Premier Wen pledges fairer, better quality education

Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged to improve the quality of education and enable people to enjoy fairer education in the coming decade through more investment and reforms.

The government work report says that the central government spending on education in 2009 stood at 198 billion yuan, an increase of nearly a quarter on 2008. Nearly 67 billion yuan was spent on compulsory rural education. In 2010, the government will advance education reform, promote the balanced development of compulsory education, continue to strengthen vocational education, reform the management and admissions systems of higher learning institutions, and improve the ranks of teachers.

The government has drafted a medium and long-term outline for education reform and development. It says the amount of government investment in education annually will increase to 4 percent of the country's total GDP by 2012. The proportion was 3.48 percent of GDP in 2008.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said, "We will continue to give top priority to cultivating the integrity of students and vigorously promote well-rounded education. We will explore systems of school management and ways of providing education that are suitable for different types of people and the development of people with different skills, so that we run schools better and turn out better graduates."