BEIJING — The gross enrollment rate in China's preschool education reached 85.2 percent last year, showed statistics from the Ministry of Education.

China had a total of 291,700 kindergartens last year that enrolled more than 48 million children, with nearly 85 percent of the children admitted to public-interest kindergartens, the ministry said on March 1.

Public-interest kindergartens refer to public kindergartens or private ones that provide quality preschool education at affordable prices.

As for the country's nine-year compulsory education, China had 210,800 schools that recruited 156 million students in total, said the ministry, adding that the compulsory education retention rate reached 95.2 percent in 2020.

In addition, more than 41 million students are studying at 24,400 senior high schools across the country, with a gross enrollment rate of 91.2 percent.