A student checks out an online geography class provided by Zuoyebang during a high-tech exhibition in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. [Photo by Chen Zebing/China Daily]

The Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Finance, and other related government departments recently released a joint guideline to require more schools in urban districts to help those in rural areas, in an effort to bridge the urban-rural gap in nine-year mandatory education.

According to the guideline, resource sharing is set to be attained between public schools in urban and rural areas across the entire province by 2022.

The resource sharing is based on a matchmaking program that Zhejiang has been pushing forward between schools in cities and their counterparts in townships. To date, more than 3,000 schools in the province have joined the program, forging 1,600 pairs.

One such example is the resource sharing between Luxun Primary School in Shaoxing and Zhongxin Primary School in Qixi town, Kaihua county. Through online classrooms, the two schools' teaching schedule and content have been synchronized. Zhongxin Primary School has thus made significant progress in its educational quality. "Parents and locals' satisfaction with us is improving. Students no longer opted to transfer elsewhere as many of them used to do," the school's headmaster Wu Zhangde said.

Zhejiang has also been encouraging good teaching professionals to work in rural regions since 2016. Between 2017 and 2019, a total of 1,788 school officials and 4,710 teachers at prominent schools in urban areas volunteered to work at disadvantaged schools for a period of time.