Thanks to the efforts to ensure everyone is able to travel to school, none of the 1,339 current students from Xihxu Township have dropped out of education. Since 2013, 217 students from the township have graduated from or are studying at university.
* The township offers a glimpse into the development that has taken place in Xinjiang’s education system in recent years.
* According to a white paper released by China’s State Council in 2021, a complete education system has been put in place in Xinjiang, with institutions providing education from preschool through to higher education.
URUMQI, March 16 (Xinhua) — Amid a convoy of vehicles winding down snowy mountain roads at altitudes of some 4,000 meters, Ankar Anwar could be found aboard a warm bus with his schoolmates, rifling through a bag for his favorite snacks.
The convoy was carrying students free-of-charge to their boarding school in Yecheng County, which is located in the Kashgar Prefecture of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, ahead of the spring semester in February. It was led by two police vehicles and escorted by an ambulance to ensure the safety of the students.
Hailing from a village in Xihxu, a mountainous township about 1,700 km from the regional capital of Urumqi, 13-year-old Ankar Anwar is a seventh-grader at Yecheng County No. 15 High School. He and more than 120 other students arrived safely at the school following a six-hour drive.
Although his parents had been unable to take him to school themselves due to it being the lambing season, Ankar Anwar was not lonely on his journey. Teachers, village officials, traffic police and doctors were also part of the convoy, working together to ensure the students could travel without concern.
Wang Xiaolin, a traffic police officer from Yecheng, has been helping escort students to school for 11 years. “The roads are narrow and curved, and there is thick ice and snow. When the convoy passes by, we temporarily control the traffic to ensure nothing goes wrong,” Wang said.
In the summer of 2023, the convoy encountered a mudslide just after the students had returned home, and it was almost struck, Wang recalled. After an hour of emergency maintenance work, traffic returned to normal.
Lyu Yonggang, who works at Yecheng County’s education bureau, said that the vehicles had been selected from the most competent transport company in Yecheng. And before the trip, traffic police inspected the condition of the vehicles and reminded drivers repeatedly of the importance of road safety. “We helped the students and their parents feel at ease with our care,” Lyu said.
Thanks to these efforts to ensure everyone is able to travel to school, none of the 1,339 current students from Xihxu have dropped out of education. Since 2013, 217 students from the township have graduated from or are studying at university. And many are studying in universities in Chinese municipalities such as Beijing and Shanghai, according to Yecheng’s education bureau.
The township offers a glimpse into the development that has taken place in Xinjiang’s education system in recent years. According to a white paper released by China’s State Council in 2021, a complete education system has been put in place in Xinjiang, with institutions providing education from preschool through to higher education.
By 2020, the gross enrollment rate of preschool institutions in Xinjiang was over 98 percent, the net enrollment rate of primary schools was almost 100 percent, and the completion rate of nine-year compulsory education was over 95 percent.
