Biannual check urged for school safety

The State Council, China's cabinet, approved a regulation on Tuesday to urge Chinese schools to pay more attention on campus safety.

According to the regulation, which was published on the website of the Ministry of Education, all primary and middle schools are required to examine school buildings and facilities every six months to identify potential risks.

Local education authorities should introduce qualified third-party agencies to provide assessments of the security standards of each school and the results should be recorded in the national school information system for future review.

The regulation also calls for the establishment of an accountability system that will punish local government officials responsible for shoddy school construction, security loopholes and misuse of funds for maintaining facilities.

In recent years, a number of students have been killed and injured in a series of incidents involving unsafe school buildings.

In February, the gate of school dormitory fell on a group of students, killing four of them, at the Xueji Primary School in Laohekou, Hubei province.

In December 2012, two students were killed when a wall collapsed at a rural primary school in Luoding, Guangdong province.

Another collapsing wall injured a student at Chunhua Primary School in Dianjiang County, Chongqing, in 2011.