Supporting and helping the ethnic minorities to develop education

The Chinese government has always attached importance to the development of education in the minority areas. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the state called a number of working conferences to make plans for promoting education among the ethnic minorities. The Constitution, the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy and the Compulsory Education Law all expressly include provisions on helping the ethnic minorities to develop education. In central and local educational administrative departments at all levels, offices in charge of ethnic-minority education administration have been specially set up to implement and enforce the state policies on education of the ethnic minorities, and to study and handle special issues. Special subsidies for education of the ethnic minorities have been earmarked at both the central and local levels in order to meet the expenditure needs due to ethnic and geographical reasons for the ethnic minorities. Especially since the adoption of the reform and opening-up policies, the minority areas have witnessed unprecedented development in elementary education, vocational education and higher education, as well as in teachers' training, "bilingual education" and education in ethnic unity. In 2002 the Decision on Deepening the Reform and Accelerating the Development of Education among the Ethnic Minorities issued by the State Council further clarified the general and specific policies and specified overall plans in this regard. In 2005, in the Outline of the Eleventh Five-year Plan for National Education, it is clearly stipulated that the country will stick to the principles of regional planning and classified guidance, and it is emphasized that public educational resources will be tilted in favor of the rural areas, central and western regions, poverty-stricken areas, border areas and areas inhabited by the ethnic minorities.

In recent years, the state has successively implemented the project of compulsory education in poverty-stricken areas, the project of renovation of dilapidated school buildings in rural primary and secondary schools, and the project to make nine-year compulsory education basically universal and to basically eliminate illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults in the western regions. The central finance has invested a total of over 29 billion yuan, thus greatly improving the conditions of schools in the minority areas. At present, in the whole country there are 20,906 ethnic-minority primary schools and 3,536 ethnic-minority secondary schools. Other schools of various levels and various types all enroll minority students as well, and grant them due preferential treatment. In 2004 the state started to implement in the rural areas of western China the policy of "Two Exemptions and One Subsidy" (exemption from incidental fees and textbook payment and subsidy for boarding), which has brought benefits to the great majority of minority students. Since 2006, the reform of the rural compulsory education funding mechanism has been carried out in the western regions as a first step. For ethnic minorities and minority areas with special difficulties, the state allocates special funds. For example, each year some 120 million yuan is allocated to rural primary and secondary schools in agricultural and pastoral areas of Tibet to implement the "Three Offers" - offering free meals, offering free boarding and offering free schooling. By the end of 2008, in the minority areas, the number of counties that had reached the targets of making nine-year compulsory education basically universal and basically eliminating illiteracy among the young and middle-aged had amounted to 674, accounting for 96.6 percent of the total number of counties in these areas.

In order to strengthen understanding and communication between the ethnic groups, to enhance ethnic relations of equality, unity, mutual assistance and harmony, and to promote the common development of all ethnic groups, for many years the Chinese government has committed to developing "bilingual" teaching (teaching with a language of the ethnic minorities and the Han Chinese language) in areas inhabited by the ethnic minorities, and has achieved good results. By 2007, in the country there were altogether over 10,000 schools using 29 scripts of 21 ethnic minorities to carry out bilingual teaching, and the total number of students attending these schools was over six million.