Several days ago, the State Council of the P.R.C. published the “List of the Counties Passing National Assessment of Balanced Development of Compulsory Education 2021”. There are only two such counties in the country in this list for their high-quality and balanced education. Haiyan is one of them.

In recent years, Haiyan has coordinated urban and rural education and improved education conditions in both urban and rural areas. Eight new schools will be put into operation this year. With big areas and advanced equipment, those schools are all constructed in accordance with provincial standards, indicating that urban and rural schools have been improved according to the same standard in Haiyan.

The county has attached importance to quality education and invested much into its hardware construction. Among Jiaxing’s first “new quality schools" of compulsory education announced recently, there are Haiyan Experimental Primary School Education Group, Experimental Middle School and Yuantong Middle School.

In recent years, Haiyan Experimental Primary School Education Group has carried out in-depth curriculum researches, development and practice, integrated national educational goals, school's educational visions and teachers' educational ideals and built a curriculum system to promote students' personalized development.

Now, this school offers more than 80 extended courses involving culture, practice, sports and art, and special extended courses based on social resources like films, TV, sand paintings and hip-hop. The courses like "Seal Cutting" have been assessed as municipal classic courses. "Now, the schools of our county are as good as those in big cities. Our children have more opportunities to learn something new and master various skills," said Li Chunyan, a student’s parent, full of satisfaction.

In 2006, the county put forward the education philosophy “balance, quality and harmony”. After years of exploration, the county has established a mechanism for compulsory education resources allocation and carried out the same standards in school construction, teachers’ allocation, public funds per student and basic equipment. Meanwhile the county has established seven "1+X" urban and rural school development communities, adopted integrated development modes in school running, management, resources and assessments. Since 2021, local comprehensive difference coefficient of urban and rural resource allocation has been kept within 0.28, and school conditions have been upgraded. In the past school conditions were up to the standard on average, but now the conditions of every school have been up to the standard.

Yuantong Middle School sets educational goals: self-disciplined, brave to take responsibilities and good at learning, sports and life, and established an extended curriculum system themed by “moral education” “sports and art” and “disciplines”. The school pays attention to students’ personalized development and to the cultivation of students’ way of thinking, offers the course group of “Visual Thinking” and the characteristic course “Language Art Studio”, which serves as a platform for students to take part in festival activities and theme exhibitions. “High-quality teachers have made great contributions to improving quality education. We adopt ‘school-subsidized training plus self-study improvement’ mode to enhance teachers’ professional competence, make the training plans for excellent, backbone, young and new teachers respectively, and require teachers to participate in online training to improve teaching ability,” said Tang Yuefen, headmaster of Yuantong Middle School.

Over the years, the county has optimized the quality development system of disciplines by achieving the goal of “overall planning” of allocating teaching staff and building “first-class discipline teams”, and given full play to the roles of high-quality teachers through the “exchange of urban and rural teachers” “teachers being managed by the county but employed by schools” “joint employment and sharing” modes, etc. Last year, the county selected 18 county-level “first-class discipline teams”. The primary and secondary school teachers enjoy higher education levels than the national standard, and the number of backbone teachers is also larger than the national standard.

The county follows the principle of “recruiting all students but adopting various education methods”. The children of new residents go to school based on the points accumulated. Special education is integrated into common education. The county assures special student groups of equal education. The teachers and students of each class are balanced. After-school education services are provided for those who need them. In 2021, 96.45% of new residents’ children and all special children studied in public schools. This year, 99.59% of primary school students and 85.48% of secondary school students receive after-school education services.

The county will continue to facilitate the urban-rural balanced, harmonious and high-quality development and build an education brand “High-quality Compulsory Education in Haiyan” to make more contributions to building Haiyan into a model county of high-quality common prosperity.