Getting poor students ready for a brighter future

Program places children from remote areas in the region's most elite schools

The initiative aims to make accessing top-quality higher education institutions easier for children from remote areas

Eighth-grader Tajinitsa's school is 1,000 kilometers from her hometown. Although she misses her parents, even when she broke her leg, no one could convince her to return home, as she is determined to stay at school.

Tajinitsa comes from Kashgar - a city in the south of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region - but studies at No 66 School in Urumqi, the regional capital. She returns home once a year, for two months in summer. The other 10 months of the year she lives at boarding school with her classmates and teachers.

She is part of a competitive program that takes children from Xinjiang's remote and impoverished areas and helps them to study at the region's top middle schools, preparing them to attend high schools in Central, East and South China. Last year, 10,600 students, 90 percent of whom were from ethnic minority groups, entered the program.

It aims to provide children from poor areas of Xinjiang with access to higher-quality education, according to Qu Mingcai, principal of No 66 School.

The school was established in 2004, specifically to host the program. Previously, the campus was a vocational college. The school has grown and now has two campuses in Urumqi.

The more than 2,200 students at No 66 will compete to get into high schools in more than 17 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

" It is very difficult to get accepted to study at No 66, because it is one of the best schools in the city. Studying here makes it easier to get into China's top universities," said Tajinitsa, who is ethnically Uygur.

" My grandparents said girls don't need to go to school. Several of my cousins have dropped out. Luckily my parents are more open-minded," she added.

" Last semester, I broke my leg. My father wanted me to return to Kashgar. But I said no, I couldn't possibly attend a mediocre school now."

Top universities

A total of 30 Xinjiang schools host the program. " Their students have better chances of getting into China's top universities, such as Peking and Tsinghua," Qu said.

The central government funds the entire program, including accommodation, meals, stationary, tuition and transportation between home and school, at a cost of about 8,000 yuan ($1,160) per student per year.

" There is fierce competition to get in. Students must have high grades and be extremely motivated," Qu said.

" Many graduates become engineers, doctors or public servants. One of our alumni just told me he was accepted into Beihang University," said Zhang Hua, the school's Communist Party of China secretary.

" Because it's a boarding school, students form strong bonds with their teachers," Zhang said.

Each class has about 50 students and two head teachers - one responsible for student's academic progress and the other for their life outside of class.

Piano teacher Wu Dan, 25, joined No 66 last year as a head teacher. She supervises mealtimes, hands out snacks, cares for sick or injured students and keeps in touch with their parents. Wu lives in the dormitory with the students.

" This is a very diverse bunch of adolescents, but most students are self-disciplined, so it is not very difficult to keep an eye on them," she said. Overcoming ethnic and language differences is one of the main tasks of the school, which includes students from 13 different ethnic groups.

Bilingual, multicultural

Many ethnic Uygur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz students arrive at the school speaking little Mandarin. At elementary schools, classes are often taught in the local language or dialect, due to a shortage of teachers who speak fluent Mandarin.

" No 66 has crash courses in Mandarin for first-year students. Most classes, such as maths and sciences, are taught in Mandarin to better prepare children for future exams," Qu said. The school also teaches English and has classes on Uygur language and culture.

Zhang Hua said: " The children live, eat and play together. We think this is a good way to promote harmony and solidarity across ethnic groups."

Xiong Yue, another eighth-grader from Kashgar, is one of the handful of Han Chinese students at the school. " I can also speak Uygur. It's easy to learn it from my peers, because we are always together," he said. Xiong helps run the school's geography club, which has about 30 members.

Nusiredula Adili is the youngest son of a Uygur family from a village near Kashgar. His oldest sister, a graduate of the same program, is studying information technology at Ningxia University. His second sister goes to a local high school.

" Studying hard is the only way I will succeed. I want to be a bilingual TV host, or maybe a singer," he said.

Xinhua