For the Tang Dynasty, the peasant issue was the most important from beginning to end.

Even though Li Xuan has promoted the development of industry and commerce as much as possible, relatively speaking, Li Xuan actually pays more attention to the problems of farmers.

On the surface, the Tang Dynasty gave many tax incentives to industry and commerce, and there were countless kinds of support, but in fact, the Tang Dynasty's financial investment in industry and commerce was far less than the investment in agriculture.

All kinds of water conservancy facilities, resettlement and reclamation, etc., are all support for agriculture, and this kind of intensity is very large.

Not to mention anything else, the financial budget support for domestic immigration reclamation is as high as 10 million taels!!

One million taels is enough to prove that the Tang Dynasty attaches great importance to agriculture.

Therefore, any question about agriculture and peasants is a major issue in the Tang Dynasty!

The same is true for the reform of official land rents!

On the surface, this is just a change in the way of collecting land rent, but don't underestimate that this is just a matter of land rent in the official field, you know, in the current Tang Dynasty, the number of official fields is very large, the current amount of cultivated land occupied by the government occupies 30% of all cultivated land under the control of the Tang Dynasty, any change in official land will directly affect the lives of tens of millions of people who rent official land, and it will affect all people in the country.

The impact of this matter was too great, and Li Xuan maintained a very cautious attitude towards it.

Therefore, for the issue of the reform of official land rent raised by the Ministry of Agriculture this time, he directly stayed in the middle of the country, and he needed to hold a special discussion meeting on this matter after returning to Jinling City.

The issue of Guantian reform has been temporarily put on hold, but more problems are still waiting for Li Xuan to deal with!

In mid-February, the holy driving party slowly returned to Jinling City along the Yangtze River and arrived in Anqing.

While staying there, Li Xuan inspected Anqing and summoned senior officials from North and South Anhui Province to listen to their work reports!

At the two meetings of the Imperial Palace, Li Xuan focused on the agricultural production of the two regions, and also focused on the development of industry and commerce, and pointed out that the local officials of the two provinces should make good use of their own advantages, actively develop the people's livelihood, and let the people live a better life.

Two days later, the holy driver left Anqing and continued to move eastward slowly!

At this time, in Jinling City, the examination for the seventh year of Xuanping had been held, and the scale of the examination was larger than before, and a total of 700 scholars from the Jinshi Department and 600 Doctoral Scholars were admitted.

A total of 1,300 scholars have successfully stepped onto the officialdom, and in the future they will be enriched into the ministries of the central government or become a new generation of middle and low-level officials.

In addition, in this examination, Guozijian is as strong as ever, this year, Guozijian's Faculty of Arts and Science, a total of more than 400 students participated in the examination, and the admitted Guozijian students reached more than 350 people, and the pass rate is quite terrifying!

In addition, several other institutions of higher learning in the higher education system also performed very well, with more than 200 students from Jinling University taking the entrance examination, and 120 students passed the examination.

The graduates of Jinling Normal School, Guangzhou Normal School, Songjiang Normal School, and other normal schools also performed well, and the pass rate was maintained at about 20 percent.

However, in the early stage, in order to attract talents to sign up, improve the attractiveness of normal schools, and increase the number of teachers as soon as possible, the conditions formulated before are relatively relaxed, and students can choose independently.

For example, tuition-free students need to work as teachers for at least five years after graduation, and after serving as teachers for five years, they can obtain the qualification to directly apply for the entrance examination.

At the same time, there are also fee-paying students, and after graduation, it is not mandatory to be a teacher, but they still have the qualifications to apply for the entrance examination, Guozijian University, and Jinling University.

And this spring examination in the seventh year of Xuanping is the first time that fee-paying students from these normal schools have participated in the examination!

Anyway, the time of the exam will be one month earlier than the enrollment time of Guozijian and Jinling University!

If you don't succeed, then apply for these two universities again, and then take the entrance examination after a few years.

And now the outstanding results of these normal schools have attracted the attention of almost all the world's scholars!

And why are scholars dedicated to studying, isn't it just to be an official!

Guozijian University and Jinling University are awesome, this is what everyone knew before, but what makes people very helpless is that these two universities recruit students, and only recruit those who are famous or graduates of preparatory schools, or simply graduates of normal schools, and others who want to apply for the examination will also have this qualification.

But now, they see another opportunity, that is, to apply for the teacher training exam!

For a time, normal schools around the country also ushered in a wave of application!

Poor children often choose to go to school for free and then serve as teachers for three years, while those from wealthy families can directly choose to go to school at their own expense, but they are a minority after all.

Why, because the tuition fee is expensive!

The cost of education in the Tang Dynasty was actually not low, and there was basically no such thing as free education, at least a very small part of the scholarship system or commission training system.

And tuition-free normal students are actually a kind of commission trainees!

Because the education system of the Tang Dynasty is essentially an elite education, even if it is a primary school in each county, this kind of primary school is actually not responsible for the most basic enlightenment education, and not all school-age children can enter school, if you want to go to study, you have to be admitted and pay tuition!

Of course, there is always preferential treatment for poor children with excellent academics, and the scholarship is for poor children with excellent academics, and the scholarship is generally set relatively high, the Ministry of Rites clearly stipulates that each school must introduce a scholarship system according to its own situation, and in principle, free admission of students shall not be less than five percent!

In Jinling Preparatory School, they have a very famous 235 system, that is, 20 percent of the students in Jinling Preparatory School are admitted for free, 30 percent of the students are enrolled at half fees, and 50 percent of students are enrolled at full fees.

But how did the scholarship come about, and how did the local government spend? Central government spending? Don't talk nonsense, education funding has always been not very important in the Tang Dynasty.

The finance doesn't give money, and the school doesn't have money, so what should I do?

Naturally, let those rich students come out!

The principle is very simple, if you need to spend 100 taels of silver to train ten students, then let three of them contribute about 7 taels of silver, and 5 students will contribute more than 15 taels, and after making up 100 taels, the remaining two students will be free!

In other words, the current tuition system of the Tang Dynasty is to let some self-financed students from wealthy families bear the education expenses of poor children!

As a result, the tuition fees of self-financed students are relatively expensive!

If you don't want to pay tuition, you can study hard and become a part of the 20 percent, then you can be free.

Everything speaks with results, quite fair!

Then someone may have said that the environment of the rich is better, and the students are more likely to produce grades, and they will occupy 20% of the scholarship places, so what about the poor children? There should be restrictions on the conditions under which scholarships can be awarded, such as having to be poor to a certain extent.

But people study hard and have good grades, but they can't get scholarships just because their families have money? !

Since the poor children are poor and the learning environment is poor, they should study harder than them, and they still want to let pies fall from the sky!

The 20 percent scholarship quota is just a chance to give poor children a chance to enroll in school for free, and it is up to them whether they can seize it.

Otherwise, it would be fair enough to simply pay all the tuition fees across the board, but in this way, all the poor children will not be able to afford to go to school no matter how hard they work or not!

The current education system of Datang is not for everyone, whether you have money or not, as long as you are mediocre, you can't, Datang education is for the real elite!

The situation that caused this reason is very simple, the Tang Dynasty needs money everywhere, and the finances are poor!

It is very nonsense to want to run universal education in a feudal dynasty that still has the agricultural economy as the core pillar, and at most it is to wait for the economy to develop in the future, slowly reduce the tuition fees for basic education, and run more government-run schools.

As for free education, let's wait a few hundred years!

It's just that in this way, the cost of education in the entire Tang Dynasty is at two extremes, on the one hand, there is no money for studying well, and on the other hand, expensive tuition fees are required for slightly worse academic performance.

If it is self-funded, if it is a primary school, an ordinary peasant family can grit its teeth and support a person's education expenses.

In middle school, even small landlords and small merchant families will find it very difficult, because the annual tuition fee in middle age has reached more than ten taels of silver.

For example, Jinling Preparatory School, the annual tuition fee is forty-five taels of silver, and the annual salary of ordinary staff or patrol officers from Jiupin is about the same number.

As for universities, Guozijian or Jinling, the cost is higher, and the annual tuition fee is hundreds of taels of silver.

This money is nothing to the gentry and merchants, but to the common people, it is very expensive.

However, this is only at your own expense!

As a matter of fact, more than 15 percent of the students enrolled in free admission are already enrolled for free, and more than 20 percent and 30 percent of the students are enrolled at half fees.

The normal school now run by the Tang Dynasty is a special case, because as long as the contract to be a teacher is signed before admission, then you can enter for free, so it attracts a large number of students to apply for the examination.

Of course, you can also pay for it yourself if you have money, but the tuition fee is basically the same as that of Shangguozijian University, and you get more than 100 taels of silver a year!

After all, when Datang ran a normal school, it was not to train officials, but to train teachers, since you want to occupy educational resources, and then run away to become an official if you are not a teacher, you naturally need to pay a price.

And the money is enough, the academic performance is acceptable, and the normal school does not refuse to come!

Because if it weren't for these self-financed students, their normal schools wouldn't be able to open!