On April 9, Minister of Education Chen Baosheng inspected Beijing's progress of educational reforms and the CPC history learning campaign.
Chen met with Cai Qi, Secretary of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee, and attended a municipal workshop on education and listened to reports given by representatives from the sectors of education, Party organization, finance and healthcare. He also visited a number of education institutions, including Donghuamen Kindergarten in Dongcheng District, Beijing Jingshan School, Beijing Technology and Business University and Beijing Yuying School.
Chen Baosheng commended the foresight, professionalism, and strong sense of responsibility exhibited by Beijing Municipal Government in its effort to build a high-quality education system. Beijing has set a national example of how to innovate educational models, enhance education governance, improve learning environments, and build an unified system of morality and ethics education for primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions. Chen said in 2021, the first year of the 14th Five-Year-Plan period and the CPC's 100th founding anniversary, the CPC Central Committee has made clear plans with a new focus to promote education in the new era. In this context, Beijing should continue its effort in the following areas: 1) stepping up institutional innovation; 2) implementing the Plan on Deepening the Reform of Education Evaluation in the New Era; 3) putting into place a clearly-defined accountability systems to foster ideological awareness; 4) ensuring that general government expenditure on education increase year by year; 5) ensuring that average education expenditure per student increases year by year; 6) regulating the use of textbooks according to national standards; 7) taking preventive measures to reduce incidence of myopia among students; and 8) building a stronger mechanism to promote standard use of language.
Chen pointed out that preschool education should be affordable and widely accessible, and an innovative play-based approach to learning should be developed to facilitate children’s cognitive, language and physical development. In compulsory education, efforts should be made to reduce students’ load of homework and extra-curricular tutoring. The focus should be placed on improving the quality of teaching in schools, provide more diversified after-school activities, and strictly regulate extra-curricular tutoring centers. A better learning environment for students should be built by taking a series of actions, including reducing the burden of homework, limiting the use of smartphones, supporting good reading and sleep habits and promoting students’ health and well-being.
Chen stressed that a CPC history learning campaign was currently launched for all CPC members, and schools should take this opportunity to enhance morality, ethics and political education. Efforts should be made to help students better understand CPC’s history and theories, which would contribute to shaping their character.