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| China enacts free compulsory education for ethnic groups |
| CCTV.COM 2003-07-18 15:07:52 |
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Education has always been great priority in China, and the Chinese government has been paying great attention to that, especially in the areas inhabited by ethnic groups. According to China's Ministry of Education, more than 2 million poor school kids in Xinjiang will receive free compulsory education this coming fall. Up until now, the total number of disadvantaged minority children who have received free compulsory education in China has surpassed 5 million.
Compulsory education is the cornerstone of basic educational development. According to statistics released by China's Ministry of Education, there are almost 20 million school kids of the ethnic groups throughout China. Many of their families live in distant and poor areas.
Now more and more of them can go to school to receive free compulsory education with the increase of government financial allocation to education.
In Yunnan Province, the number of ethnic school kids receiving free education has doubled in the past two years. All the students of ethnic groups each with a population under 100,000 in the whole province have received free compulsory education.
Starting from this July, around 25 million US dollars will be allocated by both the central and Xinjiang local governments to better implement the free compulsory education scheme in Xinjiang's needy areas.
Meanwhile, the standard of living subsidy for ethnic resident students will be raised in some provinces and autonomous regions where ethnic groups are in high concentration.
So far, the special funds allocated by the central and local governments for ethnic groups' education in impoverished areas have exceeded 300 million US dollars. And some Chinese ethnic groups have received free compulsory education for all their kids.
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Editor: Xiao Wei CCTV.com
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