Accelerate Educational Modernization and Prepare a New Generation for National Rejuvenation

Accelerate Educational Modernization and Prepare a New Generation for National Rejuvenation*

September 22, 2020

We will foster a new generation capable of shouldering the mission of national rejuvenation. Education is a matter of great significance to the country and the Party. It has been a top priority of the Central Committee since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012. We have held the National Education Conference and released a new guideline – China Educational Modernization 2035. We have strengthened moral and political education in schools of all types and at all levels, advanced comprehensive reforms in education, and made curriculum content a matter of national responsibility. Fundamental changes are taking place.

In the coming 14th Five-year Plan period (2021-2025), education will be one of the top missions of the Party and the state. We will fully implement the Party’s education policy, give priority to education, cultivate talent for the Party and the country, and develop education that satisfies the demands of the people. In accelerating the modernization of education we will foster a new generation and prepare them for the mission of national rejuvenation. We will keep to the socialist path in education, take the fostering of values and moral integrity as the fundamental goal of education, and make education play its role in encouraging students to foster and apply the core socialist values. We will further reform and innovate school courses on moral standards and political philosophy, strengthen and improve physical and aesthetic education, and expand programs on basic life and work skills. We will develop well-rounded education, promote equal access to education, and ensure the all-round development of students in terms of morality, intellectual ability, physical fitness, aesthetic sensibility and work skills. In our school education we will foster patriotism, a sense of social responsibility, a pioneering spirit, and the ability to put ideas into practice.

Human resources are an important support for the new development dynamic. We will optimize the structure of disciplines and programs, and the training of personnel to meet the needs of the new development dynamic. We will improve the mechanism to promote lifelong learning for all, and build a more flexible lifelong learning system with richer resources and easier access. We will intensify efforts to develop vocational education and training, improve workers’ skills and increase their incomes, expand the middle-income group through fuller and higher-quality employment, and release the potential in domestic demand.

Improving our capacity for independent innovation and our ability to make quick breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields is essential to fostering the new development dynamic. Our colleges and universities should take on the responsibility for releasing their potential in basic research and scientific and technological innovation, respond to China’s strategic needs, and make faster breakthroughs in core technologies, particularly in bottleneck technologies that have been withheld from us. We will support institutions of higher learning that aim to become first-rate universities or develop first-class disciplines in strengthening scientific and technological innovation and building research facilities that serve this purpose. We will foster synergy of enterprises, universities, and research institutes. We will further reform the training of highly competent staff for colleges and universities, so as to have a contingent of high-caliber teachers and nurture a greater number of outstanding staff. To serve regional development strategies, we will optimize the distribution of educational resources across regions and accelerate the creation of an education model. We must move faster to integrate education across the country, and create an environment in which the eastern region, the central region and the western region progress together in educational development. This will enable education to play a bigger role in regional development strategies.

We will continue to implement comprehensive, systematic, holistic and coordinated reforms in education. We will introduce and implement the Overall Plan for Further Reform on Education Evaluation in the New Era, and ensure that it succeeds in building a world-class evaluation system grounded in China’s realities. We must review the experience of booming online education since the outbreak of Covid19, and use information technology to update educational concepts and reform teaching models. We must open the education sector wider to the outside world, optimize global cooperation in education, and strengthen international exchanges and cooperation in science and technology at higher levels. At the same time, we must maintain our principles and keep to the correct political orientation.

* Part of the speech at a meeting with experts and representatives from education, culture, health and sports sectors.

(Not to be republished for any commercial or other purposes.)