Students ‘inspired’ by ideology y course: poll
China’s education system has shown significant progress: World Bank
More than 90 percent of Chinese college students surveyed said they are inspired by political and ideological courses in China, the country’s education minister said Friday.
In a poll of over 30,000 college students, 91 percent of them said they are inspired by the courses, Minister of Education Chen Baosheng said at a press conference in Beijing.
The Ministry of Education assembled more than 200 experts to look into the quality of political and ideological education in colleges in 2017, the largest-ever investigation since the founding of the country in 1949, Chen said.
Students even need to fight for a seat in some popular courses, and some courses uploaded online have brought a positive influence to society, Chen said on the sidelines of the ongoing annual session of China’s top legislature.
He also vowed that China will continue to provide high-quality and fair education in 2018.
In the wake of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in October 2017, China’s education reform and development faced new challenges, and one of the goals is to ensure that every child in China can receive fair and high-quality education, Chen said.
China will draft a law on preschool education, the minister said. Foreign embassies in China are invited to offer suggestions and share their experiences for China’s preschool education.
More than 2,600 international educational programs have been launched in China, including 1,324 for college, which allows Chinese students to receive leading international educational resources at home, Chen said.
Educational resources will also be promoted in poorer regions in western and central China to address the imbalance, he added.
In 2017, 95.9 million students received government funding worth over 188 billion yuan ($29.7 billion), an 11.45 percent increase from the previous year, the ministry announced at a press conference on March 1.
China’s education system has shown significant progress, according to a report released by the World Bank on Wednesday.
The East Asia-Pacific region has seven of the top 10 performing education systems in the world, with schools in China and Vietnam showing strong evidence of high and equitable learning outcomes, the report said.
“China provides several examples of how to equalize resources across the system, such as prioritizing the enhancement of the teacher support system across the country,” Michael Crawford, co-author of the report and World Bank’s lead education specialist, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency on Thursday.