Print  Font Size: 

Educational Problems in Rural Areas

With increasing changes in higher education, educational problems are become worse again in rural areas. In 2000, the central government declared that China had accomplished the expected tasks of "K9 popularization as a whole" and "youth illiteracy elimination as a whole". However, we must be aware of the fact that achievements made in K9 now are low-leveled and rather weak. On one hand, "K9 popularization as a whole" only refers to achieving the goal in areas concentrating 85% of China's population but not in areas accommodating 15% of the population, mainly poverty-stricken regions in West China. Even in places that had realized the K9 popularization goal, the achievements and quality of K9 initiative are not stable enough--significant rebound of discontinuation rate has been found in many areas. In recent years, discontinuation and dropout rates of students in rural areas have been high and discontinuation rate of junior middle school students has increased. For instance, discontinuation rate of students in junior middle schools nationwide was 3.23%, or a number of 1.67 million, in 1998. The rate in rural areas was 4.2%, which was 0.97 percentage point higher than national average. In some regions, the rate was as high as over 10%. It should be noted that the actual discontinuation rate in some rural areas is obviously higher than the statistical results. In 50 primary and junior middle schools in boundary areas and economically undeveloped areas of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the discontinuation rate in 1999 was 2.44% and 6.41% respectively and "the conception of study uselessness" rose again .

Due to significant insufficiency of funds for compulsory education, nowadays there are dangerous buildings in schools with total footprint of some 13 million square meters across the country, which mainly distribute in rural areas of Central and West China. Though the number of dangerous buildings in schools is less than 1% of the total, this proportion is higher in rural areas of Central and West China regions with less-developed economy. In Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, proportion of dangerous buildings in middle schools is 5.32% that in primary schools is 4.6%. They are 4.05% and 3% in Xinjiang Uygar Autonomous Region and 3.16% and 4.33% in Qinghai Province. In some poverty-stricken counties, this figure climbs to 10%~15%. For example, the proportion of dangerous buildings in primary schools is as high as 28.3% in Jishishan Autonomous County of Bao'an, Dongxiang and Sala Nationalities in Gansu Province. Because of insufficient funds for schooling facilities in 1970s and 1980s, low-quality construction and "like-soybean-curd-residue" projects in late 1980s, in some regions, the proportion of dangerous buildings is high, some buildings that had been used for less than 10 years become dangerous ones and 2%~3% of the buildings newly becoming dangerous annually further worsens the situation (China Youth Daily, April 5, 2000). The problem of overdue payment of teachers' salary has not radically been solved in many regions. According to an investigation by the National Educational Trade Union in first half of 1999, the problem of overdue salary payment is found in 2/3 of 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the Mainland. To date, the payments in arrears for teachers have been accumulated to over RMB10 billion. It has amounted to RMB640 million even in Guangdong Province, a province with relatively well-developed economy, in the period from 1996 to now.

To do a quick search, highlighting any word(s) then click Help!