A free high school education pilot project has benefitted 93,287 students in southern parts of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region since last fall .

The pilot project in Kashgar, Hotan and Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture pays the students' tuition, course material costs and boarding, while providing each of them with a subsidy of 1,500 yuan (US$240) a year.

China has nine years of compulsory education and secondary education is divided into junior and senior highs. Compulsory education includes six free years of primary and three of junior high.

The pilot project will be extended to all of Xinjiang's southern regions, according to a statement by the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee last month.

Ma Pinyan, a researcher at Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, believes the high drop-out rate in southern Xinjiang, a mainly Uygur region, is directly related to the local economy. "Free high school education will help raise the overall quality of the lives of residents in southern Xinjiang," Ma said.

Free high school education has also helped prevent middle school students from being brainwashed by extremists, he said.

Dilinur, vice president of Kashgar No.1 Middle School, said among 621 senior high students enrolled by the school last fall, 20 dropped out. The number of dropouts in the past, however, had been between 50 to 60.

"The free education pilot project keeps more students in school," she said.

In southern Xinjiang, a family spends about 4,500 yuan a year on senior high. Based on a local per capita yearly income of 4,077 yuan, tuition is far too high for many to afford.

In 2012, 44,000 teenagers in southern Xinjiang stopped school after junior high. Young and jobless, the teenagers are easily duped by extremists, and become a source of social instability.

Special measures are being taken to develop southern Xinjiang, improve people's livelihoods and create jobs. More efforts will be made to promote bilingual education and interaction between ethnic groups.

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