese students in primary and junior high schools nationwide have benefited from this policy.

The government will exempt all students in urban areas from tuition fees for their nine years of compulsory education from next year

Sun Guangqi, a senior official with the Ministry of Finance, said the program will open up new channels to allocate money to support poor students.

Statistics showed that China has 25 million high school students, among whom 16.86 million live in western and central China.

Chen also said the central government will increase educational input to increase accommodation subsidies for needy students and to repair  ramshackle classrooms in central and western areas.

Earlier this year, China's Ministry of Finance said it would allocate a further 47 billion yuan ($6.27 billion) to support rural education in the next three years until 2009.