Chinese education inequality to be reduced

China's education minister vowed on Thursday to promote educational equality and reduce regional, rural-urban and inter-school gaps in the field.

The central government's spending on education will reach 2.2 trillion yuan (350 billion U.S. dollars) in 2012, accounting for more than 4 percent of GDP this year, up 600 billion yuan year on year, said Minister of Education Yuan Guiren at a press conference.

The increase in educational funds from both central and local budgets will be used to promote educational equality as most of the money will be directed to poor and ethnic minority regions, according to Yuan.

The funds will also be used to train teachers, especially in rural areas, he said, adding that a special project to attract rural teachers has employed more than 110,000 teachers for more than 20,000 rural schools in 21 provincial-level regions in central and western China.

"Strict regulations have been imposed on procedures to reduce or merge compulsory education schools to ensure full engagement of local people and their right to monitor the decision-making process," Yuan said.

The minister detailed how financial aid provided to poor students has been raised. In 2010 and 2011, 156 million university, middle school and vocational school students nationwide were granted stipends totaling 183.68 billion yuan, a record high.

In order to ensure the schooling of rural migrants' children, the government has paid great attention to these "left-behind" kids and their educational issues.

Last year, the enrollment rate among children of rural migrant workers in public schools reached 79.4 percent. Another 10 percent attended schools in government-supported private schools, and another 3 percent studied in schools collectively run by migrant workers.

"They are migrants so the problem cannot be settled once and for all," Yuan noted.

"The problem has resulted from China's increasing rate of urbanization, which reached 51 percent last year," he said, adding the issue was universal as in other industrialized countries.

Latest figures show the country has more than 250 million farmers-turned-workers employed in cities. There are more than 20 million children who moved to cities with their parents and more than 10 million "left-behind" kids.

Authorities have made efforts to ensure migrants' children attend schools and college entrance exams in cities in which their parents are registered as working.

The ministry issued a document last week asking local authorities to guarantee migrants' children who have received schooling in cities in which their parents work sit the national college entrance examination and other national admission exams there. Previous regulations ordered Chinese students to sit the national exam only in their household registration locations.

Yuan pointed out that the educational rights of migrants' children should be guaranteed but local governments should formulate implementation measures to prevent the occurrence of "college entrance exam immigrants," students who attended the exam in non-native places in order to maximize their chances of being admitted.

That trend has been mainly caused by regional difference in the proportion of college admission, a phenomenon that has been strongly criticized by the public.

Due to imbalanced economic development and distribution of educational resources, students of developed regions have better chances of attending college, while poor regions' students have a poorer chance, Yuan explained to journalists.

"The problem should be settled as we are all citizens of the People's Republic of China and should have equal schooling opportunities," he said.

He admitted that reform of the national college entrance exam is "the most complicated and sensitive issue," as it concerns "selection of talents, guidance of basic education and the future of children."

The minister said an increasing number of admission quotas will be allocated to central and western regions, and that about 170,000 students from eight under-developed regions including Henan and Guizhou provinces have been admitted to colleges in booming areas this year.

In order to address another perceived area of education inequality between different schools, the ministry has urged reasonable allocation of resources so as to enable all schools to meet standards and curb the arbitrary charges of "school selection fees."

Previous media reports said that a first-class primary school in Beijing charged "school selection fees" amounting to hundreds of thousand yuan.