Guizhou spends deeply on education

Guizhou spent over 331.5 billion yuan ($48.75 billion) to boost development of education from 2012 to 2016, accounting for 18.85 percent of its total fiscal expenditure.

A press conference was held on Dec 2 in Guiyang to make public the financial expenditures on education. He Jianming, deputy director of the Guizhou Provincial Finance Bureau, said that the government had allocated 11.7 billion yuan as a special fund to build kindergartens run by the government in each town of Guizhou.

Statistics show that the gross admission rate of pre-school children increased to 83 percent in 2016, which exceeded the national average.

He said that about 202.3 billion yuan were put into compulsory education from 2012 to 2016, with gross admission rate rising to 88 percent last year.

In addition, since 2012 all the towns of the 66 poverty counties in Guizhou have built pre-school education agencies and rural compulsory education schools.

"We have invested about 29 billion yuan in upgrading high school education in the past five years, increasing the admission rate to 87 percent," He said.

More financial measures will be taken to guarantee the development of Guizhou's education because the provincial government considers it a long-term strategic project, according to He.