URUMQI - Authorities in northwest China's Xinjiang plan to reopen schools closed a few years ago in its sparsely-populated countryside to prevent drop-outs of school-age children due to commuting difficulties.

More schools should be built in remote mountainous and pastoral areas as well as places that have many children left behind by migrant worker parents, said officials with the education bureau of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on Friday.

Xinjiang covers an area of 1.66 million square kilometers, more than twice the size of Australia, including large swaths of deserts, pasture, and mountain ranges.

In 2004, the Chinese government ordered the closure of many informal rural schools that did not have enough teachers or students. This was done to concentrate rural educational resources. School children in remote villages were advised to attend boarding schools in nearby towns.

The policy worked in most Chinese regions but in Xinjiang it proved problematic.

Officials said the school closure had resulted in rising drop-out rates in parts of rural Xinjiang.

The regional education authorities now say the rural schools should be reopened as primary school pupils should walk no more than 45 minutes to school and a primary school should not have more than 2,000 children, and a kindergarten no more than 360.

There is no immediate estimate of the cost for the policy shift until education officials finalize the number of schools to be reopened by April 20, according to a circular issued by the regional government earlier this month.

The government also said more boarding schools should be built in areas where there are a large number of left-behind children or where bilingual education is weak, and children of different ethnic groups should better study together.