Tibetannet

At an average altitude of 5,000 meters, the Puma Jiangtang Village Primary School in Lhoka Prefecture, Tibet, is reputed to be the highest in the world. The school has six grade levels and nine full-time teachers, all of whom are able to use both Tibetan and Mandarin Chinese languages to teach their classes. Thanks to the bilingual education policy, the 108 students here have better access to basic education.

In 2008, the Second Session of the 9th Standing Committee of the Tibet People's Congress adopted "the Measures of the Tibet Autonomous Region for the Implementation of the PRC Compulsory Education Law". Its Article 32 stiputlates  that "In the compulsory education period, both Tibetan language and the national standard language - Mandarin Chinese are used as the basic teaching languages, and the Mandarin teaching is promoted."

"It is the most suitable method to focus on Tibetan language teaching with the addition of Mandarin Chinese," says Tashi Tsering, principal of the Muqie Village Primary School in Xaitongmoin County. No matter whether it is due to the students' language ability or the existing teaching conditions, this teaching method has been well received among local farmers and herders.

Rural primary schools and some junior middle schools in Tibet are currently utilizing the bilingual teaching method. Statistics show that by the end of 2014, 1,217 primary schools with the enrollment of nearly 300,000 students in Tibet have implemented bilingual education policy. A total of 93 junior middle schools  with nearly 1.25 million students implemented the policy. This means that bilingual education has reached 97.06 percent of Tibet's primary school and 97.46 percent of junior middle school in Tibet.

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Data shows that by the end of 2014, 29 high schools in Tibet have implemented bilingual education with nearly 560,000 students, or 92.88 percent of high school students in the autonomous region. Nine secondary vocational schools and six universities with more than 50,000 students implemented the policy, or nearly 100 percent of vocational and university students.

Tibet's reform plan in basic education regulates that both Tibetan language and Mandarin are compulsory courses for Tibetan students, from the first year of the primary school all the way through the final year of the high school.

After the 5th Conference on the Work of Tibet, Tibet launched a program to establish two years of bilingual pre-school education in rural areas and three years of bilingual pre-school education in urban areas. By the end of last year, the total number of kindergartens was 722, the total number of children was 81,123, an increase of 59.11 percent. This represents an increase of 34.61 percent from 2010 in which 57,709 students attended 603 schools.

At the end of 2014, there were 30,641 full-time bilingual primary school teachers in Tibet, accounting for 82.93 percent of the total. Since the implementation of the "12th Five-year Plan", over 200 million yuan has been invested in the establishment of a five-level (national, regional, prefectural (city), county, and school) training system and the construction of 10 bilingual teacher training centers.

In addition, Tibet has translated more than 400 types of teaching materials and compiled 2,500 terminologies in 12 academic disciplines to be applied to new teaching materials of various disciplines. Tibet has also compiled a complete set of bilingual books for children in the rural and pastoral areas.