A press briefing on education, culture, tourism, and healthcare undertakings, a part of Hunan’s serial celebrations of the 100th founding anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), was held on July 7, 2021. Jiang Changzhong, secretary of the CPC Leadership Group and director of the Hunan Department of Education, and also secretary of the CPC Committee of the Hunan Education Commission, spoke at the press briefing.

To ensure people’s access to childcare and education is an important decision and plan of the 19th CPC National Congress, and also a focus of the education authority, Jiang said. This year, Hunan will give priority to increasing primary and middle school enrollment, he added.

Hunan launched Furong School project in 2017. The project planned to support each of the 40 impoverished counties in Wuling and Luoxiao mountainous regions to construct one or two primary and middle schools for poor families. Jiang introduced that, so far, 100 Furong Schools have been constructed, and will open in this September. They can admit 146,000 students in their regions, and enable local children to enjoy high-quality education resources. Beyond that, construction of small schools in rural areas and boarding schools in townships are pushed forward in a high standard and quality way, to facilitate schooling for rural children.

Since 2020, Hunan has increased public kindergarten enrollment by 450,000 pre-schoolers. According to Jiang, Hunan will continue to involve “increasing public kindergarten enrollment” into its main practical tasks of serving the people this year, and will increase public kindergarten enrollment by 100,000 pre-schoolers. By the end of this year, all counties, county-level cities, and districts will fulfill the target of ensuring that 50% pre-schoolers are enrolled in public kindergartens.

Public senior high school education will be expanded, and oversize classes in senior high schools will be eliminated within this year. A “Chuyi action plan” of vocational education will be boosted. Fourteen Chuyi-brand secondary vocational schools will be constructed across the province. Concentrated efforts will be made to increase secondary vocational school enrollment by more than 3,000 public secondary vocational school students this year.

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Pang Yuehui

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn