The number of enrolled students in compulsory education in rural areas has reached nearly 150 million. From any point of view, the focus and difficulty of compulsory education should be on rural areas. Meanwhile, rural compulsory education is crucial to overall economic and social development in rural areas. Since 1995, in order to speed up the progress of popularizing nine-year compulsory education in poor areas, the central government and local authorities have input a large of money to carry out some major projects to develop compulsory education, which has achieved better effects.
1.3.1 National Compulsory Education Project in Poverty-Stricken Regions
To help poor regions speed up implementation of compulsory education and pro- mote the progress of local people, the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Finance jointly carried out the first phase of the National Compulsory Education Project in National Poverty Stricken Areas (hereafter referred as the project) from 1995 to 2000.
To implement this project, the central government invested 3.9 billion Yuan and local governments input 8.7 billion Yuan, totaling 12.6 billion Yuan. Thefirst phase of the project covered 852 poverty-stricken counties in 22 provinces, among which 568 counties were national poverty stricken counties set down by the Seven-Year Program to help 80 million people out of poverty.
With governments at various levels having attached great importance and full support from the society, particularly people from poor regions, thefirst phase of the project was finished completely by the end of 2000 and reached its planned objectives. The major achievements include the following:
1. The process of Two Basics in the central and western regions was accelerated.
By the end of thefirst phase of the project, 428 counties among 852 counties in the project have passed Two Basics.
2. The physical facilities of compulsory education in poor areas have been remarkably improved. By the implementation of the project, 384 new primary and junior secondary schools were established and 28,478 primary and junior secondary schools were renovated and expanded totally. Thefloor area of pri- mary and junior secondary schools in project counties increased from 13 billion square meters to 18.8 billion square meters, with an increase of 58 million square meters. The rate of dilapidated school buildings decreased from approximately 10 % to less than 3 %. Approximately 6.53 million sets of desks and chairs, more than 100 million volumes of books, and almost 400,000 items of teaching equipment were newly purchased.
3. The teaching level of teachers has been largely improved. In 5 years, the number of trained primary and junior secondary school teachers totaled 466,000 person-times and trained principals totaled 72,200 person-times, improving the qualification rate of primary school teachers to 94 % and of junior secondary school teachers to 87.7 % in project counties. All principals of primary and junior secondary schools are qualified in terms of academic credentials.
4. The distribution of primary and junior secondary schools has been improved. By the implementation of the project, the number of schools in project counties has decreased by 16,700 and the number of students increased by 3.2 million. The average scale of schools has reached 168, with the ratio of students to teachers being 22.7:1. Enrolled students in junior secondary schools have increased by 1.53 million and the average scale the of school has reached 660, with the ratio of students to teachers being 18.2:1.
By the end of 2000, after the first phase of the project, there were still 522 counties in China that had not popularized nine-year compulsory education, cov- ering a total population of approximately 124 million. It is a more arduous task to achieve the objective of popularizing nine-year compulsory education in these poor areas. Therefore, the central committee of CPC and the State Council decided to further carry out the second phase of the project in the period of the Tenth Five-Year Plan. The central government invested 5 billion Yuan and local authorities input 2.36 billion Yuan, totaling 7.36 billion Yuan. The specific transfer payment from the central government would be inclined to western regions, which accounts for more than 90 % of specific transfer payments. The second phase of the project also focused on the renovation and construction of teaching buildings. It also strengthened teacher training and offered new programs, such as the provision of free textbooks and equipment for information technology education.
According to the plan, 10,663 primary and junior secondary schools in the 522 project counties would be newly constructed, renovated, or expanded (4062 newly constructed and 6601 renovated or expanded). Of these, 6928 are primary schools that would be newly constructed, renovated, or expanded (2431 newly constructed, 4497 renovated or expanded) and 3735 are junior secondary schools that would be newly constructed, renovated, or expanded (1631 are newly constructed and 2104 are renovated or expanded). Primary and junior secondary school principals and teachers to be trained would reach 467,000 person-times, with 16,000 sets of equipment, 205 million sets of desks and chairs, and 23 million books and materials purchased. A total of 1.14 million sets of free textbooks were provided to primary and junior secondary school students. Almost 20,000 rural primary and junior secondary schools (14,770 primary schools and 4940 junior secondary schools) were equipped with information technology education and distance education facilities.
1.3.2 Project of Dilapidated School Building Renovation for Primary and Junior Secondary Schools
To speed up the renovation of dilapidated buildings of primary and junior sec- ondary schools, the State Council decided to carry out the Project of Dilapidated School Buildings Renovation for Rural Primary and Junior Secondary Schools around China in 2001. From 2001 to 2002, the first phase of the project was successfully implemented in rural areas, for which both the central government and governments of provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) allocated spe- cial appropriation expenditures of 5.2 billion Yuan. Among the expenditures, 3 billion Yuan was allocated by the central government. A total of 17 million square meters of dilapidated buildings of rural primary and junior secondary schools were renovated. In 2003, the state started the second phase of the project for the rural areas, deciding that the specific transfer payment of 6 billion Yuan would be invested from 2003 to 2005. This would basically eliminate the D level of dilap- idated school buildings for rural primary and junior secondary schools throughout the country.
1.3.3 Rural Boarding Schools Project
To achieve the objective of universal nine-year compulsory education and elimi- nating young and middle-aged illiteracy in western areas by 2007, a guarantee expanding scale of compulsory education counties targeted by Two Basics and removal of the bottlenecks preventing popularization of compulsory education in western rural areas, central, and provincial governments were jointly implemented in the Rural Boarding Schools Project. Namely, it took about 4 years to construct, renovate, and expand a quantity of boarding schools as the mainstays within rural junior secondary education from 2004. Meanwhile, it aimed to speed up the pace of renovating and expanding boarding schools and to make sure all students who needed boarding could study at boarding schools. The special appropriation expenditure of 10 billion Yuan was mainly allocated by the central government. By 2007, of the 410 targeted counties, 317 reached the goals of making nine-year compulsory education generally available and basically eliminating illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults. The proportion of the target groups attaining these two goals in the western region increased from 77 % in 2003 to 96 %.
1.3.4 Two Exemption and One Subsidy Policy
Two Exemption and One Subsidy (TEOS) refers to exempting students from tuition and miscellaneous fees in compulsory education, providing free textbooks for
students from families withfinancial difficulties, and supplying living subsidies for indigent boarding students in poor regions. In 2005, TEOS wasfirst implemented in 592 national key poverty-stricken counties and then expanded to western rural areas and some of rural areas in central China in 2006. Since the spring of 2007, TEOS has covered all rural areas, benefiting 150 million primary and junior secondary school students in rural areas and concretely alleviating the educational burden of farmers. Taking the western region as an example, miscellaneous fees have been reduced by an average of 140 Yuan per year for a family with a primary school student and 180 Yuan per year for a family with a junior secondary school student.
Under the free textbook policy, costs have been reduced by an average of 210 Yuan per year for a primary student and 320 Yuan per year for a junior secondary school student.3 Moreover, the exemption of miscellaneous fees in urban compulsory education has been added to the agenda and will be gradually implemented.
In 2006, a total of 184 billion Yuan in government appropriations for rural compulsory education have been used to exempt 52 million students from tuition and miscellaneous fees in compulsory education in western regions and some areas of central China, providing free textbooks for 37.3 million students from families with financial difficulties, and supplying living subsidies for 7.8 million boarding students in poverty.
1.3.5 Project of Distance Education in Rural Primary and Junior Secondary Schools
To improve the quality of basic education in rural areas, the state decided to carry out a distance education project in rural primary and junior secondary schools to transmit quality schooling resources and teaching methods to rural primary and junior sec- ondary schools via Video on Demand (VOD) of teaching disks, VOD of satellite teaching, and computer classrooms. The Decision of the State Council on Further Strengthening Rural Education introduced the distance education project in rural primary and junior secondary schools, to proceed on the principle of“overall plan- ning, pilot anteceding, making breakthroughs in main areas and implementing step by step.”
Since 2003, the central government has supplied 1.344 billion Yuan from central finance and treasury bond expenditures for the pilot program of modern distance education for rural primary and junior secondary schools in central and western China, under the rule of local governments being responsible and the central government providing the appropriate subsidy pursuant to the economic develop- ment level of different regions. Particularly, the pilot regions in western China mainly depend on investments from the central government with support from local
3Statistics are from website of Ministry of Finance: www.mof.gov.cn/news/20070228_2118_
24475.htm.
governments. The special appropriation expenditures from the central government account for two-thirds of the total for pilot areas.
Efforts will be made to equip about 110,000 digital disc teaching systems in rural primary schools, establish about 380,000 video stations for satellite teaching in primary schools, and establish and equip about 40,000 computer classrooms in rural junior secondary schools in 5 years, so as to alleviate the burden of schooling resource leanness and insufficient teachers in rural primary and junior secondary schools in the western region and promote teachers’ qualifications and quality education. With regard to the Modern Distance Education Project in Rural Primary and Junior Secondary Schools, the central government and local governments have inputted accumulated expenditures of more than 11 billion Yuan to set up a distance education network covering all rural areas in China, making it possible for primary and junior secondary school students in central and western regions to enjoy quality teaching resources. By 2006, approximately 8 billion Yuan had been invested into the modern distance education projects of rural primary and junior secondary schools in China, covering more than 80 % of rural primary and junior secondary schools in central and western regions and providing more than 100 million primary and junior secondary school students with access to quality educational resources.
From the beginning of the Ninth Five-Year Period, the central government has constantly strengthened financial support for rural compulsory education. The implementation of these projects has made nine-year compulsory education uni- versal in poor rural areas and improved educational quality. Meanwhile, these projects were implemented in the background of transformations of the rural compulsory educationfinance system and were reflections of these transformations to some extent.