The Song Dynasty in the 13th year of the Qingli period was full of positivity.

The economy, culture and technology develop comprehensively.

The education coverage rate has gradually increased, and three-year compulsory education has officially begun.

This proposal was made by Zhao Jun to Zhao Zhen at the regular meeting in Chongzheng Hall at the end of the 13th year of the Qingli period.

Hope to start six years of compulsory education.

He believes that now is the best time to implement compulsory primary education.

First, the domestic economy is developing rapidly.

During the Jingyou period, the annual GDP was only 400 to 500 million guan, and tax revenue was only 70 to 80 million guan.

Moreover, most of the tax revenue is used to cover heavy military expenses, making it difficult to develop education.

However, as the effects of reforms have become increasingly significant over the years, the country's wealth and productivity have more than doubled, and annual fiscal revenue has reached more than 500 million guan.

Although the higher the fiscal revenue, the more money needs to be spent, for example, a few years ago, the problem of repairing the city of Beiping was decided.

There is also the construction of railway networks in various places, investment in science and technology, and construction of hydropower stations, etc.

However, education is the cornerstone, and no matter how poor you are, you must not be poor in education.

Therefore, even though money has to be spent in all aspects, once compulsory education is opened, fiscal expenditure will inevitably increase significantly, and this money has to be spent.

Otherwise, if it is delayed for too long, education will only become more and more backward and slow down the country's development.

The second issue is the educational process.

Although the national education system for primary, middle, high and university students is well established, tuition fees are high and only those from well-off families can afford to go to school.

The Song Dynasty is indeed wealthy now, but it does not mean that everyone is wealthy. It means that most people have solved the problem of food and clothing and no longer have to worry about food like any previous dynasty.

But among the vast peasant class, since food prices are not high, simply farming can only ensure that they will not starve to death, but it is impossible to help them get rid of poverty and become rich.

Therefore, the lives of the vast majority of the lower-class people in the Song Dynasty were not very comfortable.

After solving the daily necessities of life every year, it is considered good if a few strings of cash are left. We still have to buy some clothes and furniture. It is very difficult to support children to complete elementary school, junior high school, high school and university.

However, the current national situation of the Song Dynasty is one that urgently needs a large number of educated talents. Factories are being built everywhere, and workers also need cultural level.

At present, there are many illiterate factory workers across the country, many of whom do not even have an elementary school education and lack industrial research and development capabilities.

Scientific research technology and scientific theories also need continuous innovation.

There may be one or two people in the scientific community who can rapidly advance scientific development.

For example, Newton and Einstein.

But the condition for the emergence of Newton and Einstein lies in the popularization of education. It is not realistic to expect scientists to appear among billions of people, rather than expecting one to emerge after teaching ten people.

Therefore, when the educational process has lagged behind and private education cannot be widely popularized due to the high tuition fees, compulsory education must be implemented.

This is true whether it is Japan's compulsory education after the Meiji Restoration or the nine-year compulsory education fully implemented in my country after 1986.

Therefore, the implementation of compulsory education is an inevitable trend in order to significantly improve the quality of the country's citizens.

However, after a long and serious discussion at the meeting, everyone agreed that the six-year compulsory education system would put too much pressure on the finances and should be reconsidered.

The main reason is that the population of the Song Dynasty is growing rapidly. It is foreseeable that tens of millions of school-age children will enter primary school in the next few years, and the financial burden will be very terrifying at that time.

Once compulsory education is relaxed, it means that a large number of primary schools will have to be built, and there may be not just a few thousand but tens of thousands of them across the country.

Tens of thousands of primary schools each accommodate several hundred students on average, and therefore need at least six teachers. Some large primary schools may even need dozens or even hundreds of teachers.

Hundreds of thousands of teachers are needed nationwide.

Let’s not talk about whether there are so many teachers working in teacher education in the Song Dynasty. Even if there are, considering the various school facilities and ongoing maintenance funds, the annual financial budget would probably be tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of strings of cash.

Basically, once compulsory education is implemented, one-fifth of the national fiscal budget will have to be invested in it, accounting for 20%. Even in later developed countries, the proportion is only in the single digits, which is too exaggerated.

Therefore, careful research is still needed in this regard.

Zhao Jun felt that what everyone said was indeed reasonable, and that 20% of the investment in education was indeed not appropriate. Even if education was to be vigorously developed, an annual investment of 10% would already exceed that of all developed countries in the world in later generations.

There are still a large number of areas in the country that need to be developed. If we raise the level of education too high all at once without keeping up with the rest of the construction, the result will only be a large number of talents being unemployed, which will be a waste of manpower.

After realizing that he had gone too far and overcorrected, Zhao Jun discussed with everyone and finally decided on three years of compulsory education and implemented the 543 system.

This system consists of five years of primary school, four years of junior high school, and three years of high school.

Compulsory education will be provided from grades one to three of primary school, and tuition fees will only be charged from grades four to five to maintain local education finances.

In this way, although investment in education will still increase, both the number of people involved and the entire system will be much smaller, and the focus will be on literacy, supplemented by basic education.

In a few years, when the national strength has developed to another level, we will start to focus on basic education as the main target, improve the education level of the entire country, so as to achieve the goal of cultivating more talents.

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