Ministry of Education: In-depth implementation of AI empowering education action

On September 26, The State Council Information Office held a series of themed press conferences on “Promoting high-quality Development”, and the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Education introduced the relevant situation.

Education is the foundation of building a strong country and reviving the nation. Minister of Education Huai Jinpeng said that the Ministry of Education has formulated and implemented the outline of the plan for the construction of a powerful education country as a strategic measure to promote high-quality development, and will fully implement the major tasks of the comprehensive reform of education deployed by the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Party, and make solid progress toward the strategic goal of building a powerful education country.

We will optimize the layout of higher education and improve the mechanism for adjusting the setting of disciplines in colleges and universities. According to reports, at present, there are 1,308 undergraduate colleges and universities in the country, including 12 categories, 93 professional categories, 816 kinds of majors, and the number of undergraduate majors in the country has 62,000. This year, a total of 1,673 specialized sites were added to the list of areas urgently needed by the national strategy, and 1,670 specialized sites that were not suitable for economic and social development were abolished.

Wu Yan, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education, said that the next step is to improve the adaptability of undergraduate major construction and the national strategy, improve the adaptability of universities, especially local universities, and regional development, improve the adaptability of undergraduate major construction and the comprehensive development of students, and accelerate the adjustment and optimization of professional structure.

The Ministry of Education has also promoted reform in the training of outstanding engineers. According to reports, under the unified guidance of the Central Organization Department, the Ministry of Education and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council jointly supported the “double first-class” universities and central enterprises to build two batches of 32 national excellent engineer colleges. At the same time, in combination with the national strategic needs, we will promote and support the construction of four national innovation institutes of Excellence engineers in Beijing, Shanghai and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

The reform of colleges and universities will be promoted in different categories, and the regional layout of higher education will be optimized. In particular, by launching breakthrough plans for basic disciplines and interdisciplinary disciplines, an effective mechanism for scientific and technological innovation and personnel training to support each other and drive high-quality development of disciplines will be established. At the same time, the training of talents urgently needed for major national strategies is placed in a prominent position, and the training of top-notch innovative talents is strengthened.

Basic education has reached the average level of high-income countries. The total number of students receiving financial assistance has reached 1.4 billion. Nutrition improvement program reaches 420 million people… A series of data shows that the people’s sense of educational attainment is more fulfilled.

How to promote the healthy growth and all-round development of children? In the new semester, some regions will increase the activity time between primary and secondary schools from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. We should further improve the comprehensive training system of morality, intelligence, physical fitness, the United States and labor, and promote the reform and innovation of the integration of ideological and political courses in schools and colleges; Implement physical fitness programs and mental health promotion actions for students, and ensure that primary and secondary school students spend no less than 2 hours a day on comprehensive physical activity; We will make solid progress in coordinating education between families, schools and communities.

In order to make education better adapt to economic and social development, we should establish a basic public education service supply mechanism coordinated with population changes. Wang Guangyan, vice minister of Education, said that it is necessary to adhere to overall considerations and comprehensive policies: in preschool education, the school-age population continues to decrease, and efforts should be made to optimize the distribution structure of inclusive resources and steadily increase the supply of public resources. In terms of compulsory education, the size of primary schools will peak in 2023, and the secondary school-age population will continue to increase. It is necessary to further optimize the distribution of urban and rural schools and expand the supply of degrees in areas with a net inflow of school-age population. In terms of senior high school education, we should appropriately increase the input of financial education funds to promote the diversified development of senior high school schools. In terms of higher education, we will expand higher education resources and ensure that the people have access to education through various means, such as upgrading and expanding existing colleges and universities to tap their potential and expand their capacity and establishing new ones.

In recent years, the comprehensive reform of education has been further deepened. In the past three years, the education system has steadily promoted the work of “double reduction”, highlighting the role of schools as the main front: the number of subject training institutions in compulsory education has decreased significantly, and the burden of students’ homework and off-campus training has decreased. The proportion of students who voluntarily participate in after-school services has increased to over 90 percent, and the teaching quality of students in compulsory education has significantly improved. The next step is to continue to consolidate the results of “double reduction” and create a good education ecology. Expand resources, stabilize the basic teaching quality of primary and secondary schools, optimize the allocation of regional educational resources; Improve the quality, activate the internal power of school education and teaching, and comprehensively improve the level of classroom teaching; Focus on practice, build a comprehensive education system pattern, and cultivate students’ exploratory and innovative thinking quality; Strong supervision, strengthen the discipline of invisible variation training governance, strengthen the training institutions pre-charge supervision.

Digitization of education is an important breakthrough to open up a new circuit of education development and shape new advantages of education development in our country. As of this month, the national smart education platform has been visited more than 50 billion times, providing valuable data resources for China’s basic education, vocational education and higher education.

Standing at the new starting point of building a powerful education country, we should further deepen the reform of the mechanism and formulate guiding opinions on accelerating the digitization of education. Adhere to the application of the king, improve the pattern of resource supply; Promote the construction of a learning society and the development of lifelong education through digital empowerment; In-depth implementation of AI-enabled education actions, the establishment of educational evaluation and scientific decision-making systems based on big data and AI support; Strengthen opening-up and cooperation, and actively promote international exchanges in digital education.