Mme Wei Yu, vice president of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), told the press that a number of famous Chinese scientists, including herself, had submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Education, urging improvement of science education in primary schools. "While the whole nation stresses on the need to enhance public awareness of science and the capacity of innovation, what we have seen in primary school science education is a regression. It's really a serious problem," Mme Wei Yu said.

Mme Wei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and former vice minister of education, said that since the introduction of a new curriculum scheme in 2001, science courses have been cancelled for the Year 1 and Year 2 children – normally of ages of 7 and 8) in the Chinese primary schools. In the meantime, the educators in the western countries have been studying how to effectively teach science to the five years old children.

Mme Wei said, "Science education in high grades of primary schools is not encouraging, either." Science is regarded as an unimportant subject even among the subsidiary subjects, far behind art and physical education.

She pointed to the reason why science education is overlooked, saying that people engaging in education research and education officials understand very little about science.

"In China, education is categorized as a liberal arts discipline, and educational researchers have not had sufficient training in science and are not science-conscious. They believe that science is too difficult for children below ten years of age to learn."

Mme Wei revealed that except for asking to resume science education in the first and second grades of the primary schools, the joint proposal also appeals for having a better training for the teachers of science. An education award should be set up by the National Natural Science Foundation, which is responsible for funding basic research, so as to encourage scientists to popularize science in primary and middle schools and to improve research and assessment of science education.    

Under the support of CAST and the International Council for Science (ISCU), Mme Wei is organizing a project that involves the study and designing of curriculum of science education for the early years. Mme Wei believes that the early year children are at "a crucial period" of developing scientific thinking.

Li Daguang, a professor of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, considered Mme Wei's work as of great importance. But he also pointed out that science education is not taken seriously in primary schools because many people in China believe that science is only a "useful" subject rather than a mode of rational thinking and that it becomes useful only to students who have entered universities.