The Ministry of Education yesterday announced that it would build
more schools and train more teachers to boost education in areas
inhabited by China's ethnic minorities.
The educational program will aim to build up primary and secondary
education in administrative areas above county level, the ministry
said at a Beijing press conference.
China's compulsory education policy means that all children should
attend primary school for six years and secondary school for three
years.
However, poor economic and educational conditions mean that the
policy cannot always be implemented.
The ministry's department for minority education said that the
policy was effective in around 45 per cent of areas above county
level inhabited by China's ethnic minorities.
Secondary technical school education will also be developed to
train farmers and herdsmen in other skills, said department
director Xia Zhu.
Middle schools in cities or relatively rich pastoral areas are
expected to open courses on information technology, said Xia.
Bilingual teaching programs in standard Chinese and the local
minority language will be further promoted in ethnic groups'
regions, he added.
In
North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, trilingual learning
programs in Chinese, English and Mongolian took effect in middle
schools last year and will continue in the future, according to the
educational administration of the region.
Over the next few years, schools in better-developed cities will
recruit more teenagers from the Tibet and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous
regions to help train professionals for the two regions, according
to ministry official Ah Budu.
In
1985, the central government decided to provide State funding to
sponsor Tibetan trainee teachers in better-developed cities such as
Shanghai and Beijing to help ease the region's shortage of teaching
staff.
By
2000, some 8,200 students had graduated as teachers and returned to
the Tibet Autonomous Region.
A
further 14,500 Tibetan students are now studying in 150 schools
across 26 provinces or municipalities.
Starting in 2000, Beijing, Shanghai and 10 other better-developed
cities opened classes at middle-school level and recruited the
first group of 1,000 Xinjiang students.
(China
Daily June 13, 2002)