(1) Ensure comprehensive implementation of the gender equality principle in education work.

(2) Work to ensure that the gross enrollment rate of children in kindergartens rises to 70 percent, and that girls enjoy equal access to three-year preschool education.

(3) Increase to 95 percent the retention rate of children in nine-year compulsory education, ensure that girls enjoy equal access to nine-year compulsory education, and eliminate the phenomenon of girls dropping out of school.

(4) Work towards ensuring that the gross enrollment rate of children in senior high school education rises to 90 percent, and that girls enjoy equal access to senior high school education.

(5) Work towards ensuring that the gross enrollment rate of children in higher education rises to 40 percent and that girls enjoy equal access to higher education, and strive to achieve a balanced gender ratio in higher education institutions.

(6) Step up the popularization of women's studies courses in higher education institutions.

(7) Expand the proportion of women in vocational school education and vocational training.

(8) Ensure that women receive an average 11.2 years of education before working age.

(9) Reduce the illiteracy rate of young and middle-aged women to less than 2 percent.

(10) Ensure that the gender equality principle and concept are fully reflected in the standards and teaching processes of education courses of all categories and levels.

Strategies and Measures:

(1) Include gender perspective and carry out the gender equality principle in the formulation, revision, implementation and evaluation of educational laws, regulations, policies and programs.

(2) Ensure girls' equal access to preschool education. Provide financial support to ensure that impoverished girls and girls with disabilities receive universal preschool education. Enhance the popularization of preschool education in rural areas, expand rural preschool education resources in various ways, and make efforts to ensure that "left-behind girls" (girls whose parents have moved to other regions of China to work) have access to kindergartens.

(3) Ensure that school-age girls have equal access to compulsory education. Expand the dissemination of the Education Law of the People's Republic of China, the Law of the People's Republic of China on Compulsory Education, and other laws and regulations, raise parents' legal awareness and promote their consciousness of the need to secure girls' right to compulsory education.

(4) Ensure girls' equal access to high school education. Boost support for high school education in impoverished areas in central and western China, and ensure that the demand of girls in rural and poverty-stricken areas for high school education is met. Provide financial support to impoverished girls and girls with disabilities in high school education, and ensure that girls do not drop out of school because of poverty and/or physical disabilities. Progressively provide free secondary vocational education and ensure that girls who fail to go on to senior high school receive the necessary vocational education before seeking employment.

(5) Improve women's access to higher education. Take proactive measures to protect women's equal access to higher education, and increase the proportion of women with higher education among the working-age population. Provide financial support to impoverished and/or disabled women college students in various forms and through multiple channels.

(6) Satisfy women's vocational education needs. Ensure equal emphasis on the importance of vocational school education and vocational training, and provide women with more opportunities and resources for vocational education. Support women in remote poverty-stricken areas and women with disabilities seeking vocational education. Provide compensatory education for overage girl dropouts, and expand their vocational training opportunities. Organize various forms of vocational training for unemployed women, and improve their ability to start their own businesses or to become re-employed. Offer vocational education majors applicable to the physiological and psychological characteristics of women with disabilities.

(7) Enhance life-long education for women. Construct an open and flexible life-long educational system that provides women with diversified, life-long education opportunities and resources. Encourage women to take up various forms of continuing education, and support employing units in providing such education opportunities for their women employees. Improve women's ability to use new media for access to modern distance education.

(8) Promote women's participation in community education. Integrate and optimize community education resources, develop diversified community education modes, enrich community education contents, and satisfy women's individualized study and development needs. Strengthen the development of community education for senior citizens, and provide convenient and flexible learning conditions for female senior citizens.

(9) Step up literacy programs for women. Innovate and improve the operating mechanism for literacy, formulate favorable policies, and reinforce work to provide literacy programs for young and middle-aged illiterate women. After eliminating illiteracy, consolidate the achievements of literacy programs, and carry out in-depth literacy drive and post-drive continuing education through organizing compensatory study.

(10) Improve training for female technological and technical talents. Improve policies for talents in the field of science and technology, and explore the establishment of a multi-layered, multi-channel training system for female sci-tech talents. Gather and train female professional talents by utilizing on State key laboratories, key scientific research projects, and key engineering and construction projects.

(11) Improve women's theoretical research in gender thoeries and the building of women's studies in higher education institutions. Include projects and subjects on gender and women's development in State social science funds and other related funds to promote theoretical women's studies. Expand the discipline ranking of women's studies, and encourage higher education institutions to offer a major or a course on women's studies with a view to cultivating women's studies professionals.

(12) Implement gender evaluation of education contents and process. Include gender experts in the staff of institutions providing guidance on school courses and textbooks. Fully reflect the gender concept in education contents and modes, and guide students to foster gender equality ideas.

(13) Improve gender awareness among education workers. Step up training among education administrators on gender theories, include gender equality content in teacher training programs and courses in normal colleges, and strengthen gender awareness among education administrators. Increase the percentage of women among decision-makers and administrators in schools of all levels and categories, and in education administration departments.

(14) Balance the gender structure of students in areas of study in secondary and higher education. Encourage students' comprehensive development, and reduce the influence of gender on students' choices of majors. Adopt diversified means to encourage more women to participate in high-tech study and research.