Poverty Alleviation of Ministry of Education

　　【Overview】In 2010, the Ministry of Education actively supported the education in impoverished areas, continued to issue preferential policies for compulsory education and vocational education in impoverished areas, strengthened the construction of primary and secondary schools as well as vocational schools in poor areas, improved financial aid policy for education and supported the opening of Tibetan classes in minority areas of the hinterland, which effectively ensured the development of education in poor areas and guaranteed the right to education of students from needy families. Meanwhile, the Ministry authorities also organized and mobilized forces to help these three counties in poverty alleviation and development.

　　【Investments in education】 In 2010, the Ministry of Education invested a total of 104.605 billion Yuan in education for poverty relief, which benefited 186 million students. The central government allocated 62.46 billion Yuan for compulsory education, of which 40.3 billion Yuan was for rural schools and 13.3 billion Yuan for free textbooks. All the 160 million students in the compulsory education period were exempted from tuitions. The state grants for secondary vocational education was about 17 billion Yuan, of which 8.052 billion Yuan was issued by the central government to subsidize 11.36 million students; 8.8 billion Yuan was issued for free secondary vocational education, including 4.32 billion Yuan from the central government to benefit 4.4 million students from urban and rural needy families and students majored in agriculture-related disciplines, accounting for 20% of the secondary vocational school students; 2.245 billion Yuan of state grants was issued to subsidize 4.82 million high school students and 14.1 billion Yuan of grants and scholarships was issued for 4.99 million college students.

　　【Infrastructure construction of schools】A total of 26.866 billion Yuan was put in. 8.3 billion Yuan was allocated for renovation of the rural schools for compulsory education with a rather weak foundation; special funds of 2 billion Yuan was issued by the central government to support the renovation of junior middle schools’ buildings in the central and western areas, covering key counties for national poverty alleviation and development, autonomous counties, old revolutionary base counties and frontier counties; 10 billion Yuan was allocated for the safe buildings of primary and secondary schools across China with stress on population-dense areas threatened by earthquake of level 7 or above in the central areas and the west (including poverty-stricken areas and non-poor regions); 3 billion Yuan was allocated for the basic capacity building of secondary vocational education (including poverty-stricken areas and non-poor regions), of which 2 billion Yuan was invested in the construction of high-quality featured schools with 70.4% for the central and western areas, 1 billion Yuan was invested in the construction of training bases for vocational education with 63.15% for the central and western areas, 2.9 billion Yuan was invested in the construction of special education schools in the central and western areas (including poverty-stricken areas and non-poor regions); 460 million Yuan was invested to bilingual kindergartens in Xinjiang and 206 million Yuan for the combination of schools of Han and minorities  (including poverty-stricken areas and non-poor regions).

　　【Tibet classes and Xinjiang classes in hinterland】 In order to improve the quality of education in Tibet and Xinjiang, we opened Tibet classes and Xinjiang classes in hinterland with a total of 38,000 students. Tibet classes had 12,000 students, Xinjiang classes had about 23,000 students and the Tibetan secondary vocational schools in hinterland had 3,000 students. They fostered lots of various talents for Tibet and Xinjiang.

　　【vocational skills training for labor force】 In 2010, relevant education departments organized rural labor transfer skills training and migrant worker technical trainings for about 15 million person-times and rural practical skill trainings for 38 million person-times, including a large number of surplus labors from impoverished areas and the farmers in rural areas, which helped to promote the transfer of rural surplus labors to other industries in impoverished areas and improve farmers’ ability to get rich, and contributed to the improvement of the people’s livelihood in impoverished areas.

　　【Fixed-point poverty alleviation】 According to the arrangement of LGOP, the Ministry of Education is designated to support the poverty alleviation and development of Qinglong County, Laiyuan County and Wuyi County in Hebei. In 2010, the Ministry of Education completed the task of fixed-point poverty education. First, go with the support to the rural education in Qinglong County, Laiyuan County and Wuyi County in Hebei. The Ministry of Education arranged primary and secondary school construction projects for the three counties, subsidized each county with 600,000 Yuan and reinforced the primary and secondary schools’ running ability in the three counties. Second, organize the relief to impoverished families and poor teachers. Before the spring festival of 2010, the party committee and labor union of Ministry of Education’s general office organized Spring Festival Warmth event and raised 150,000 Yuan, 3 division heads of Ministry of Education led the teams to greet impoverished families and teachers in Qinglong County, Laiyuan County and Wuyi County. Third, carry out labor trainings and employment transfer. 100 labors from needy families were selected from each county to receive skills trainings so as to achieve employment transfer and shake off poverty. 500 Yuan of subsidy was issued for each of the trainee. Fourth, do a good job of entire village advancement. From 2008 to 2010, entire village advancement projects were launched in a total of 149 villages.