Development plan seeks to give new hope to deprived children
Print Edition
WHEN 23-year-old Yu Runhan began teaching at a remote middle school in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, educating the students proved a daunting challenge.
Her school, in the Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Chuxiong, comprised students from the Yi ethnic group who speak their local language rather than Mandarin. As her lesson plans were mostly in Mandarin, Runhan found her students couldn’t understand what she was saying and quickly lost interest.
“I noticed that many pupils disliked school. Some high school students gave up altogether and returned home to work on their farms,” Yu said.
Language and education barriers are just one of many problems faced by children in poverty-stricken areas.
According to the Enhancing Underprivileged Children Development Plan (2014-20), approved by the central government last November, 40 million children have lower development in health and education than the national average.
The plan aims to help underprivileged children in 680 impoverished counties by providing benefits from prenatal care to effective and affordable education until they finish school.
It also pledges to help underprivileged children live in conditions as close as possible to the country’s average level in terms of health, water, sanitation, nutrition and education.
It set a goal for the maternal death rate related to childbirth in such regions to be decreased to 30 per 100,000. It also aims to reduce the death rate among babies and children under 5 to 12 per 1,000 and 15 per 1,000, respectively.
To help achieve those goals, free vaccines will be provided.
Authorities will also build more child welfare institutions, send more teachers to rural and remote areas and increase the allowances for special education and rural teachers, it said.
Yu, in the meantime, has figured out a way to help her pupils study. She set up a “reading corner” filled with old books and magazines in her class, drawing students interest by letting them select materials that interest them.
“The pupils like reading, though they’re not so keen on going to school. The books and magazines get borrowed as soon as I put them out,” she said.
Dang Guoying, an agricultural expert with the China Academy of Social Sciences, said a lack of early education and skills acts a barrier for many Chinese people to escape poverty.
“The plan is a key step in promoting the development of underprivileged children,” Dang said.
Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, said provincial governments should increase financial support as financial security plays a key role in the implementation of the plan.
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