The Ministry of Education released the National Report on Education for All in China in November 2005. According to it, China has some 180 million children between the age of six and 14. In 2004, elementary school children numbered 112 million, with the net enrolment rate for school-age children standing at 98.95 percent and the rate of admission into junior middle schools at 98.1 percent, up 3.2 percent over 2000. There were 65.28 million students in junior middle schools, with gross enrolment rate of 94.1 percent, 5.5 percent higher than that of 2000.

Between 2001 and 2004, 8.03 million people became literate, representing an annual average of 2 million newly literate people. The illiteracy rate for the youth and the middle-aged was contained to within 4 percent. The literacy rate for adults ranks among the first among developing countries with large populations. In 2004, the number of schools for special education stood at 1,560, an increase of 29 schools over 2000. Disabled students numbered 372,000 in 2004, almost the same as in 2000. Among them, the number of handicapped children studying at general schools was 243,000, representing 65.3 percent of the total number of students in special education.

The Chinese Government has always attached great importance to education for all, actively promoted the popularization of nine years of compulsory education and the elimination of youth and middle-aged illiteracy, and developed rural education. It aims to offer free textbooks and boarders' living allowances for all students from rural families with economic difficulties by 2007, free compulsory education in rural areas by 2010 and free compulsory education throughout the country by 2015.