Education to boost growth, orders Wen
07 Jan 2009
Premier unveils 12-year training plan to counter financial crisis Adopted from South China Morning Post, Jan 5
Premier Wen Jiabao has called for the formulation of an education reform plan that will focus on improving rural education, vocational training and teachers' welfare, citing the global financial crisis as a call to arms to bolster education.
The plan, which will span 2009 to 2020, must take into account the nation's evolving population structure, rural-urban wealth gap and rural-urban migration, and meet the talent requirements for industrialisation, urbanisation and modernisation, Mr Wen said in a speech delivered at an earlier education conference and published in today's People's Daily.
He said planners must be prepared to shatter old mindsets and structures and be daring in exploring reforms in school management, pedagogy and assessment.
"Education will take a prominent position as we seek to mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis on our economy," Mr Wen said. "Education has become the cornerstone of national development."
Education reform has been anticipated for years, with many members of the public highly critical of the exam-oriented education system.
Graduates also complain that, after passing highly competitive college entrance exams and spending a fortune to finance their studies, they are no longer guaranteed a job in the fiercely competitive job market, and the knowledge they learned at school is seemingly useless in the workplace.
Rural areas face great difficulty finding qualified teachers because of low pay and the tendency among graduates to drift to the cities.
Outlining his vision, Mr Wen listed eight areas where reforms are needed to ensure:
- equity in the provision of compulsory education;
- quality of rural education;
- promotion of vocational education;
- excellence in higher education;
- students learn how to learn on their own;
- educators, not officials, are responsible for managing schools;
- teachers are well trained; and
- resources are used effectively.
In particular, Mr Wen said, the 2009-20 plan should promote education equity and improve the quality of education in rural areas.
"Income inequity affects a person temporarily, but education inequity affects a person's whole life," he said. "So we must pay attention to the equity of education resources; compulsory education is the priority among the priorities in rural areas."
Mr Wen urged education policymakers to boost support for less-privileged students and give priority to providing nine years of compulsory education for children of migrant workers. He lamented that while most university students used to come from rural areas, this was no longer the case.
The premier also urged policymakers to come up with schemes, such as increased welfare, to ensure rural areas had sufficient qualified teachers, noting that many teachers in rural areas lived in poverty.
A new pay scheme has recently been adopted to tie the salaries of the nation's 10 million-strong teaching force to performance and to ensure their average salaries will not be lower than those of public servants.
Mr Wen said the government would also increase funding for renovating schools in rural areas to ensure they would be "the safest and most reliable buildings" in rural areas.
He stressed that vocational training should be given a higher priority to ease the current shortage of skilled workers due to urbanisation and industrialisation.