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On January 1-8, the National Educational Work Conference 2021 was convened in Beijing. Among other participants, officials from the MOE and representatives from local education authorities and universities directly affiliated to the MOE attended the event. Chen Baosheng, Minister of Education and Secretary of the MOE’s Party Leading Group, delivered a work report at the conference.
Chen stressed at the conference that, following the guidance of Xi Jinping’s thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era and his key statements on education, the MOE would continue to pursue steady progress and quality in its work by strengthening the Party’s leadership and fully implementing the Party’s educational guidelines. It was going to take measures such as promoting fairness in the development process, reforming institutional mechanisms, enhancing accountability, adopting a holistic approach to quality improvement, and consolidating the assurance system through Party-building activities. With greater efforts to improve educational governance, the MOE aimed to accelerate the modernization of education in building China into an educational powerhouse.
The minister said that 2020 was an extraordinary year, in which the education system weathered the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, fulfilled the goals set out in the 13th Five-Year Plan (FYP), and scored countless victories in poverty alleviation through education, making great contributions to the progress of the nation.
Noting that China’s education would be entering a quality development phrase during the 14th FYP period, the minister urged the education system to embrace new ideas and identify gaps and shortcomings in work plans and the implementation thereof, in order to address emerging challenges and meet new requirements. To this end, he encouraged the education system to develop a stronger sense of mission, that is, bearing in mind that educational progress is vital to the mission of building a modern socialist nation and that ultimately, education must serve the interest of the people. For greater achievements in education, the minister underlined that cross-sectoral collaboration had be further strengthened to optimize synergy with other ministries. He added that education should adopt a targeted problem-solving approach, raise risk awareness, and have accountability mechanism in place to address problems as they emerge.