Starting from the fall semester this year, China will allocate about 50 billion yuan (US$6.6 billion) every year to needy students, an official with the Ministry of Finance announced yesterday.

This is another major advance in promoting equality in education after the central government exempted primary and junior high school students in rural areas from tuition and other fees last year, said the official.

About 4 million students at 1,800 colleges and universities and 16 million students at 15,000 secondary vocational schools will benefit from the financial aid, he said.

The ministry will try to make national scholarships, bursars and student loans available to more students and will ask schools to put aside money to support needy students, the official said.

The financial aid provided over this fall semester will reach 15.4 billion yuan and for the whole of next year will be 30.8 billion yuan, according to the official.

He said China was giving priority to developing rural education and to supporting needy students so that they can complete their nine years of compulsory education.

The nine-year compulsory education, including six years at elementary school and three years at junior high school, was enforced in China in 1986.

By 2010, the nation will have allocated a total of 218.2 billion yuan of which 125.4 billion yuan came from the central government.

Last year the central government exempted students in rural areas of western China from tuition and other fees. The same has been applied in the central and eastern regions this year.

The exemption has relieved the financial burden on 150 million rural families with school-age children.

Yet most urban middle-class parents think the scrapped charges are just "a drop in the bucket" compared with the hefty amount they have to pay - an average of 30,000 yuan in Beijing, for children to attend the best schools.

Meanwhile the former Vice Education Minister Zhang Baoqing pointed out that one in five of China's 240 million students had financial difficulties.

"Though the government has adopted various measures to support poor students, all social welfare organizations should help," said Zhang, president of the China Education Development Foundation.