A special State grant of 800 million yuan (US$99 million) will be available every year for poor students at secondary vocational schools nationwide starting next month.

The grant, allocated by the central government, is to help cover tuition for 800,000 poor students at public and private schools. Each student will receive a yearly subsidy of 1,000 yuan (US$125), the Ministry of Education announced at a press conference Wednesday.

Students who apply for the grant must come from very poor families, and certification of their family background issued by local authorities is required, the ministry said.

The standard for determining exactly who qualifies varies from province to province.

Wu Qidi, vice-minister of education, said the grant is "the first national aid project for secondary vocational school students."

The only aid project at the moment is for poor university students, but Wu said the central government is making efforts to establish a comprehensive aid system to help all students from impoverished families, no matter whether the student is at university, vocational school or common secondary school.

Ministry figures indicate that about 4.8 million secondary vocational school students in China are suffering from poverty, accounting for 30 per cent of the total 16 million. Vocational schools are an alternative to ordinary secondary schools, offering education with a focus on work skills.

Wu said the majority of vocational students in China are from rural areas or urban families with low incomes. "Without financial aid, they're very likely to drop out of school because of tuition costs," she said.

Tuition for secondary vocational schools varies from 1,000 yuan (US$125) to 2,000 yuan (US$250) a year in different areas of China.

For those who fail to get the State grant, applying for scholarships or loans might be another way. The ministry has also urged local governments to set up scholarships for excellent students at secondary vocational schools, and has encouraged financial institutes to provide low-interest loans to vocational students.

Orphans, the handicapped and students from minority groups may have their tuition waived, according to the ministry.

Wu estimated that with the help of local governments, financial institutes and other social organizations, about 20 per cent of the total number of secondary vocational students may get financial aid in different forms.

In some areas, such as East China's Jiangsu Province, aid for secondary vocational students started in 2004. Yu Haitao, an 18-year-old third-year student at Shuyang vocational training centre, is among the first group of students who benefited from the local aid.

The girl, from a rural family with a yearly household income of 500 yuan (US$62.5), is having her 2,000 yuan (US$ 250) tuition waived each year. "Without the help from the school and government, I could only have become a migrant worker," she said.

Yu said she was happy that more students like her would get financial aid from the State grant, and more importantly, "rural students have another way to get out of the countryside, other than going to university."

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Hotline to help poor students go to college

China's education watchdog has opened a 24-hour hotline for students who want to go to university but can not afford the tuition fees.

"Parents and students can ring in to learn about the country's financial aid programs targeted at college freshmen from low-income families, and report universities which fail to implement these programs," said Wang Xuming, the spokesman for the Ministry of Education.

"The ministry will deal with the reported problems in a timely fashion," Wang added.

Education has always been a priority of Chinese parents, especially the poor, who consider a degree a quick and safe road to wealth and social status.

But college tuition fees are recurring nightmares for many parents. The average university tuition fee is 5,000 yuan (about 625 U.S. dollars) a year, well beyond the reach of most rural residents, who earn on average about 3,200 a year.

Earlier this year, media reports told of parents committing suicide because they could not afford to send their children to university.

Official figures indicate that around 4 million university students in China are suffering from poverty, accounting for 26 percent of the nation's total.

As part of "a nationwide mechanism to help poor university students", Wang said, the Ministry introduced a "Green Channel" policy in 2000. The policy will be reinforced to enable poor students to register for college first and defer tuition payments.

Statistics from the Ministry show that about 390,000 students used the "Green Channel" to register for college in 2005, accounting for eight percent of total registrations.

China also launched a large-scale scheme in 1999 to provide subsidized loans to poor college students. By the end of last June,2.405 million students had received loans totaling 20.14 billion yuan (around 2.5 billion U.S. dollars).

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