Wang Jingli

wangjingli0715@163.com

SHENZHEN will add nearly 100,000 public high school seats and 34,000 vocational school seats in five years, according to a five-year high school development plan that was unveiled by the municipal education bureau at a news conference Friday.

The city will build, expand or renovate 30 public high schools, adding more than 60,000 new school seats in two years to meet the demand for high school education, which will bring the high school acceptance rate up to 53 percent.

The municipal planning and natural resources bureau has allocated 29 pieces of land for the construction of 37 new schools by the end of 2025, which include four high school parks in Pingshan, Longgang, Guangming and Shenshan Special Cooperation Zone, according to the plan.

Each high school park is expected to include three public high schools and to reserve land to build a private school, it says.

Except for the one located at Shenshan Special Cooperation Zone, the other three high school parks will be scheduled to conclude construction before 2022.

This year, Shenzhen will see an increase of 8,500 students attending the high school entrance exam. The municipal education bureau has planned to address the school seat crunch by building new public schools, expanding current class scale and adding new classes, according to Chen Qiuming, the bureau’s director-general.

In addition to public high school seats, the city will build vocational schools in Longhua, Pingshan, Guangming and Dapeng to offer a total of 34,000 school seats in five years.

“The manufacturing industry is an essential part of the city’s economy. Building high-quality vocational schools will offer more vocational school seats and increase the attractiveness of vocational education,” Vice Mayor Wang Lixin said at the news conference.

The city set a construction standard of no less than 8,000 yuan (US$1,150) per square meter for newly built schools to ensure their quality.

The city will also build or renovate 116 primary and junior middle schools, which will add 150,000 school seats in the next three years, according to Chen.