CSR Special: IT access major boost for rural schools

Personal computers have now attained a ubiquity in urban life that was once, not so long ago, the province of the telephone, the TV set, the radio or the refrigerator. It is perhaps difficult for those city dwellers living in multi-terminal households to conceive of the relative paucity of PC access that still prevails in more rural areas. Nor is it easy to comprehend the sudden transformation that on-line access can suddenly confer on an outlying region.

Liu Qingyu, a teacher in a Chongqing secondary school, has seen the reality of this change at first hand. He says: "Through computers, children living in mountainous areas can communicate with the outside world, possibly for the first time. This is the catalyst for a sea change in the quality of their schoolwork.

"It also gives them an understanding and appreciation of the world beyond their high-altitude homes. It is electrifying to see the sons and daughters of isolated mountain villages truly connect to the 21st century for the first time."