Tibetan students in class.

Tibetan children, who once played with the flocks and herds, now enjoy a happy life in school where they can learn and play football and games with their companions. The complete different childhood reflects the great changes of Tibetan education between the past and the present.

There wasn’t any modern school in Tibet before its peaceful liberation in 1951, when the enrollment rate of school-age children was less than 2% and the illiteracy rate was as high as 95%.

But now, the best architectures are schoolhouses and the most beautiful places are schools in the agricultural and pastoral areas. The enrollment rates of school-age children are 99.4% in primary school and 98.5% in junior high school; while the illiteracy rate of young adults has dropped to 1.0% in Tibet.

Today, the Tibetan education has ushered in a new chapter with more than 60 years’ continuous investment and hard efforts. Statistics shows that a total of 43,271 mln yuan was invested from 2000 to 2001, which injected a strong power to the development of Tibetan education. So far, a complete education system has formed, covering preschool education, basic education, vocational education, higher education, adult education as well as special education. Tibetan education has started from scratch, making a historical breakthrough from small to large, from a single system to comprehensive system.

Tibetan children happily to get new books.

Special preferential policies benefit plateau students

The school life is full of joys and happiness in the eyes of Tenzin Sangmo, a grade three student from the primary school of Ombu Nam Village, in Ombu Township, Nyima County of Tibet. “I like to go to school, where I can learn knowledge, play games with other kids, and I like the music class best.” he said.

Tenzin Sangmo clearly knows that all his costs in school are “free”.All these benefit from the special “Three Guarantee” Policy concerning food, dormitory and tuition supported by the central government.

Since 1985, the central government has started to implement the “Three Guarantee” Policy for children from farmers and herdsmen’ families in compulsory education. In the autumn of 2012, the government begins to implement free preschool education for urban students, which means the free education in Tibet has expanded to 15 years, from preschool to high school. Tibet takes the lead in carrying out the 15 years free education policy, from preschool to high school (including vocational school) and financial aid policy in preschool.

Over the past 27 years, the central government has raised the “Three Guarantee” Policy standard for 12 times, and continually expanded the covering scope to senior high school stage. From 1985 to 2012, it has totally invested 5,176 million yuan for the “Three Guarantee” Policy, 1,229 mln yuan only in 2012, which is 39.65 times of that in 2000, with an average annual increase of 38.18%.

Since the new “Three Guarantee” Policy has been implemented, the benefited students has expanded to more than 500,000 from 27,000, and more than 95% of Tibetan students can enjoy these policies.

Tibetan students in the Beijing Tibet Middle School.

In 1991, the 12 -year-old Yingsa•Norbu Tsering was admitted to the Beijing Tibet Middle School in Beijing, and left his hometown Lhoka Prefecture. 18 years later, his long reportage autobiography “Tibetan children” won the 10th national minority literature “Pretty Horses” Award.

The judges gave their evaluation to the “Tibetan children” “This is the true portraiture of a Tibetan child about his 11 years mind journey. His healthy growth reveals that the modern education lifts up the future of Tibet and brings infinite vitality and hope to the ancient Tibet.”

Now Yingsa•Norbu Tsering is a young writer working in a cultural department of Tibe . "The inland Tibetan Class is an intelligence aid-Tibet project the government has implemented for more than 20years. As a beneficiary with personal experience, I know that the students of the Tibetan Class have brought new knowledge, new ideas, and new vision to Tibet when they come back from Beijing. Our growth experience in a cross-cultural environment gives us a more objective, comprehensive, and inclusive view when we see problems”Yingsa•Norbu Tsering said.

These are the heartfelt words of the Tibetan children including Yingsa•Norbu Tsering  who benefit from the national special education policies, such as the “Tibetan Class” and the “Three Guarantee” Policy.

With the help of the central government, the scale of the inland Tibetan Class has further expanded. There are more than 20,000 students studying in the inland Tibet schools where the teaching evaluation and supervision mechanism has been strengthened with continuously improved management and teaching quality. For the past twenty years, the inland Tibetan Classes have become an important part of the modern education system with Chinese characteristics and Tibetan features, which has trained more than 20,000 talents to Tibet.