School spending vow renewed despite years of failure
The central government says it is committed to spending the equivalent of 4 per cent of gross domestic product on education next year, despite having failed to deliver on the same promise for 11 years.
During a special National People's Congress Standing Committee review of the implementation of a 10-year blueprint for education development, Deputy Finance Minister Zhang Shaochun said yesterday government spending on schooling was likely to be between 3.83 per cent and 3.86 per cent of GDP this year and that there should be little problem reaching 4 per cent next year.
Beijing initially set the 4 per cent target in 2000 to bring China in line with many developing countries. However, it has repeatedly failed to deliver and the country only registered spending equal to 3.66 per cent of GDP in 2009.
The National Outline for Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform and Development, covering 2010 to 2020, was released at the end of February last year amid rising public discontent over a school system increasingly dogged by bureaucratic corruption and widening inequality.
To meet the target next year, Zhang said the central government would continue to prod regional governments into spending more on education and making some of the proceeds from land sales available for schooling, among other initiatives. He stopped short of specifying how much would be spent beyond next year.
Standing Committee member Wu Qidi said she was concerned about the long-term sustainability of the funding mechanism.
'There is another issue here,' she said. 'Whether the money will be spent in an efficient way and how such spending should be evaluated.'
Analysts said regional governments were required to contribute more than 80 per cent of education spending but had their own priorities or not enough money.
Education Minister Yuan Guiren said yesterday that mergers of rural schools were partly to blame for a series of school bus tragedies.
Yuan said the number of primary schools was cut from 550,000 to 260,000 between 2000 and 2010 and that 64 per cent of rural pupils relied on motor vehicles to get to and from school. He promised to make more funding available to address the resulting safety problem.
Based on estimates by education departments, 460 billion yuan is needed for 1.5 million school buses to carry 150 million students.
