The Ministry of Education pledged yesterday to bring 6 million
people living in the country's western regions out of illiteracy by
the end of this year.
The undertaking is part of combined efforts by the central
government and local authorities, the deputy director of the
ministry's finance department, Tian Zuyin, said at a press
conference in Beijing yesterday.
"The country will continue to fight illiteracy by providing more
financial support for the students from poverty families, and
building more boarding schools in remote rural areas," Tian
said.
The ministry and the National Development and Reform Commission
have jointly invested 10 billion yuan ($1.35 billion) to build
boarding schools, with 580 million yuan injected by local
governments between 2003 and this year, he said.
"The program covered 7,651 schools in 953 counties in western
provinces, of which three were built 5,000 m above sea level, and
152 built 4,000 m above sea level," Tian said.
"At least 48.8 million students have benefited from the boarding
school program this year, which is much higher than the record of
16.33 million in 2005," he said.
Tian also said that a total of 1,955 needy students have
benefited from the free textbook policy, and more than 604 students
in boarding schools were given financial aid this year.
Signs have so far been encouraging.
"The rate of enrollment for middle school has increased to 90
percent and the illiteracy rate of adults from 15 to 50 has
continuously declined to 5 percent in the western regions in the
past five years," Tian said.
In 2004, for example, the number of illiterates and
semi-literates over 15 years in western regions was 9.02 percent of
local residents, which was 2.3 percent higher than the domestic
average level, ministry figures showed.
"Providing better educational infrastructure and financial
support is still not enough, we need a group of excellent teachers
to inspire and motivate students," Tian said.
To that end, at least 715 million yuan has been invested in
training teachers and 17,000 top graduates from universities were
employed to teach in western provinces this year, Tian said.
(China Daily November 27, 2007)