Free compulsory education to spread to urban children in 2008

China will continue to spend moreon education next year and spread the free nine-year compulsoryeducation to urban children, said finance minister Xie Xuren.

The government would continue to improve the funding system toguarantee free nine-year compulsory education currently enjoyed by150 million rural children, while spreading it to their urbancounterparts next year, Xie told an annual conference of theMinistry of Finance in Beijing.

Starting from the spring term, China would increase the fundingfor free textbooks used for the national compulsory courses, andthe local governments would provide more money for free textbooksfor local compulsory courses, he said.

Local governments would also provide scholarships to cover theliving costs of boarding students from poor families. The centralgovernment would provide half of the education funding for areasin central and west China, while provincial governments in thoseareas would cover the rest of the costs.

Local governments in east China would provide all educationfees with some supplementary funding from the central government.

Xie said the government would issue new standards for percapita expenditure of students in primary and middle schools, andput those standards into effect within the next two years.

He said the allowance for maintenance and refurbishing of ruralschools in central and west China would also be raised withspecial financial support to high-altitude and cold areas.

In addition, the government would continue free education forstudents taking courses for teaching careers at normal schools andprovide scholarships for poor undergraduates and students atvocational schools.

According to Xie, the first 11 months saw 557.8 billion yuan(about 74.3 billion U.S. dollars) of fiscal expenditure used foreducation, up 32.7 percent compared with the same period lastyear.

As a result of the implementation of scholarships for the poor,about four million college students and 16 million secondaryvocational school students had benefited.

Source: Xinhua