Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday pledged central and local government funds to provide and improve school bus services in the wake of the traffic accident that killed 19 preschool children and sparked national outrage.
He urged relevant departments of the State Council to "rapidly" formulate safety regulations for school coaches, and said China will accelerate the setting up of standards on design and production.
Central and local governments will share the costs on providing more school buses that meet safety requirements, the premier said.
He was speaking at the opening ceremony of the fifth national meeting on women and children affairs in Beijing.
Twenty-one people, including 19 preschoolers and two adults, died when a nine-seater bus illegally carrying 64 crashed head-on with a coal truck in Gansu province on Nov 16. Another 43 were injured.
On Saturday, a school bus carrying 39 people in Fengcheng city, Northeast China's Liaoning province, rolled over, injuring 35, including two who suffered serious head wounds, according to authorities.
More rural students now have to travel long distances to schools in counties or cities, as the number of village schools has declined due to consolidation efforts.
However, Wen said a lot of local governments have failed to meet the rapidly increased demand for safe school buses or established sound management systems.
Officials will face investigations into their liability if tragedies such as the one in Gansu occur again, he warned.
"School buses should be safe mobile campuses for students," Wen said. "Society should bear in mind that children should be the first to enjoy all kinds of social welfare and the last ones to suffer from any disaster."
Yuan Guilin, an education professor at Beijing Normal University who is known for his research into rural education, has proposed that all school buses should be equipped with black boxes, adding that it is achievable and affordable.
The government should also improve the wages and benefits for drivers to prevent them from taking extra jobs and often driving while tired, he said.
Given that some authorities complain that they are short of money, Yuan suggested they be allowed to sell advertising space on school buses.
Gan Yuanchun, a lawyer in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, who participated in a campaign to promote school bus safety, said the central government should encourage the use of smaller school buses in rural areas, as roads in remote countryside areas are not as wide as in cities.
Students' parents should also be able to get involved in deciding how school buses are managed, he added.
Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show that only about 56.6 percent of Chinese children under the age of 6 were able to enroll in kindergarten last year, although the rate rose by about 22 percent compared with 2000.
In rural areas, especially in western parts, many children are struggling to receive quality preschool education because public kindergartens are scarce and most private ones often do not have qualified teachers or hardware.
School bus accident injures dozens
A school bus carrying 39 people in Fengcheng city, Liaoning province, rolled over on Saturday morning, leaving two children with grave head injuries and causing lesser injuries to another 33 people, according to the local publicity authority.
The bus rolled over while passing a turning point en route to the Central Primary School of Baoshan township at about 7:50 am. A sudden rainstorm left the road frozen and slick, said Lu Xuekun, head of the city government's publicity office.
Lu said that two 7-year-old girls received "grave" head injuries, and they were sent to the intensive care unit of the local hospital. The other 33 students were slightly injured, and they were sent to two local hospitals, Lu said.
"The two severely injured girls are in stable condition after four doctors from Shenyang performed surgery on them," Lu told China Daily on Sunday.
Two of the 33 slightly injured students were treated and released, while the rest remained under observation.
The school bus, which was purchased last year, was qualified to carry 41 people. She said that 39 people, including a driver, a ticket seller, the parent of one student and 36 students, were on the bus.
Wen Xiaohua, the driver, got a license in 2001 and was "experienced", according to Lu. Wen, 33, was still under investigation.
"It's not the only accident on Saturday caused by the rainy weather, which made the road slippery," she said.
Zhang Lihua, a 42-year-old woman whose daughter received a head injury, said that many of the children had similar injuries caused by hitting seat backs.
"My 7-year-old daughter was crying when I arrived at the hospital. She had never encountered such an accident.
"My daughter has no choice but to take the school bus since it is seven and a half kilometers from our home to the school," Zhang said. "We parents have to deal with our work every day and have no time to escort the children to school."
Hundreds of villagers petitioned the local government on Nov 4 over school bus safety, China National Radio reported on Sunday.
Lu refuted the report, saying there was no recorded petition earlier this month concerning school buses.
School bus safety has become a hot topic since an overloaded van carrying students collided with a truck in Gansu province on Nov 16, killing 21 people and leaving 43 injured.
