“Medical care, housing and social security should be addressed while solving education problems in China. Unfair distribution of resources in cities and the countryside as well as a shortage of teachers in rural areas has resulted in unfair education among school children. China should put more efforts into improving school conditions and raising teachers’ incomes in rural areas, particularly in remote mountainous regions,” said Gu Yeli, CPPCC member and vice president of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.
Gu said, “China should enact a better fiscal transfer system and put more investment towards helping alleviative the cause of underachieving rural education. The money allocated for rural education must be fully implemented and used for its specified purpose only.
Education equality is one of the most talked-about topics at the on-going session of China’s top political advisory body. The problems of preschool education in the country’s rural areas and education of migrant workers children are still not solved. In consideration to the 900 million farmers in China, children in the countryside constitute the largest part of compulsory education. However, most of them do not enjoy the right to education like those in cities do.
Gu maintained that children in the countryside do enjoy the same right to education as urban children do. They should not be deprived of the basic right because they were born in rural areas. Central government should attach more importance to children in countryside and help with money and policy.
China should put more efforts towards improvement of rural infrastructure and teachers’ incomes, which will help solve education problems in rural areas. Preferential treatment will attract more talents to the education cause in rural areas.
(People's Daily Online March 3, 2009)