Legislators Call for Revision of Law on Compulsory Education

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, March 14, 2003

Legislators Call for Revision of Law on Compulsory Education

Chinese legislators attending the ongoing First Session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) have called for a revision of the existing law on compulsory education.

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Chinese legislators attending the ongoing First Session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) have called for a revision of the existing law on compulsory education.

A total of 376 deputies to the NPC, China's top lawmaking body, have jointly signed a motion regarding the revision of the 17-year-old law on compulsory education. They include government officials, private entrepreneurs, experts and scholars, as well as farmers and workers, and constitute nearly one eighth of the total NPC deputies.

"In my memory there has never been a motion winning so much support from so many legislators in the NPC's history," said an NPC staffer in charge of handling the deputies' motions on Friday.

"We all share the view that top priority should be given to education if the Chinese nation wants to attain its long-term development goals," said Wang Bintai, a deputy from east China's Jiangsu province and one of the motion's initiators.

Statistics showed that by 2002, 90 percent of the Chinese population had been covered by the nine-year compulsory education scheme as a result of the enforcement of the law on compulsory education since July 1986.

However, there are still approximately 450 counties in China where tens of millions of people remain uncovered by the scheme. Most of the counties are situated in the outlying and underdeveloped western regions, a traditional habitat to many of China's ethnic minorities.

Meanwhile, the recent years also witnessed a widening gap in compulsory education development in different regions of the country.

"In my school there are colored TV sets, slide projectors, desktop and laptop computers and Internet connection in every classroom, but some schools in the rural areas are housed in dilapidated buildings with no teaching facilities but a blackboard and a piece of chalk for each room," said NPC deputy Ren Jichang, headmaster of a famed middle school in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang province.

Ren said he was also worried to see many children drop outbecause of difficulties at their families. A survey found that some 20 to 30 million teenagers in China leave schools for this reason last year.

"As a kind of public service, the compulsory education should expand in a balanced manner," said Wang, the lawmaker from Jiangsu.

The revised compulsory education law should explicitly state the liability of governments at all levels for guaranteeing adequate funds be allocated to education, said the deputies in their motion.

The revised version should also show more concerns about the "disadvantageous group of people" in society, by reducing charges on students in the rural areas, providing completely free compulsory education for those from needy families, and establishing a system to ensure that children of rural migrant workers have no obstacles in entering urban schools, they noted.

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