County-level administration is a great breakthrough reform in China's rural education, which has not only solved a series of problems, but also offered new opportunities to rural students, a high-ranking official said in Beijing Monday.
Chinese Minister of Education Zhou Ji said here Monday that China has so far offered compulsory education to 91 percent of its population, and lifted the entrance rate for junior high school to90 percent. The Chinese people have had an average schooling of eight years, surpassing the world average. However, China still had 85 million illiterate citizens, of which three quarters live in China's rural areas.
According to Zhou, in the past over 50 percent of rural education was financed by the central government, however, rural education mainly depended on town and village level administrations. This led to such problems as teachers' salaries being unpaid and illegal charges being levied against students, due to lack of funds and loose management.
In order to lessen the burden of Chinese farmers, China has launched a county-level administration mechanism for compulsory education in rural areas, with the county-level governments taking back management of personnel and finance. Funds for rural education are co-sponsored by the central, provincial, municipal and county-level governments.
Statistics showed by the end of this May, more than 98 percent of the Chinese county-level divisions have taken back the teachers' salary management, and 94 percent of them have taken control of personnel management.
County-level administration also boosted the public finance system, Zhou said, with an increase of budgetary appropriation in rural compulsory education to 99 billion yuan (about US$11.97 billion) in 2002, from the original 43 billion yuan (about US$5.2 billion) in 1997.
In 2002, transferred payment from central government to local government for rural education totaled 24.35 billion yuan (about US$2.94 billion), which played a key role in guaranteeing salaries for rural teachers. The central government has also launched special funds for rural compulsory education with 9.584 billion yuan (about US$1.16 billion), which is almost nine times of that of 1997.
Zhou said the rural population totaled 64 percent of China's total, while agricultural technology only contributed 40 percent to the production, which is half the figure in developed countries.
(Xinhua News Agency September 16, 2003)
