Education

 

Tsinghua University is a well regarded university in Mainland China.

In 1986, China set the long-term goal of providing compulsory nine-year basic education to every child. There are about 628,840 primary schools, 78,642 secondary schools and 1,020 higher education institutions in the PROC.In February 2006, the government advanced its basic education goal by pledging to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees, in the poorer western provinces. 90.9% (male: 95.1%; female: 86.5%) of the population over age 15 are literate. China's youth (age 15 to 24) literacy rate is 98.9% (99.2% for males and 98.5% for females) in 2000. In March 2007, China announced the decision of making education a national "strategic priority", the central budget of the national scholarships will be tripled in two years and 223.5 billion Yuan (28.65 billion US dollars) of extra funding will be allocated from the central government in the next 5 years to improve the compulsory education in rural areas.

The quality of Chinese colleges and universities varies considerably across the country. The consistently top-ranked universities in mainland China are:

• Beijing: Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Beijing Normal University
• Shanghai: Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• Tianjin: Nankai University
• Xi'an Jiaotong University (Xi'an)
• Nanjing: Nanjing University, Southeast University
• University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei)
• Zhejiang University (Hangzhou)
• Wuhan University (Wuhan)
• Sun Yat-sen University (aka Zhongshan University) (Guangzhou)
• Sichuan University (Chengdu)
• Shandong University (Jinan)
• Lanzhou University (Lanzhou)

Many parents are highly committed to their children's education, often investing large portions of the family's income on education. Private lessons and recreational activities, such as in foreign languages or music, are popular among the middle-class families who can afford them.