Ningbo allocates 800 m yuan to aid needy students in 2013

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Category: On The Campus

Published: Tuesday, 18 February 2014 12:56

Ningbo had earmarked 800 million yuan ($132 million) of financial aid to students from poverty-stricken families in 2013, said the City’s Education Bureau on Monday. About 95,000 students including preschoolers and postgraduates benefited from the subsidy,

Ningbo spares no efforts to ensure "no child shall be allowed to drop out due to family financial difficulties" and attaches great importance to the education of these needy students. The city has introduced a series of subsidy policies to assist financially-needy students in recent years.

The city launched a postgraduate funding program in October, 2011, which for the first time covered graduate students with financial need. According to policy, full-time graduate students from poverty-stricken families in Ningbo are eligible to an annual 3,000 yuan subsidy. The program can benefit 10 percent graduate students. To date, the city has provided subsidies for students from preschoolers to postgraduates.

To improve the nutrition of students who are in the stage of a nine-year compulsory education, Ningbo expanded its "free lunch" project, which had benefited many rural primary and secondary schoolers. The new "free lunch" project benefit local students as well as qualified non-Ningbo students.

The subsidies standard of "free lunch" is 1,500 yuan per person each year. Financial departments at county or district levels can increase the standard when necessary.

Statistics show, 49 million yuan had been put into the "free lunch" project, which benefited 32,000 students who are in the stage of a nine-year compulsory education.

The subsidies benefit not only local needy students but also children of migrant workers.
To ensure children of migrant workers with financial difficulties to "receive timely and good education", the city has established a system which ensures most migrant children to be enrolled by public schools and the rest by privately run migrant schools.  Statistics show over 278,900 migrant children have been pursuing compulsory education in the city by the end of September 2013. Among them, 225,000 kids, or 80.67 percent of the total, are going to public schools.