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Booming Young Population Challenges Senior Middle School Capacity
The number of students graduated from junior middle schools is expected to reach 20 million next year and rise by about 5 million annually through 2005, statistics from the Ministry of Education indicated.
To cope with the booming young population which will create challenges for crowded middle schools, senior middle school education must be expanded in the next few years, said Li Lianning, director of the ministry's Department for Basic Education, according to Friday's China Daily report.
Among the innovations suggested, universities are being encouraged to run senior middle schools in an effort to find spaces for the fast-expanding classes.
Private schools and those run by non-governmental organizations and companies are playing a significant supplementary role, but they only handle about one-tenth of the nation's middle school student, the newspaper quoted Li as saying.
Beijing has pledged to build as many as 70 senior middle schools by 2005, each with at least 500 student spaces. Existing senior middle schools can handle an average of 205 students, according to the Beijing Education Committee.
The central government plans to fund middle school construction in rural areas, which don't have sufficient money to do so.
No timetable or amounts have been given for this program, but the goal is to provide money for at least one new senior school in each county in the central and western areas, Li promised.
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