According to a report, released by the Institute of Social Science Survey, Peking University, the proportion of rural residents with a bachelor degree is only 0.7 percent. The report has attracted the attention of a number of law makers who are now in Beijing attending the annual session of the National People's Congress. Their view is that the equitable distribution of education resources will be key to solving this problem, China Youth Daily reports.

The report points out that the household registration system has an obvious influence on levels of educational attainment. The proportion of rural residents with a bachelor degree is only 0.7 percent, while the figure for urban residents is 12.3 percent. Additionally, in urban areas 85 out of 100 people have received junior high schooling or above, in contrast to less than 20 in rural areas.

Zhang Fangping, head of the Education Department in Hunan Province and an NPC deputy, said that it was good to see more and more people from rural areas having access to higher education, but we should be conscious of the fact that the gap between urban and rural areas is getting wider. "For example, in college entrance exams in English, urban students have an overwhelming advantage over their rural counterparts. This is unfair,"Zhang noted.

Another deputy, Wang Qishi, principal of a junior middle school in Shaoyang County, Hunan Province ascribed the problem to unbalanced resource allocation. "Most of the county's best teachers choose to teach in urban districts, which has a negative impact on the quality of our rural education," Wang said.

Early this year, when talking about education issues in rural areas, Premier Wen Jiabao said the ratio of rural students in colleges has been falling. "We need to give our attention to this problem. With social and economic development, rural people are getting wealthier, and their children should be getting more access to higher education. Obviously this is not the case at the moment," said Wen.

Statistics from another report in 2005 showed that in recent years, key universities like Tsinghua University and Peking University have enrolled increasing numbers of urban students. Based on the report's findings, the key to the household registration system lies in resource allocation, which is crucial to the distribution of educational resources and educational attainment.

(China.org.cn, March 4, 2009)