China's education authority has required that every earthquake-ravaged school should be supported in school reconstruction to enable all affected students to return to school on the opening day of the new semester which starts on September 1.

"The units which support quake-damaged schools should do their best to render manpower, material, financial and intellectual support by sending managerial personnel and experts with the rebuilding," the Ministry of Education said in a recently issued notice.

They should also facilitate these schools to transfer local students to schools or kindergartens outside of the quake zone, develop secondary vocational education, and offer training courses for farmers and migrant workers, the notice read.

The ministry has also adopted a series of preferential policies for the quake-affected college candidates such as increasing the enrollment rate, exempting their tuition fees and giving subsidies to would-be freshmen who lost their parents or became disabled during the devastating earthquake.

The death toll in the May 12 earthquake rose to 69,134 as of Saturday noon, while 374,061 people were injured and 17,681 others remained missing, the State Council Information Office said.

(Xinhua News Agency June 8, 2008)