Good news for suburban Beijing students: 新京报/The Beijing News’ Wang Jialin reports that starting from September students in Beijing’s suburban areas will not be charged textbook fees. Currently rural students, students from poor families, and those in special education schools already get free textbooks, but this will be expanded to include those from suburban district and county towns and townships (城,镇). No translation, though, we’re heading off for lunch and then to enjoy the beautiful weather very soon. Some districts and counties will also start recycling programmes for certain textbooks. Shunyi, for example, will be recycling the extracurricular reading materials for primary school Chinese classes up to Grade 6, and will expand this to calculators next year. I suspect, but I’m not sure, they mean ‘recycle’ as in pass the books on to younger students as older ones move up a grade.
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