A Summary of Suzhou Education

Students of Suzhou University

It is good tradition in Suzhou to respect teachers and value education. More than 2000 scholars ( ZhuangYuan, JinShi ) appeared in the history of Suzhou and at present the number of native academicians has reached more than 80. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially since the reform and opening-up, Suzhou has been focusing on "Flourishing the City through Science and Education" as one of the main strategies of its modern economic and social development. Historically, educational practices in the City have advanced to a new level every ten years or so.

From the year 2000, Suzhou has continued to promote the rapid development of its education as a first priority. Throughout the city, the gross enrollment of senior high school students has reached 95.6% of those eligible, and participation in higher education exceeds 50%. A system of universal basic education has been established. On several measures, the current level of instruction being offered in Suzhou is equivalent to that offered in developed Western countries in the late 1990's

Basic Education

During "The Tenth Five-Year Plan," the City budgetted 25.951 billion RMB for education, which is twice what was spent during "The Ninth Five-Year Plan." On an annual basis, this increase for education exceeds 18% per year. The total number of elementary schools, junior high schools, and senior high schools in the City reached respectively 452, 181, and 89 in the Year 2005, changed from 980, 151, and 113 in the Year 2000. With respect to advanced education, there are 133 provincial experimental elementary schools, 89 provincial demonstration junior high schools, 32 three-star senior high schools, and 20 four-star senior high schools. The cover ratio (i.e., the percentage of students served by high-quality educational resources) is 80% of total kindergarten, 33.33% of total elemantary school, 50% of total junior high school, and 66.67% of total senior high school. In all high-quality schools, the advanced elementary schools reach 57% of the total elementary schools, the advanced junior high schools reach 41% of their total number of schools, and the advanced senior high schools reach 82%.

Vocational Education

The Plan for vocational education emphasizes "Service for the Economy." 41 secondary schools have been restructured to provide vocational education, 11 new senior vocational schools have been built, and an additional 22 schools offer a variety of kinds of senior vocational education. The number of students enrolled in vocational programs has increased to 128,000, up from the previous 91,700. The vocational programs include such specialties as Electronic Communication, Mechatronics, and Autocontrol. The City of Suzhou contains 15 national key vocational schools, 5 province-level key vocational schools, 11 provincial vocational education centers. At the City level, 40 modern vocational specialties are taught, and at the Province level, 31 specialties are taught. The Plan also establishes 3 national-level and 4 province-level "Training Centers for Scarce People with Ability." The employment success ratio for graduates of City vocational schools continues to be above 99%.

Higher Education

The ordinary colleges have increased to 16 from the former 7, and the number of students has increased to 140,000, up from 50,000 earlier. Now there are 6 postdoctoral research and training stations in the City, 6 sites authorized to grant doctoral degrees in first-class subjects, 63 sites authorized to grant doctoral degrees in second-class subjects, 136 sites granting masterˇŻs degrees, 2 national level key subjects centers, 2 national level training centers, and 19 province level key subjects training centers. The Suzhou Dushu Lake Higher Education Town, and the Suzhou International Education Park, which are both currently being built, will contain more than 26 academies and nearly 70,000 teachers and students when completed.

Adult Education

The City of Suzhou currently has 25 city-level, 6 province-level and 2 national-level community education demonstration sites. It also has 5 province-level and 20 city-level demonstration locations for agriculture, science, and education. There are 20 agricultural service information websites and 12 modern farmer education centers. The gross number of people now receiving rural adult education exceeds 4,000,000, which is an increase of 20% over those being trained during the previous period of "The Ninth Five-Year Plan." Rural science and technology cadreman enrichment training additionally trains nearly 100,000 people, and rural labor force transfer training trains more than 400,000 people. The City has a total of 73 correspondence stations for adult education, and 29 outer learning sites for long-distance education. Altogether, there are nearly 50,000 enrolled students participating actively in all kinds of adult education in the province.

Multimedia Internet Educational Development

The current development plan includes creating an Internet wide-band educational network which will cover both the City center and all the rural areas throughout the entire province. All junior high schools and elementary schools will contain multimedia classrooms. Schools in the City center above elementary school level will all be connected by a fiber-optic Internet network operating at transfer rates above 10 Megabits per second. All province-level junior high schools and elementary schools will each build their own intramural network. Every city and town in the province will build an advanced educational information center. All of these subnetworks will be directly connected into the master broadband educational network (described first in this paragraph above) which will then span the entire province. The basic idea is to "Pass the Schools and the Classes Through to the Students," by using the Internet as the vehicle for change. The provincial standard will be that every student has access to the Internet at every school, and that the number of students per computer will be 8 students to 1 computer at every school. Eventually all the cities and towns in the province will gradually become directly involved in advanced educational development projects, to the benefit of all.

International Educational Cooperation

More than 20 overseas educational institutions have established teaching programs in Suzhou. These include such schools as the University of Dayton, U.S., Liverpool University,U.K., National University of Singapore, Australia TAFE Educational Institute, and so on. Groups of international schools are being built here, one after the other, such as the Singapore International School, the Eton International School, the Japan School of Suzhou, the Taiwanese ChildrenˇŻs School and the International Foundation School. Overseas students currently studying in Suzhou exceed 1,000 people, which is 58% of those overseas students studying in the entire province. For further example, there are nearly 1,800 junior high school and elementary school students in Suzhou from HongKong and Macao alone, and nearly 300 incumbent foreign teachers teaching here in Suzhou from all over the World.