while the central and provincial governments provide some funding for education, this varies from province to province, and funding in the rural areas is notably lower than in major urban municipalities. families must supplement money provided to school by government with tuition fees, which means that some children have much less . however, parents place a very high value on education, and make great personal sacrifices to send their children to school and to university. illiteracy in the young and mid--aged population has fallen from over 80 percent down to five percent. the system trained some 60 million mid-- or high--level professionals and near 400 million laborers to junior or senior high school level. today, 250 million chinese get three levels of school education, (elementary, junior and senior high school) doubling the rate of increase in the rest of the world during the same period. net elementary school enrollment has reached 98.9 percent, and the gross enrollment rate in junior high schools 94.1 percent.