The Education Department of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region plans to further drive the development of preschool bilingual education to realize the goal of three-year and two-year bilingual pre-schooling in urban and rural areas respectively by the end of the Twelfth Five-Year-Plan period (2011-2015).

Currently, the Central Government has approved a fund support plan and allocated the fund for the region’s bilingual pre-school education in the next five years. In the regional budgetary plan for 2011, 41.4 million Yuan has been invested to purchase teaching and schooling equipments, 1300 million Yuan to construct pre-school bilingual education resources, 552 million Yuan to purchase  multimedia equipment and another 500 million Yuan to maintain and restore bilingual nurseries.

So far, Tibet has spent 80 million Yuan on the maintenance of 79 nurseries, including renovating village-level teaching nurseries and expanding regional Experimental Kindergartens. Meanwhile, the bilingual textbooks being compiled from late 2010 for preschool students has be completed and put into use since this autumn semester across the region’s agricultural and pastoral areas.

At present, around 34,000 preschool children from rural families and economically disadvantaged urban families are benefited from the full subsidies and grants funded by the government, amounting to 49 million Yuan in total.

In the future, bilingual pre-school education along with compulsory education across the region will be counted into the public financial support system with consistent funding ensured, the regional education authority says.