BEIJING, May 15  -- The integration of technology and education has improved greatly since 2012, according to the Ministry of Education (MOE) on Friday.

More than 80 percent of the country's primary and secondary schools had access to the Internet as of March 2015, while 73 percent of schools have built their own multimedia classrooms, said Lei Chaozi, deputy director of the science and technology department of the MOE.

China is also creating a national cloud-based educational platform to provide free teaching materials to teachers, Lei said. More than 54 million visitors had used the cloud teaching platform by the end of 2014.

Technology-based education has also been playing an important role in narrowing the gap between teaching resources in urban and rural schools, said Liu Changya, deputy director of the elementary education department of the MOE.

Thanks to the help of distance learning and an online course database, four million students living in less developed villages can enjoy the same lessons as their peers in cities, said Liu.