-- When the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded, the enrollment rate of school-aged children was 20 percent, while the illiteracy rate was over 80 percent.
Now, China has the world's largest educational system. In 2009, China had a student population of 260 million, who were taught by 14 million teachers.
Illiteracy among young people and people of working age dwindled to below 3.58 percent.
-- Now the nine-year free compulsory education has been popularized. The enrollment rates in elementary schools and junior high schools have reached 99 percent. The average year span of education among people above 15 have reached 9.5 years.
-- In 2009, China's higher learning institutions had 29.79 million students, with a gross enrolment rate of 24.2 percent, equaling the world average level.
Besides, 82 million people now have higher education degrees.
-- Universal access to education has been a goal of the country since the era of Chairman Mao Zedong.
-- Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping once said that education is crucial to the development of science and technology which plays a key role in China's modernization drive.
-- On June 21, 2010, China passed the medium and long term guidelines for educational development over the next decade, which reiterated that education is the cornerstone in the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
-- China has put into place a free compulsory education system across urban and rural areas. From 2006 to 2010, the central government has allocated additional funding worth 218 billion yuan (32 billion U.S. dollars) to shore up compulsory education in rural areas.
-- The monopoly of public schools has been ended. Now China has over 100,000 private schools.
-- Government spending in education has increased year on year. In 2009, the funding allocated to the education sector by the central government reached 198 billion yuan (29 billion U.S. dollars), up by 23.6 percent year on year.
-- The government decided in 2006 that public education resources should shift more to rural areas, under-developed central and western regions, poor and bordering regions, and communities with ethnic minority groups. --BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua)