China issues guidelines on building strong educational country

China on Sunday issued guidelines on building a strong educational country (2024-2035), emphasizing expanding the scale of graduate education, steadily increasing the proportion of doctoral students, and enhancing the salary and benefits for high school and kindergarten teachers. 

The guidelines made clear the goal of building a strong education country, covering the directions and pathways for the reform and development of various levels and types of education, according to CCTV News on Sunday.

According to the guidelines, by 2027, significant progress will have been made in building China into a strong educational country, and by 2035, a strong educational country will be fully established, said the guidelines, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The guidelines propose to promote mental health education for students, establish a national monitoring and early warning system for student's mental health, and improve service mechanisms at different educational stages.

The guidelines emphasize the implementation of a health-first education philosophy for students. This includes the establishment of a physical fitness program that ensures primary and secondary school students engage in at least two hours of comprehensive physical activity each day. In addition, campus football activities will be promoted, and the rates of myopia and obesity will be effectively controlled.

China will coordinate the promotion of the "double reduction" policy and the improvement of educational quality. The guidelines aim to consolidate the achievements in regulating extracurricular training, strictly control subject-based training, standardize non-subject training, and reduce repetitive homework. China will strengthen its efforts on decreasing the frequency of daily exams and tests, enhancing the quality of after-school services and service content, strengthening scientific education, as well as reinforcing the cultivation of core competencies, according to the guidelines.

According to the guidelines, China will systematically expand the enrollment scale of high-quality undergraduate education over the next decade, increase the scale of graduate education, steadily raise the proportion of doctoral students, and vigorously develop professional degree graduate education.

At the same time, newly added higher education resources should be moderately tilted towards the central and western regions in China, as well as ethnic minority areas. The guidelines propose to improve the mechanism for targeted support and encourage high-level foreign universities in science and engineering to collaborate in running schools in China.

These measures provide a solid policy foundation for higher education to adapt to national strategic development and meet the needs of the people in cultivating talent, according to an expert, as reported by CCTV News.