administered official educational system, such schools had a low political status. As the official system declined, the teaching of natural sciences and technology (including handicrafts) was gradually taken up by individuals as a private undertaking.

        After the Opium War in 1840, with the spread of Western science and technology into China, the imperial examination system became ever more evident as useless and empty of ideas, and it came under attack by people with insight. In the 31st year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu (1905), the Qing government began promoting school education and abolished the imperial examination system.

        Schools of a modern sense appeared in China in the 1860s. Set up the earliest were foreign languages,

military and technical schools. The Qing government also sent young people to Britain, France and other countries to study technology and military science. In the early 20th century, the Qing government promulgated a series of "school regulations," in accordance with which a modern educational system was established in China. It was patterned after Japan's educational system of the end of the 19th century. The system should be "based on Chinese traditional learning with Western knowledge to be acquired for practical purposes" - this was to be the guiding principle for China's educational system. And its purpose was to "read ancient classics and extol Confucianism." According to the regulations, education was divided into three stages:nine years of primary education, five years of secondary education and seven years of higher education. Students began their education at the age of seven, and their courses were predominantly related to Confucian classics. Teachers were mostly scholars who had passed the imperial examination at the county level and had had teaching jobs at private schools. Graduates