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Govt vows to work toward equality in education
The Ministry of Education said on Thursday that it will continue its
efforts to narrow the gap in college enrollment in different regions to ensure
nationwide equality in higher education.
Education Vice-Minister Du Yubo said at a news conference in Beijing that
by 2017 the gap between provinces and regions with the lowest college enrollment
rate and the national average should be no more than 4 percentage points.
The news conference introduced details of reform measures in the education
system, including exams and recruitment.
Narrowing the regional gap in college enrollment and ensuring that students
from across the country have equal access to higher education is one of the
focuses of the reform. Du said the government has been taking measures to narrow
the gap.
By implementing a preferential enrollment policy that requires colleges to
recruit more students from central and western regions, 200,000 students from
these regions have been recruited since 2008, Du said.
He also said that last year, the lowest college enrollment rate among all
provinces and regions in China was 70 percent, or 6 percentage points lower than
the national average, while the gap in 2007 was 17 percentage points.
Rural students have gained greater access to good universities, with the
implementation of a policy to improve their chances of being admitted by such
universities.
The policy, which took effect in 2012, covers 832 impoverished counties
nationwide.
"This year, 50,000 rural students were admitted to good universities,
marking an 11.4 percent increase from last year," Du said.
To achieve the goal set for 2017, Du said, the ministry will continue
implementing the preferential-enrollment policies, while fully considering
regional differences when drawing up each year's recruitment plan. The ministry
will also consider many other factors, including the number of students,
education resources and the graduates' employment prospects.
Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education
Sciences, said the preferential policy "promoted education equity to some
extent", but still needs to be improved.
Chu said some problems have arisen, such as the children of some officials
in these regions taking advantage of the policy to gain admission to good
universities.
"One way to get rid of these problems is to reduce the administrative power
in enrollment and to allow universities to have a bigger say in what kind of
students and talent they would like to recruit," he said.
With the purpose of promoting education equity and selecting talent in a
more scientific way, education reform includes measures such as canceling the
division of students into different tracks in high school.
Previously, students were asked to follow a science or a liberal-arts track
according to their interests and needs.
Currently, students on both tracks should learn Chinese, math and English.
But in addition, those following the science track should learn physics,
chemistry and biology, while students on the liberal-arts track should learn
history, geography and politics, which will be tested in the national college
entrance exams, or gaokao.
In the future, students should learn all nine subjects and take tests
before the gaokao, and they can choose any three elective subjects if their
scores are satisfactory. Colleges will then admit students on the basis of the
scores of the three subjects, as well as their test results in Chinese, math and
English. (中国日报)
impoverish vt. 使贫穷;使枯竭
impoverished adj. 穷困的;用尽了的，无创造性的
recruitment n. 补充;征募新兵
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发表于 2016-7-10 18:10:06