China will establish a "safety record" for every school building in the country during an inspection of all 338,000 primary and secondary schools nationwide by the end of October, an education official said on Friday.

"As we conduct safety inspections on school buildings across the country, a 'safety record' for each building in each school should also be established in the same time," Lu Xin, vice minister of Education said at a ministry meeting.

The school building inspection, started in May this year, would be completed by the end of this October, according to Lu.

China started a three-year nationwide school reinforcement project from May this year, to improve school building's capabilities to survive disasters such as earthquakes, landslides, floods and typhoons.

All government departments concerned should join hands to make concrete plans to complete the project, Lu said, adding that the project should include the reinforcement plan for "every single building of every single school."

The central government will allocate at least 24 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion) in the upcoming three years to support reinforcement of buildings in earthquake prone areas such as central and western China.

However, it is estimated that at least 200 billion yuan (US$29.4 billion) is needed for reinforcement of all rural school buildings in those regions.

The rest of the money will be raised by governments at the provincial level, according to the ministry.

The quality of schools in southwest China's Sichuan Province has been a major source of discontent and complaint for local parents whose children died in the devastating 8.0-magnitude quake on May 12 last year.

According to the ministry's plan, local government heads will be responsible for accidents in which dilapidated or unsafe school buildings in their administrative areas cause injury or death.

(Xinhua News Agency July 12, 2009)