Schools in Northwest China's Gansu Province have been asked to install Global Positioning Systems (GPS) in school buses in the latest move to improve school transport safety after an accident that killed 19 children last month.

Police at the crash scene of a minivan carrying 12 students that plunged into a nearly 78-meter-deep valley in the county of Guangnan, the Wenshan Zhuang and Miao autonomous prefecture, Yunnan province, on Saturday. [Photo/China Daily]

?The GPS equipment will allow transportation safety regulators to monitor the location and speed of school buses, said education officials with the provincial government on Saturday.

Stricter rules will also apply to school buses and their drivers. Schools must take responsibility for safe transportation of students while local work safety administrations, usually assigned to monitor industrial facilities, have been asked to take responsibility for school bus safety.

A nine-seat school bus illegally carrying 64 people collided head-on with a coal truck in Gansu on Nov 16, killing 19 pre-schoolers and two adults and injuring 43 other people.

The accident raised concerns around the nation about school transportation safety.

Schools are few in the vast and sparsely populated rural areas of China. School buses are themselves relatively new, as children in years past would typically hike rugged roads to attend school.

Premier Wen Jiabao has called on government departments to "rapidly" draft safety regulations and standards for school buses while improving the design, production and distribution of the vehicles.

Wen said central and local governments will share the costs of providing more school buses that meet safety requirements. Officials will face investigations into their responsibility if tragedies such as the one in Gansu occur again, he warned.