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Q: According to the agreement reached in 1951 between the central government and
the local government of Tibet, the school education of Tibet would steadily develop.
How has this development progressed up to now? |
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A: In old Tibet, education was backward, and there were no modern schools. It
was only some 2,000 lamas and children of noble families who were eligible to
study in old-style official and private schools. The majority had no access to
education.
After the signing of Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful liberation
of Tibet in 1951, the Lhasa Primary School was built in 1952, and the Lhasa Middle
School in 1956. Since then modern education has found its way to Tibet. In order
to develop the education sector of Tibet, the central government has invested
1.1 billion yuan, and has launched many incentives, a particularly effective one
being that of Tibetan students receiving free education from primary school right
through to college. Since 1985 primary and middle schools have provided free accommodation
and clothes to their Tibetan students. And boarding schools have been built in
farming and pastoral areas. When enrolling students, colleges, professional schools
and secondary specialized schools give priority to Tibetan and other ethnic minorities.
A number of schools and departments in Tibetan culture have been established,
including those specializing in the Tibetan language, Tibetan medicine, Tibetan
folk arts and history.
Over the past 50 years Tibet has set up an education
system with Tibetan characteristics, including kindergartens, primary and middle
schools, secondary professional education, higher education, adult education and
TV education. All residents in cities and towns, as well as farmers and herdsmen,
enjoy the right to education. By 1998 Tibet had built 4 modern colleges-Tibet
University, the Ethnic University, the Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Institute
and the Institute of Tibetan Medicine, as well as 16 secondary specialized schools
of teaching, agriculture and animal husbandry, health care, Tibetan medicine,
economy and finance, sports, arts, posts and telecommunications, 90 middle schools
and 4,251 primary schools. In 1998 the school enrollment rate for children was
81.3 percent, and the registered number of pupils was more than 370,000, with
Tibetan students as the majority. The number of teaching staff stood at 16, 000,
two-thirds being Tibetan teachers, and audio-visual education has become an important
method of teaching in Tibet.
Over the past 50 years, there have been 18,000
university graduates and 510,000 primary-school and middle-school graduates in
Tibet, of whom 40,000 are graduates of secondary specialized schools senior middle
schools and vocational schools, and 15,000 cadre-training-course graduates. Nearly
7,000 people have won adult self-education diplomas from colleges of professional
training and secondary specialized schools. | |
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