Lunch for rural kids

The State Council's decision on Wednesday to provide 16 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) a year from the central coffers to improve nutrition for rural students is a welcome initiative to raise the quality of rural education.

The central government has exempted rural children from tuition and other fees for nine-year compulsory education and provided subsidies for those whose families are in extremely poor conditions since 2007. This has relieved many poverty-stricken families of the burden of paying for the basic education of their children.

However, malnutrition is still a big problem for poor rural students. An investigation conducted by the China Development Research Foundation under the State Council in 2010 found that 12 percent of 1,458 rural kids aged from 10 to 13 were retarded in physical development and 9 percent were underweight because of malnutrition.