It will become less complicated for Chinese schools to pass ISO authentication, as the country is planning to set up a national center to authenticate school education with international standards.

Once completed, the center will facilitate authentication with ISO standards and help improve the quality of the country's school education, that of private school education in particular, according to an official of the Education Ministry.

China has a total of 700,000 schools, 54,000 of which are private schools. However, only ten schools have passed the ISO9000 authentication. Experts say authentication services in this sector have immense market potential.

The ISO9000 international quality authentication is known as a key to the international market. Over 400,000 enterprises and organizations from over 130 countries have adopted ISO9000 standards.

By the end of May, China had ratified 37 professional authentication centers, and 30,248 enterprises had passed ISO9000 standards.

(Xinhua News Agency 07/04/2001)