China's education system is better than it has ever been since the reform and opening-up in 1978, with two outstanding achievements of spreading compulsory education and boosting higher education, Education Minister Zhou Ji said Tuesday.

Zhou said in a press briefing on the reform and development of the education sector that compulsory education had made historic progress in recent years. By the end of 2002, China had 456,900 primary schools and 65,600 junior high schools, with enrollment rates of 98.58 percent and 90 percent respectively.

Nine-year compulsory education had expanded to 90 percent of the population, the highest rate among the nine most populous countries in the world.

Higher education had rapidly developed in size and quality, with 16 million students studying in 2,003 colleges and universities by the end of 2002, an enrollment rate of 15 percent. Meanwhile, 597 colleges and universities were merged into 267 comprehensive universities.

The government always prioritized education by constantly increasing educational investment. The proportion of fiscal investment to gross domestic product was 3.41 percent in 2002, up from 2.55 percent in 1998.

Zhou said the government had made consistent efforts to eliminate illiteracy. As a result, illiteracy in the population had fallen to 6.72 percent from 80 percent before 1949 when the New China was founded.

By the end of 2002, China had the world's biggest education system with 1.17 million schools and 318 million on-campus students.
 
(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2004)