As their parents follow the seasonal rhythms and roam with their herds across northwest China's Gansu Province searching for lush new pastures, the children of migrant herdsmen are now staying put in comfortable spacious classrooms.

These classrooms are in new boarding schools built in China's grasslands to replace the open-air schools, which used to follow the herdsmen's tents and were called "schools on horse backs."

As one of the five largest grazing regions in China, Gansu boasts 240 million mu (about 16 million hectares) of natural grassland. It is the home of 3.2 million herdsmen of several ethnic minority groups such as the Tibetan, Hui, Mongolian, Kazak and Yugur.

Over the years children of the herdsmen only received intermittent elementary education while they traveled.

To improve the educational environment in the country's vast grazing regions and make sure all school-age children receive quality education they deserve, China set up pilot boarding schoolprograms some years ago in the province's Kazak Autonomous County of Aksay.

Each of the province's 116 villages engaged in stock breeding now has a boarding school for school age children of the ethnic minority herdsmen.

In addition each of the province's 10 counties, where the local economy mainly relies on animal husbandry, now has a high school for boarders.

Ba Jiankun, a local educational official, says, "Boarding schools have permanent grounds and that has saved traveling by both staff and students."

A long-term investment program aiming to improve the educational environment and education quality in grazing regions is now being put into practice.

According to Ba Jiankun, over 3,000 headmasters and teachers have been trained for regions of animal husbandry in the province over the past few years.

In the coming summer vacation, a Sino-New Zealand course will train headmasters for boarding primary schools.

All primary and high schools in the Kazak Autonomous County of Aksay have been equipped with computer-assisted teaching facilities and language-teaching equipment.

Because of the lifestyle in the grazing areas, these boarding schools have adopted a flexible management system.

If the school is close to grazing areas, students are granted regular leave once a month to get together with their families. If the school is too far away, a longer leave is given every few months.

Many more herdsmen have sent their children to boarding schools as they want them to get a better education.

Sociologists say that these widely scattered boarding schools are among the earliest fixed buildings in China's vast pastoral areas, which are now moving towards having new regional centers.

As China has made great efforts in recent years to encourage pastoral households to lease land and follow the pay-for-use policy by promising them a 30 year contract many herdsmen are beginning to swap their tents for houses.

On the Sangke Prairie in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Gannan, many herdsmen build their own houses within range of boarding schools for their children's convenience.

(People's Daily June 17, 2002)