At the beginning of the current semester, many schools in Kashgar of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region named after Shenzhen, like Shenzhen Kashgar No. 1 High School and Shenzhen Kashgar No. 2 High School, enrolled local students.

According to the person in charge of the Shenzhen support program for Xinjiang, in the newest rounds of aid, Shenzhen has continuously laid emphasis on education quality in Xinjiang and consistently invested in cultivating teachers and improving instruction quality since 2010.

At present, 50 teachers have been recruited to work in Xinjiang. Education from kindergarten to college education as well as general education to higher vocational education is projected to improve through the program. Moreover, the newly built Kashgar University campus aided by Shenzhen will soon be put into use.

It is estimated that Shenzhen has invested 390.7 million yuan (US$ 56 million) in building four modern middle and primary schools, resulting in the creation of an additional 10,700 seats for schoolchildren. The city also helped to build 110 kindergartens in 2017, and 1 billion yuan was invested into building a new Kashgar University campus.

In order to improve the teaching quality of Kashgar’s educational system, training intensity for local teachers has been enhanced. Shenzhen aims to raise the proportion of bilingual teachers and better allocate teaching resources across all of Kashgar’s areas. Activities encouraging the use of Mandarin are also being carried out in many local schools.

At the same time, capitalizing on the opportunities presented by the cooperation between Kashgar University and Shenzhen Polytechnic, Shenzhen has also supported employment-oriented vocational education programs in Kashgar meant to help graduates find jobs.

(A Ding)