In its aim to balance the development of education in both rural and urban areas, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance carried out a plan four years ago to rehabilitate schools in rural areas.

Now, according to updated statistics from the Ministry of Education, the central government allocated 21.9 billion yuan ($352 million) to schools in 22 provinces in central and western China and to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps through December 2013.

Coupled with an investment of 14.5 billion yuan from local governments, the level of education has improved in these areas.

More than 20 billion yuan from the fund was used in purchasing new equipment for primary and middle schools. Roughly 4.76 billion yuan was used to purchase books for students and 10 billion yuan went to multimedia teaching and learning materials.

More than 165,200 schools with poor facilities benefited from the rehabilitation plan over the past four years.

Since 2010, 110,000 classrooms were refurbished in China’s central and western regions and 631,900 sets of multimedia teaching materials were purchased for schools.