At a press briefing on China’s progress in digital education held on February 9, the MOE announced that China has achieved full Internet coverage in primary and middle schools across the country, marking a 75-percentage-point increase over 2012. Currently, 99.9% of all schools enjoy a 100 Mbps or faster connection and over 75% offer wireless Internet access on campus, while 99.5% of schools have their own multimedia classrooms.

According to Zhu Dongbin, an MOE official in charge of primary education, Chinese schools have witnessed a substantial improvement in both quantity and quality of digital education resources over the last year. In March 2022, the MOE upgraded the previous National Network Cloud Platform to the Smart Education Platform for Primary and Secondary Schools, with an expansion from two to 10 thematic sections, comprising 53 topics. The Smart Education Platform now boasts a total of 44,000 resource entries, three times more than the older platform; its thematic section “course teaching” contains 25,900 class-hours of online courses, featuring 446 textbooks in 30 editions.

Zhu added that, due to the further application and integration of information and communication technology (ICT) in education, school faculties have proactively introduced digital approaches across all aspects of teaching and learning, which has enabled them to improve pedagogical practices, boost teaching productivity and inspire curiosity in students.

Moreover, the digital literacy skills of Chinese teachers and students have greatly improved. A large proportion of teachers have developed mastery of ICT-based teaching activities, thanks to the various capacity-building programs and training projects on information literacy and digital capabilities organized by the MOE at local schools.