World - "Education for All" inititaive in China

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

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

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

The higher educational institutions enrolled 53.86 million students from 128 million participants in the entrance examinations over the past three decades.

Meanwhile, the government has stepped up efforts to implement compulsory and secondary education. More than 100 million students have graduated from professional schools of different kinds. In 2007, Chinese professional schools had 80 million students in training.

In 2000, China had reached its goal of ensuring nine-year compulsory schooling for children and eliminating illiteracy among young and middle-aged citizens.

The great success in the economic reforms has a positive impact on the educational field as the government has increased investment and adopted more favourable policies in education, with greater importance attached to rural education.

In 2003, a remote educational programme was launched to cover 3,60,000 rural elementary and middle schools involving more than 100 million rural students.

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

In 2006, it amended its Law on Compulsory Education to exempt all school charges for students. This was first adopted in rural areas of the backward western parts of the country in 2006 and nationwide in 2007.

This year, 16 provinces, municipalities and ethnic autonomous regions, as well as five big cities in provincial financial powers, became pilot areas to test the free compulsory education for urban students of elementary and middle schools.

While making great efforts to reach its goal of “Education for All”, the government has also encouraged students to study abroad. In addition, China has opened up its door to overseas students. Over the past 30 years, 1.23 million students from more than 180 countries and regions have studied in various schools.

The successful reforms and increasingly higher international status have made the Chinese language more attractive and useful to foreigners. So far, the number of foreigners studying Mandarin is claimed to exceed 30 million. — Xinhua