We must strive for equality in education, says an article in People's Daily. The following is an excerpt:
Last year, Premier Wen Jiabao promised the government would ensure education for every child. This year, Wen said in the Government Work Report that rural compulsory education had been fully financed by the State revenues, and starting from this autumn, urban students would also be exempt from fees.
It is by no means easy for China, a country with a population of 1.3 billion, to realize free compulsory education. Although China passed the Compulsory Education Law in 1986, only 20 percent of students were able to complete the nine-year compulsory education at that time and they needed to pay school fees. For the disadvantaged groups in both the urban and rural areas, it was still too expensive for them to send their children to school.
Free compulsory education, for the first time, will now be fully adopted throughout the country.
China has accelerated the pace of advancing equal education as its economy has improved. It has not only popularized nine-year compulsory education and wiped out illiteracy among youths, but also scrapped school fees. It gives every child an opportunity to go to school and the word dropouts, for those who could not afford to continue their education, will soon disappear.
Education equality is the basis for social equality. China has more than 600,000 schools, 260 million students as well 14 million teachers, it still has a long road ahead to achieve a balanced education system.
We have to face the fact that for a long time the government had failed to put enough money into education. China has a weak educational base and a wide gap exists in educational development in the different regions.
The boarding school system lacks supporting facilities in the remote western regions, and the salaries of teachers in the rural areas need to be raised.
(China Daily March 25, 2008)