"I also raised funds for Liangjiahe Village to run a primary school, and I was very happy."

On the afternoon of March 6, General Secretary Xi Jinping mentioned a past event while visiting members of the Democratic League, Democratic Progressive Party and Education who attended the Third Session of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and attended the joint group meeting.

In 1969, Xi Jinping, who was under 16 years old, came to Liangjiahe. After 7 years of educated youth, the care of the Liangjiahe family and fellow villagers has benefited Xi Jinping for life. At that time, many people in Liangjiahe were illiterate. At Xi Jinping's suggestion, the village set up a literacy class.

After leaving northern Shaanxi, Xi Jinping always cared about the villagers there. He helped the village to turn on electricity, build bridges, and rebuild primary schools. When he was the secretary of the Fuzhou Municipal Party Committee, he made a special trip back to Liangjiahe to visit the children from door to door, bringing new school bags, stationery and alarm clocks to remind them of school time.

"No matter how hard you are, you cannot suffer children, and no matter how poor you are, you cannot be poor in education." The healthy growth of children has always been the gentlest concern in Xi Jinping's heart. "The best house in the village is the school", "Educational issues are absolutely not allowed to 'wait for a while'", "Really put education in the position of pioneers"... When working in the local area, Xi Jinping devoted a lot of effort to the education of children.

"When I saw the letter, I recalled the scene of laying the foundation for your school 20 years ago." On the eve of the 2024 "June 1st" International Children's Day, students from Zhijiang Primary School in Jialing District, Nanchong City, Sichuan Province received a sincere reply from General Secretary Xi Jinping. Zhijiang Primary School is one of the Hope Primary Schools built in Nanchong, Zhejiang. In May 2004, Xi Jinping, then Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, came here to lay the foundation for the school and earnestly instructed "to build this school well so that children in the mountain village can become successful as soon as possible."

"Together, we will do a good job in education and cultivate students well, and cultivate a batch of pillars of the country to promote Chinese-style modernization." Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has placed education in a strategic position of priority development. From schools deep in the mountains, to schools in ethnic areas, to schools in disaster areas, to schools rebuilt in disaster areas, his investigation footprints have been left.

"Does the children learn?" "How is the children studying?" "Where do children go to school?"... Over the years, General Secretary Xi Jinping has carefully asked when he saw that there were children at home. He emphasized over and over again that "the next generation must first be educated to live a good life" and "the children cannot lose at the starting line."

From running literacy classes for literacy when they were poor and lax, to raising funds to run schools and implementing the "Hope Project" at the beginning of reform and opening up, and then to a new era of becoming a strong country in education. Looking back at the magnificent history of the development of education in New China, the General Secretary sighed: "Our own educational process has been upside down!"

The changes in progress have brought new problems. Changes in population size structure pose new challenges and new requirements for education. "Optimize the allocation of regional education resources and establish a basic public education service supply mechanism that is coordinated with population changes." This is an important deployment made by the "Decision" of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

In September 2024, the second National Education Conference of the New Era was held. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized in his important speech that we must adhere to the people-centered approach and continuously improve the universality, accessibility and convenience of public education services, so that the results of education reform and development benefit all people more and more equitably. Optimize the allocation of regional education resources, promote the high-quality and balanced development of compulsory education, and gradually narrow the gap between urban and rural areas, regional, interschool and group.

At this joint group meeting, member Cai Guangjie from the Sichuan Provincial Department of Education mentioned that in recent years, the focus of population distribution has shifted to cities and the reduction of school-age population, and some new problems have followed, such as the coexistence of over-degree supply and shortage of degree supplies, and the uneven structure of the teacher team.

General Secretary Xi Jinping mentioned the primary school that raised funds for Liangjiahe Village that year: "Why did it disappear later? It was also a good thing. In order to improve the quality of teaching, it was concentrated in townships. That was also an adjustment of the school structure."

This year's Central Document No. 1 and Government Work Report both made arrangements for "optimizing the allocation of regional educational resources." The Central Document No. 1 not only requires "improving the operating conditions of boarding schools and the management level of fire protection, safety, etc.", but also clearly proposes "running necessary small-scale rural schools well." The government work report proposes, "Deeply implement the project of expanding and improving the quality of basic education, and improve the resource coordination and allocation mechanism that is compatible with population changes."

At the CPPCC joint meeting on March 6, the General Secretary thought deeply: "We must focus on modernization needs, adapt to changes in the population structure, coordinate basic education, higher education, and vocational education, coordinate government investment and social investment, and establish and improve a more reasonable and efficient educational resource allocation mechanism."

Producer: Liang Changjie

Planning: Yue Xiaoqiao

Written by: Qiu Yaozhou

Position: Wang Yufeng