BEIJING — Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan on Feb 5 stressed concrete efforts to ensure a good start to education development in the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

Sun made the call at a symposium held in the Ministry of Education, urging addressing the problems of unbalance and inadequacy in education development and establishing a high-quality education system.

Noting that an improved education system will underpin the building of a new development paradigm, she called for efforts to make ideological and political education more targeted and practical, improve the structure of education, disciplines, and talent cultivation and foster more high-caliber and technical talented people.

As more than 840,000 college students will stay at schools during the upcoming Spring Festival holiday, Sun urged measures and services to ensure them a safe and happy holiday.

China achieved significant breakthroughs in education development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, with the nine-year compulsory education retention rate reaching 95.2 percent and the gross enrollment rate for senior high schools 91.2 percent.