11.06.2021 – 00:22
CGTN
Peking (ots/PRNewswire)
An old Chinese proverb says: “To dig a well you start with a shallow pit that gets deeper and deeper”. The phrase means that a long journey begins with a small step. It comes from “Liu Zi · Chong Xue,” a book that was written about 1,500 years ago.
Chinese President Xi Jinping sees education as a first and fundamental step to “dig the well” and eradicate absolute poverty across the country. This goal was achieved in 2020.
Preventing the intergenerational transfer of poverty
Yangjialing Fuzhou Hope Elementary School in Yan’an, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, was renovated in 1995 with donations from Fuzhou City, capital of southeast Fujian Province, after Xi Jinping, then Fuzhou party leader, encouraged local entrepreneurs to target the underdeveloped regions to help the country build schools.
“We mustn’t leave the children behind,” Xi said when he visited the school in 2015 and emphasized that education is the key factor for the development of poor regions.
The school, which once had only one teacher and one classroom in a cave, has changed rapidly with government and society support. Today it is in a four-story building with modern multimedia classrooms and students get a free lunch at school.
Ministry of Education (MOE) statistics released in 2020 show that China’s total investment in education, including free meals and improving school facilities, has increased more than eight percent annually for the previous three years.
According to the White Paper on Combating Poverty in China, published in April 2021, the country has renovated around 108,000 schools since 2013 to ensure nine-year compulsory education in poor areas.
“Reducing poverty must begin with reducing the lack of education. Therefore, in combating poverty, it is particularly important to offer children in rural areas a good education, which in turn contributes significantly to preventing the intergenerational transfer of poverty,” said Xi .
Reduction of the educational gap
Regarding educational equality as the foundation for social equality, Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized the importance of narrowing the gap in educational resources and quality between rural and urban areas.
In the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), China’s central budget provided subsidies worth 749.5 billion yuan (US $ 114.6 billion) to support compulsory education, and 90 percent of the funds were invested in rural areas, according to the Ministry of Education. For example, students from poor rural households received a state subsidy to help finance their studies.
The 2021 White Paper on Poverty Reduction in China said there were no dropouts in rural areas due to financial difficulties. All children from rural poor households can now attend nine years of compulsory schooling, and the graduation rate in 2020 was 94.8 percent.
China is also increasingly switching to digital in education, and internet infrastructure has now bridged the gap between urban and rural education – all elementary and middle schools across the country have an internet connection.
Students at Yangjialing Fuzhou Hope Elementary School can now use the “Internet Classroom,” which the school and partner schools in major cities use to offer real-time lessons.
Measures have also been taken to enroll more poor students, expand employment opportunities for graduates, and help students overcome poverty through vocational training.
More than eight million middle and high school graduates from poor families have received vocational training, 5.14 million poor students have received higher education, and major colleges have received approximately 700,000 students from designated rural and poor areas.
Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcUM0b2VEJ8
Press contact:
Simin Jiang
+86-18826553286
[email protected]
– .
