More than 10,000 students forced to study elsewhere will return to newly-built schools in their hometown, Wenchuan County, the epicenter of the massive earthquake last May in southwest China's Sichuan Province, local officials said on Sunday.

Ninety-five percent of the school reconstruction in Wenchuan is expected to be finished before September 1 when the new term begins, said Hu Zheng'an, Wenchuan Education Bureau head.

Students of four primary schools continued their education in prefabricated houses in Wenchuan, while most of the nearly 16,000 students across the county moved to other cities or provinces after the 8.0-magnitude earthquake which left more than 87,000 people dead or missing and millions homeless.

The county made a fresh new program of the school building with more than 2.2 billion yuan budgeted. As one of the first to start reconstruction, the Sanjiang Primary School will resume classes for all the 360 pupils on May 12, the first anniversary of the earthquake, Hu said.

Currently, more than 300 workers are working in the construction site of a primary school around the clock in Yanmen Township.

"Construction of a school covering more than 10,000 square meters normally takes a year, but we plan to finish it within six months so that students can come back to school earlier," said Huang Guangcan, the project manager. "We must strengthen supervision to ensure the quality of the project."

(Xinhua News Agency April 19, 2009)