BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China has made progress in improving high school education, with its gross enrollment rate for senior high education reaching 89.5 percent in 2019, up 1.2 percentage points from 2017, China Education Daily reported Monday.

By the end of 2019, the proportion of oversized high school classes with over 56 students had declined to 19.39 percent, a drop by 10.97 percentage points from 2017, the newspaper said.

Oversized classes have long been a prominent issue in China's education system, as quality education resources are insufficient in some regions.

To meet the need of smaller classes, the number of full-time high school teachers totaled 1.86 million in 2019, up 85,200 from 2017, according to the report.

Meanwhile, school construction and expansion have been promoted across the country to eliminate the large-sized classes. China saw construction of 4,401 high schools in 2019, 3,053 of which had been finished, it said.

All the 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland have established standards on public expenditure for high school students, with 21 regions having reached 1,000 yuan (about 142.25 U.S. dollars) per student a year, according to the newspaper.

The General Office of the State Council in 2019 unveiled guidelines on advancing reform in senior high school education, urging local governments to increase the standard to 1,000 yuan per student a year by the end of 2020, while regions with difficult conditions should accomplish the goal no later than 2022.

The country also saw an increase in terms of funds invested in high schools in poverty-stricken, rural and remote regions, which are also regions with rather inadequate educational resources. From 2017 to 2019, 23.15 billion yuan had been allocated to high schools in these regions.