Luozhuang district expands school places and boosts rural education quality

Luozhuang district in Linyi, East China's Shandong province, has expanded school places and improved rural teaching quality through group-based school management, addressing public concerns over access to good schools close to home.

At Huangshan Middle School, a member of the Ceshan Middle School education group and located more than 20 kilometers from the district's urban center, the number of students has risen from more than 600 to nearly 1,200 over two years, more students are being admitted to public high schools, and 12 outstanding urban teachers have chosen to move to the rural campus.

"Previously it was each school fighting alone; now we fight together," said Zhu Gaosheng, deputy Party secretary of the district education working committee and deputy director of the district education and sports bureau, attributing the change to the release of the advantages of group-based schooling.

To address weak rural teaching resources and the continued loss of students, the district has broken down urban-rural barriers and established three education groups — Linyi No 20 Middle School, No 21 Middle School and Ceshan Middle School — each managing a remote junior middle school, with integrated management of personnel, finances and assets and a pairing model in which strong schools help weak ones and urban schools help rural ones.

The district has also improved the two-way flow of teachers between urban and rural schools, with urban backbone teachers regularly sent to rural schools and rural teachers taking up posts in urban schools for training, unified teaching standards and shared research resources. Teaching researchers are regularly sent to rural campuses for classroom observation, collective lesson preparation and special research, and an online platform allows urban and rural schools to prepare lessons and observe open classes together.

On school places, Linyi Shengnenghu Senior High School, the district's fourth public high school, has been converted from existing urban school buildings and can add 5,830 quality senior high school places. By optimizing class sizes and revitalizing idle school resources, the district has added 9,256 places in total.

Liu Wenfeng, executive deputy secretary of the district education working committee and Party secretary and director of the district education and sports bureau, said the senior high school place shortfall is among residents' most pressing concerns. Facing a rigid shortfall of more than 8,000 public senior high school places from 2025 to 2027, the district has combined internal tapping of potential, revitalization of existing resources and new construction, closing the gap for 2025 and achieving dynamic balance in 2026 enrollment.

The district has also strengthened enrollment management, strictly implemented the nearby enrollment policy and continued to reduce oversized classes, with particular attention to left-behind children and students in difficulty.

Editor：韩蒙蒙