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Issued jointly by the Cyberspace Administration, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. Reported in People's Daily, 22 February 2024.

The document sets the year's priorities for raising digital literacy and skills across the population. It commits to a more complete system for developing digital skills by the end of 2024, better digital accessibility, and wider provision for groups currently least served.

For schools it means digital literacy treated as a general competence rather than a specialism — the same premise as the general-education AI courses in this programme.

This is a summary. The full text of the circular is published in Chinese — switch language above to read it.

By Wang Jiayi, member of the Party Leadership Group, Vice Minister of Education and Chief Inspector.

An argued piece rather than a regulation. It makes the case that strengthening science education is required by national education policy, is central to the task of educating the whole person, and underpins the country's strategic scientific capability.

The argument

Science education has too often been taught as content to be memorised and tested. The author argues for the opposite: enquiry and practice at the centre, teachers equipped to run it, assessment that rewards what a student can actually do, and resources outside school — laboratories, museums, universities — brought into reach of ordinary classrooms.

He also argues that identifying exceptional aptitude early, and giving it somewhere to go, is a national interest and not merely an individual one.

This is a summary. The full text of the circular is published in Chinese — switch language above to read it.

Analysis of the decision adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee. Source: People's Daily.

The decision names education, science and technology, and talent as the foundational supports for modernisation, and calls for the three to be reformed together rather than separately — a single co-ordinated reform of the systems that govern them.

The practical implication is that curriculum, research capability and workforce development are expected to be planned as one, with the education system feeding identified talent through to research and industry. The assessment ladder and talent database in this programme sit at that junction.

This is a summary. The full text of the circular is published in Chinese — switch language above to read it.

Issued jointly by the Ministry of Education and sixteen other bodies, including the Propaganda Department, the Cyberspace Administration, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the National Health Commission, the Communist Youth League, the All-China Women's Federation and the China Association for Science and Technology. Source: Ministry of Education.

The plan establishes co-ordinated arrangements between schools, families and the wider community — what it terms an "education alliance" — so that a child's development is not treated as the school's responsibility alone.

It assigns roles: schools lead and co-ordinate, families are supported rather than merely instructed, and community bodies — health, culture, science, policing, youth organisations — are expected to contribute concrete provision. For science and technology education specifically, it opens community and institutional resources to school-age children as a matter of policy rather than goodwill.

This is a summary. The full text of the circular is published in Chinese — switch language above to read it.