China plans community education network by 2020

BEIJING - China plans to establish a national community education network by 2020 through 200 demonstration areas with exemplary practices and 600 others to test relevant practices, the Ministry of Education (MOE) announced.

Community education should be richer in content and more diversified in its forms, and resident participation and their approval of such schools should increase remarkably in the next five years, according to a guideline to promote community education issued by the MOE with other departments.

The guideline also called for better service capacity, pooling and sharing of educational resources.

It encouraged schools to offer community schooling by capitalizing on their existing facilities, courses and teachers.

Schools are required to open more resources to the public, such as libraries, museums, gymnasiums and exhibition halls.

The guideline asked localities to establish a cost-sharing mechanism to raise money for community education through government input, private endowment, and tuition.