Premier Wen Jiabao has hit out at the aggressive closures of rural schools in a speech ahead of today's Teachers' Day that addresses the sorry state of rural education.
The problem could hinder the development of the whole country, he warned.
Many village-level schools have closed down because of falling enrolments caused by rapid urbanisation, with pupils transferring to supposedly better-resourced township and county schools.
However those schools often struggle to cope with the extra students because they lack sufficient facilities, including larger dormitories and canteens.
The closures controversy was underscored by a China Youth Daily report in July about more than 100 villagers in the town of Dayang in Zhejiang's Jinyun county getting on their knees in front of reporters to ask for help to keep a newly built township school open.
Villagers said that if the school was forced to close, hundreds of children would have to go to schools up to 40 kilometres away.
'If our children drop out of school because their schools are closed or because the other schools are too far away to attend, such measures would go against what our policies were designed for,' Wen said.