On December 21, the 32nd session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) held its second plenary meeting in Beijing. On the occasion, Minister of Education Huai Jinpeng gave an overview of the Ministry’s handling of proposals made by NPC deputies in 2021.

According to Huai, the Ministry of Education (MOE) handled a total of 1449 proposals in 2021, marking an increase of 2.69% over the previous year. Among them, the MOE led the handling of 623 proposals, ranking the first place among all the other ministries. The MOE provided timely replies to 100% of the proposals, reached out to all the deputies concerned, and turned 100% of its promises into action.

Huai said great efforts were made to put NPC deputies’ proposals into practice. For example, the MOE was committed to implementing the “Double Reduction Policy”. As of December 20, 2021, the number of online academic curriculum-based tutoring institutions has been slashed by 84.1%, and the number of offline ones by 83.8%. Significant progress has been made in curbing disorderly expansion of the after-school tutoring market and most of the parents were satisfied with the outcomes. The MOE also endeavored to improve education quality in predominantly ethnic minority areas by taking various measures, including organizing workshops to discuss with concerned NPC deputies, providing more financial support, increasing job vacancies for public school teachers, and raising teachers' salaries.

Huai said that in its next step the MOE would take the following measures to improve its work: 1) enhancing synergy and integrating the handling of proposals into its routine work more seamlessly; 2) ensuring effective and multi-channel communications with NPC deputies throughout the whole process of proposal handling; 3) strengthening I.T support to improve efficiency, including promoting the use of digital platforms and WeChat official accounts run by government agencies, and providing AI-augmented human services to handle proposals.