As learnt from the Ministry of Education Wednesday the coming "10th Five Year Plan on National Education" shows that China will make a considerable headway in its educational cause in the initial five years of the new century.
As pointed out in the "Plan", the rate of the national population with nine-year compulsory education will be raised by the year 2005. The gross entrance rate of junior high school will exceed 90 percent; senior high school education will be expanded and the scale of professional training following junior high school education will be enlarged so as to raise the gross entrance rate of senior high school to about 60 percent.
The scale of the higher education will also be vigorously expanded, expecting to increase its gross entrance rate to nearly 15 percent by 2005.
China has 11 million college and university students on campus in 2000. Calculated on the basis of the above rates planned by Ministry of Education, the number of China's university students will exceed 16 million by 2005.
As required by the "Plan" the related authorities and circles should vigorously develop sophisticated Telnet education, promote vocational education, follow-up training and re-education so as to build up by and by a popularized and socialized lifelong educational system.
The task for the reform and development of educational cause during the "10th Five-year Plan" period, as pointed out by the Ministry of Education, is quite an arduous work, which needs practical investment by governments at different levels. The bottleneck of investment in education must be set free so as to improve the conditions for running schools, strengthen the building up of teaching staff and improve the educational quality. The reform in education should be deepened and the creation in mechanism and construction of legal system should be intensified so as to create a favorable and healthy environment for the development of educational cause. And initiative of all circles of society must get mobilized to form a social ambience for the training of talents in the new century. Priorities should be given to some major projects such as "Quality Educational Project", "National Compulsory Educational Project for Impoverished Regions", "Educational Development Project in Western Regions", "Informationization Project of Education", "Construction of First-Rank Universities and Courses and 211 Project" and "University Hi-Tech Industrialization Project ", etc.
(People's Daily 03/29/2001)
