The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : ‘Chinese education key to creating wealth’

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 17, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

‘Chinese education key to creating wealth’

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: Socialist countries give top priority to education as a means to create wealth. Though China has redefined its socialism as creation and distribution of wealth, Maoism remains the basis for their progress, according to Chukka Ramaiah, MLC.

The noted educationist and Progressive Democratic Front chairman was talking to presspersons here on Wednesday after returning from a 11-day tour of China. He was in the nine-member delegation of teachers and educationists.

Political will, planned development, rural reconstruction, responsibility of local bodies in implementing government programmes and people’s participation were the factors for China’s economic progress, he said.

Unlike India, which was still struggling to universalise primary education, China could achieve it in the 70s itself because of strong political will. An education commission was set up at every level to ensure that every child attended school. Failure to do so would invite cut of government incentives.

Unlike education which is a right here, in China nine years of education was compulsory. After the eighth standard, a student would take an entrance test to go into any course of choice in line with global scenario.

There was no undue focus only on few professional courses as here.

For the backward regions, the government has created autonomous regions and the team visited one such region called ‘Inchu’. Directly funded by the government, a school building accommodated 6,000 students with a teacher-student ratio of 1:20.

Success mantra

Though English was taught in schools, the medium of instruction was Chinese. Chinese would create infrastructure first before implementing a programme to ensure its success, he noted.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh