SOES ramp up work on school infrastructure

BEIJING: The autumn term began this month in China, which made quite a difference for some middle school students in Liaocheng, Shandong province.

This semester, they are relocated to carry on with their education in brand new school buildings in the Liaocheng High-speed Railway New District.

Some 2,000 junior high students from Wenxuan Middle School, a public school in Liaocheng, have begun their new school year in more spacious classrooms and dormitory rooms.

What’s more important is that with the establishment of the new school, more local students will have a better opportunity to study in a public school when they need one, which generally boasts lower education fees and better teaching resources.

“We moved to the New District to live and would worry about the distance between our new house and our kid’s original school but not for long, as the new school was built at such a convincing speed, which eased our worries quickly,” said Zhang Huarong, a local housewife who moved to the area in 2019, the year the school plan was settled.

According to China Railway 24th Bureau Group Corp Ltd (CR24), the middle school is part of a key livelihood-improving project aimed to promote public education opportunities to cover more students in Liaocheng, with more projects including a kindergarten, a primary school and a high school underway.

CR24 is the builder of the school and a unit of state-owned enterprise (SOE) China Railway Construction Corp.

Since March, despite challenges brought by the Covid-19 outbreaks and extreme weather, the builders managed to accomplish a construction area of 83,500 sq m in time before the autumn semester began, showcasing their edge in infrastructure construction, said Ma Weihong, vice-mayor of Liaocheng.