Cui Ning

BY the end of this year, the nine-year compulsory education programme will be fully accessible in Dongchuan, a landlocked and underdeveloped prefecture in Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Teachers have received training and the didactical tools in the prefecture's primary and middle schools have been greatly improved thanks to a programme launched by the China-Unicef Education Project Support Centre in 1996, the Dongchuan education committee wrote in its newsletter.

The China-Unicef Education Project Support Centre, a special institution set up in 1996 to help spread basic education in China's poorest areas, has launched the nine-year compulsory education programme in 106 counties located in 11 provinces and autonomous regions, the centre's official Zhan Ruiling announced.

All these programmes should be completed by 2000.

The education project targeting China's 106 poor counties, is the largest one that the United Nations Children's Fund has supported in developing countries.

Dongchuan, located in the northeastern part of Yunnan, has 287,000 inhabitants, mostly farmers.

The area's industrial and agricultural sectors are underdeveloped as 96 per cent of the prefecture are beset by mountains.

Aided by the five-year programme (1996-2000) launched by the China-Unicef Education Project Support Centre, Dongchuan has made remarkable progress with the introduction of the nine-year compulsory education project over the past three years, according to prefecture's education committee.

The rates of children's attendance in primary and middle schools were respectively 95 per cent and 61 per cent in 1996 before the programme's implementation.

Attendance rose up to 98 per cent and 78 per cent respectively last year, the committee's statistics indicated.

Dongchuan has set up training programmes for teachers covering subjects such as school management, Chinese, mathematics, preschool education and labour skills.

All primary school teachers in the prefecture's remote and mountainous areas will receive these programmes by this summer, said the education committee.

More than three-quarters of China's population have received nine-year compulsory education. The education programme will be spread among the remaining population by the end of next year, according to the Ministry of Education.