Law on Ethnic Minority Regional Autonomy of the People's Republic of China provides that schools which enroll mainly ethnic minority students should, if conditions permit, use textbooks in ethnic minority languages and that lectures should be given in ethnic minority languages. In senior years of the primary school or in middle school, Chinese should be taught with putonghua - common speech of the Chinese language - promoted.
        Among China's 55 ethnic minority groups, 53 have their own languages except the Huis and Mongolians who use Chinese. Twenty ethnic minorities have their own scripts. Among these scripts are traditional ones with a fairly long history, ones created after 1949 with help from the state, and alphabetical systems of writing designed by ethnic minority autonomies on their own and approved by the state. At present, most traditional scripts are used for school teaching. Scripts created after 1949 have been used in varying degrees in the educational field with the exception of the Li script. Used now in bilingual teaching are 60 ethnic minority languages and 29 ethnic minority scripts.
        With many years of application, bilingual teaching now has three basic modes: predominant use of an ethnic minority language in teaching, with use of Chinese as a supplement; predominant use of Chinese in teaching, with use of an ethnic minority language as supplement; a gradual transition from predominant use of an ethnic minority language in teaching to predominant use of Chinese.
        Teaching materials in ethnic minority scripts are compiled by the ethnic minority script teaching materials publishing houses of relevant provinces and regions. To ensure quality of such teaching materials, the Ministry of Education has established three cross-regional ethnic minority script teaching materials coordinating agencies responsible respectively for: Mongolian-language teaching materials for eight provinces and regions including Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, Korean-language teaching materials for three provinces including Jilin, and Tibetan-language teaching materials for five province and regions including Tibet and Qinghai. The state has established examination committees for teaching materials written in Mongolian, Korean and Tibetan languages. Preparation and publication of ethnic minority teaching materials has received human resources, financial and material support from the central and local governments.