section_path: Demographics/Education
section_name: Education
paragraph_text: Education
  
  Compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years from the age of 6 and 15. The Gaokao, China's national university entrance exam, is a prerequisite for entrance into most higher education institutions. Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level. More than 10 million Chinese students graduated from vocational colleges every year. In 2023, about 91.8 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school, while 60.2 percent of secondary school graduates were enrolled in higher education.
  
  China has the largest education system in the world, with about 291 million students and 18.92 million full-time teachers in over 498,300 schools in 2023. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$817 billion in 2020. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces, it only totalled ¥3,204. China's literacy rate has grown dramatically, from only 20% in 1949 and 65.5% in 1979, to 97% of the population over age 15 in 2020.
  
  As of 2023, China has over 3,074 universities, with over 47.6 million students enrolled in mainland China, giving China the largest higher education system in the world. As of 2025, China had the world's highest number of top universities. Currently, China trails only the United States and the United Kingdom in terms of representation on lists of the top 200 universities according to the 2024 Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities, a composite ranking system of three world-most followed university rankings (ARWU + QS + THE). China is home to two of the highest-ranking universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University) in Asia and emerging economies, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities. These universities are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.