Since ancient times, Zhejiang people have handed down farming and education as their family tradition, emphasizing education as a means to prosper. Zhejiang has traditionally been a place of great figures and splendid culture. Since the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of CCP, especially in recent years, the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC) has been giving priority to education as a development strategy. In 1992, Zhejiang province set up the strategy of “Rejuvenating Zhejiang via Science and Education” and in 1999, it started to launch a campaign of building prominent counties of education. In 2002, it raised a strategic goal of establishing and developing Zhejiang as a “Prominent Province of Education”. In 2006, an outline for establishing a prominent province of education was drawn up. After many years of efforts, Zhejiang has established a complete education system including basic education, vocational education, higher education and adult education. Educational reform and development, as a result, has made remarkable achievements.
Further Tamping the Foundation of Basic Education
In 1989, Zhejiang Province universalized its elementary compulsory education. In 1997, it became the third province in China to “basically universalize the 9-year compulsory education, and basically eradicate youth’s illiteracy”. In 2004, Zhejiang Province took a lead in universalizing 15-year education from three-year preschool education all through to senior high school education in China. Zhejiang further reconfirmed basic education management system featuring county autonomy, aimed at high standard and high quality 9-year compulsory education, and spared no efforts to realize the “Three Increases and Two Rises” of education input. (Three Increases refer to: The increase rate of the treasury funds appropriated by the State Council and the local people’s governments at all levels for the implementation of the compulsory education policy shall be higher than that of the current income of treasury so as to ensure the gradual increase of the average compulsory funds based on the number of attending students as well as the gradual increase of the salaries of the school staff and the average public-use operating fund for students. Two Rises refer to: The proportion of educational appropriations in gross national products allocated by the State shall gradually rise as the national economy develops and fiscal revenue increases. The proportion of educational appropriations allocated by governments at various levels shall gradually rise along with the development of the national economy.) Zhejiang province is determined to extend basic education to three-year preschool education and senior high school education on the basis of consolidating and strengthening the 9-year compulsory education. At present, the rate of universalizing 15-year education has reached 96.5%. A series of activities are carried out, such as building prominent counties of education, promoting a new round of layout adjustment of elementary and secondary schools, establishing new compulsory education fund guarantee mechanism, waive other miscellaneous fees, book fees and temporary schooling fees, strengthening the construction of model senior high school, and expanding senior high school education scale, so as to raise the overall level of basic education. In 2009, Zhejiang has 1,670,000 kids in kindergartens, and 5,870,000 students in elementary and secondary schools. Gross enrollment rates in primary and junior secondary school has reached 99.99% and 99.93% respectively. Enrollment rate of 3-year preschool and admission rate of junior secondary school students into senior high school has reached 94.8% and 97.7% respectively. Farmer-turned migrant workers’ children and disabled children can receive free and high quality compulsory education in Zhejiang province. All main indexes about Zhejiang’s basic education are taking a leading position in China. Zhejiang province boasts 80 prominent counties of education and a host of model schools with high teaching quality that mushroom throughout the province.
Thriving Higher Education
In 1999, Zhejiang provincial Party Committee and government made a strategic decision to devote major efforts to developing higher education. They gave great support to Zhejiang University for its development, turning it into a leader of Zhejiang higher education institutions. In order to further develop provincial level higher institutions, 6 higher education zones including Xiasha, Binjiang, Xiaoheshan of Hangzhou, Zijingang Campus of Zhejiang University, Ningbo and Wenzhou were established to hold 36 higher education institutions with a student population of 370,000. Zhejiang higher education has been greatly developed by intensifying the reform in the fields of higher education management system, school-running mechanism and logistics outsourcing. Currently, there are 78 institutions (1 institution being set up included) of higher learning of various types with a student population of 909,900, including 30 undergraduate higher education institutions, 4 specialized higher education schools and 44 higher vocational institutions. The gross enrollment rate has reached 43%. Eight of these higher education institutions have been authorized for conferring doctoral degrees, and those institutions offer 274 doctoral programs. Now, many institutions have been entitled to confer master degrees, and the number of master programs has reached 762. Those institutions have established an array of key subjects, key laboratories, key programs and talents cultivation bases at the national, provincial and ministerial level. Presently, Zhejiang higher education institutions have set up 2 key laboratories at the national level, 7 key laboratories and 8 engineering research centers under the leadership of Ministry of Education, and 2 state-level engineering research centers. Innovation competences of science and technology and social contribution in higher education institutions have been prominently promoted. From 2006 to 2008, Zhejiang higher education institutions won a total of 58 national prizes including national prize for natural sciences, technical invention award and National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology, accounting for 57% of all prizes won in Zhejiang province. In 2009, Zhejiang higher education institutions as a whole carried off 17 national science and technology awards, making up 89% in the whole province, among which, local higher education institutions and Zhejiang University had equal shares. Efforts of higher education institutions serving enterprises started to show good results, promoting economic restructuring, industrial transformation and upgrading. In addition, government scholarship of 5,000,000 RMB was set up to attract international students to study in Zhejiang province. In 2009, the number of international students studying in Zhejiang province reached 8217. 3 new Confucius institutes were founded abroad by Zhejiang higher education institutions.
Accelerating Vocational Education and Adult Education
The schooling efficiency and quality of secondary vocational schools have been greatly improved through furthering the reform of educational management system and accelerating the adjustment of layouts. Secondary vocational education and regular high school education develop coordinately with the equal annual enrollment. 5-year vocational education was carried out to strengthen the hook-up between secondary and higher vocation education. Now, In Zhejiang province, there are 436 secondary vocational schools with 628,000 students and 44 higher vocational institutions (including 6 national level model institutions) with 327,000 students. In 2009, Zhejiang province launched the second round “Six Actions Plan”, as part of which, 50 provincial-level model programs, 32 provincial-level practical training bases and 7 comprehensive practical training bases were established. Meanwhile, in order to further secondary vocational curriculum reform, 34 secondary vocational schools were selected as pilot schools to start the second batch of curriculum reform in the field of Logistics, Comic and Animation, Computer Application and Maintenance, etc. In 2009, 16,700 bachelor degree or associate degree program students were enrolled in distance education with a total student population of 40,600 on campus. 13,500 self-taught students were issued graduation diplomas or certificates. In the meantime, 36,100 farmers were trained as rural labor force reserve, and some reference books and materials were compiled to start “diploma-and-certificate” adult education.
Stepping-up Efforts on Staff Development
The ratio of teachers with required degrees and the ratio of teachers with high level degrees have been greatly enhanced through the following measures: licensed-based teacher qualification system, life-long education system and in-job training. “High level talent cultivation project” was carried out to foster celebrity teachers, academic backbones, and 200 middle-and-young-aged subject leaders as well. Zhejiang provincial government set up “Meritorious Teachers” award to honor those meritorious teachers who made outstanding contributions in their teaching career. It set up “Outstanding Contribution” award for rural teachers and rewarded, for the first time in 2009, 100 outstanding teachers long-stationed in rural areas. In 2009, “Leading Wild Goose Project” was established to offer in-job training for elementary and secondary school teachers in rural areas. This project consists of 3 levels --- provincial level, municipal level and county level. Through this project, 14,621 rural backbone teachers received training, including 4,048, 3,723 and 6,850 backbone teachers of provincial, municipal and county levels respectively. In addition, “Double-Qualified Teachers” program was established to propel the training of teachers in secondary vocational schools. At present, the number of teachers in kindergartens, elementary schools, secondary schools, secondary vocational schools and higher education institutions reached 87,200, 170,100, 180,200, 30,600 and 49,500 respectively. By the end of 2009, there are 25 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences or Chinese Academy of Engineering, 12 experts and scholars selected by the national “1000-scholars Scheme”, 48 specially-appointed professors and 15 chair professors of “Chang Jiang Scholars Program”, 85 experts selected by the “National Talents Project”, 35 provincial-level top senior experts, and 44 specially-appointed professors of “Qian Jiang Scholars” in Zhejiang province.
Ever-Increasing Investment in Education
Unremitting efforts were made to improve schooling conditions by various ways of fund-raising and establishing education fund guarantee mechanism that embodies the features of public finance. In 2009, the total investment in education amounts to 89.11 billion RMB, 11.77% increase year-on-year. Besides, private sectors or individuals are encouraged to run schools or institutions. Now, there are about 10,000 private educational institutions with student population 2,161,800, which accounts for 23.09% in the total student number. In order to give strong support to rural education and improve rural schooling conditions, small rural schools reconstruction or renovation projects were carried out with cumulative investment of 1.13 billion RMB in Zhejiang province in 2009. Through this project, schooling conditions of 1683 rural schools have been improved greatly. Reconstruction projects for rural teachers’ accommodation, kindergartens in towns or townships, and schools for farmer-turned migrant workers’ children were initiated as planned with total investment of 1.16 billion RMB in 2009. By the end of 2009, 573,000 square meters of teachers’ accommodation has been built, 185 kindergartens were put into use, and 22 schools for farmer-turned migrant workers’ children were set up or reconstructed. The second phase of “Distance Education Project for Rural Elementary and Secondary Schools” flourished. In 2009, 3000 elementary and secondary schools in rural areas were equipped with 3,500 multi-media equipments, many rural schools were offered about 1,500,000 volumes of books, and 100 laboratories suited for high school new curriculum reform were set up in 31 underdeveloped counties or island counties. Minimum standard for student per capita public-use operating funds has been raised up to 350 RMB for elementary school and 550 RMB for junior secondary school during the period of compulsory education. In fact, the actual average standard for student per capita public-use operating funds has reached 792.66 RMB and 1072.22 RMB respectively. Accordingly, the standard of full-of-love-and-nutrition meal for rural elementary and secondary school students has been raised up to 350 RMB which benefits about 360,000 students.
Goals of Prominent Province of Education are: to consolidate the achievements of universalization of the 15-year education, to continuously enhance its quality, and to further mass higher education with its gross enrollment rate reaching 45% by the end of 2010; and by the end of 2020, sound and modern education system and education development support system will take shape, balanced development in cities and rural areas will be basically realized, educational quality and internationalization will have been greatly improved, and educational modernization will come true. All of the above efforts will give great talents support and intellectual support for the implementation of the plan “Entrepreneurship enriches people, and innovation invigorates Zhejiang” and eventually for the realization of a modern well-off society.