Authorities in China's far western Xinjiang region has decided to raise by up to 100 percent the living allowances for rural boarding school students from poor families from the next academic year starting in September.

Boarding students who are eligible will receive 1,000 yuan (148 U.S. dollars) per academic year, up from 500 yuan. Junior high school boarders will get 1,250 yuan, up from 750 yuan, Zhang Jianren, deputy director of the regional education bureau, said Saturday.

The region will spend a further 85 million yuan for the autumn semester after the allowance increase, Zhang said.

Xinjiang started to pilot the living allowance program, together with free textbooks, among rural primary and junior high schools in poor and border regions in 2003, which was expanded gradually to cover all the region in 2006.

The program covered 287,200 school children, 86 percent of the total number of school boarders, in 2009, up from 157,600, or 53.4 percent, in 2006.

Local governments channeled 615 million yuan (90.8 million U.S. dollars) into the allowance program between 2006 and 2009, Zhang said.