China has reportedly achieved a nearly 99 percent decline in the number of school drop-outs before the end of their 9-year compulsory education, an important factor in accomplishing its 2020 goal of poverty alleviation.
More impoverished drop-outs in China are returning to school with the help of governments. The number of students having dropped out of school had largely decreased from 600,000 in May 2019 to 6,781 by June 2020, the People’s Daily reported on Friday.
As for China’s 52 counties that haven’t been pulled out of poverty, there were a total of 82,000 drop-outs in May 2019 but only 433 by June 2020, it added.
To improve the quality of compulsory education in impoverished regions, national education authorities have encouraged primary and secondary schools in more developed eastern areas to send teaching staff there, and have also organized online training courses for local teachers.
China also continues a higher education project targeting poor students this year. Amid the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it vows to offer free five-year university educations in medicine to nearly 7,000 students only from rural regions, according to a statement from the Ministry of Education earlier this month.
The project will cultivate participants into medical workers, especially in the fields of clinical medicine, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and medicines of China’s three ethnic minorities: Mongolian, Tibetan and Dai. Only students and their families with permanent residences (hukou) registered in rural areas for more than three consecutive years will be eligible for the project, read the statement.
Since the project was launched in 2010, some 57,000 rural medical students have received free education and training at 113 universities across the country, which has indirectly helped 35,000 impoverished families be lifted out of poverty, the ministry said.
Students attend a class at a primary school in Dahua Yao Autonomous County, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, May 29, 2020.
