According to statistics of the Ministry of Education, drop-out rate among students under compulsory education in big and middle-sized cities were almost zero in 2004, but it was 2.45 percent for rural primary school students and 3.9 percent for rural junior high school students, or even as high as 5 percent inrural areas in seven provinces in central and west China.

    Zhang Jianhua, a State Council (or the cabinet) official in charge of education, science and culture, said the draft amendmen tasks the provincial governments, rather than county-level governments as stipulated in the to-be-revised law, to take the responsibility to fund compulsory education in their own provinces.

    The draft also demands expenses for this purpose should be listed in the budget of the provincial governments, said Zhang, director of the Education, Science and Cultural Department of the Legislative Affairs Office, the State Council.

    "And the governments are required to give priority to rural schools when they draw up the budget for compulsory education," Zhang said, citing the provisions of the draft amendment, which also demand the central government to cover the cost of textbooks for rural compulsory education in the central and western regions.

    To reinforce the teaching staff of rural schools, the draft amendment requires teachers in urban public schools who are to receive the senior professional title or are freshly employed teachers to go to underdeveloped rural areas to teach for a certain time.

    The Chinese government has paying great heeds to improve rural education, with a recent promise to allocate 218 billion yuan (26.9 billion U.S. dollars) in the next five years to boost compulsory education in the countryside.

    Rural students are expected to be exempted from all tuition fees and other educational expenses, including the costs of textbooks, winter heat, and transportation, according to the government.

    Education experts who are worried about the negative impact of the widening wealth gap on education, urged equal opportunities for all children to receive education in order to root out hidden danger of social instability. Enditem