What is basic education? Definition, scope and stages of basic education. Basic education is a national education for all students, and its fundamental purpose is to lay a solid foundation for improving the quality of the whole nation and for all school-age children and adolescents to learn for life and participate in social life. Basic education plays an overall, basic and leading role in improving the quality of the Chinese nation, cultivating talents at all levels and promoting socialist modernization. Over the years, the state has insisted on the moderate and advanced development of education, put basic education in the first place, and guaranteed it in key areas of infrastructure and education development. In China, the current basic education includes preschool education (generally 3-5 years old), compulsory education (generally 6-15 years old), high school education (generally 16-19 years old) and literacy education. Compulsory education covering primary school and junior high school has the characteristics of universality, publicity and compulsion. It is an education that all school-age children and adolescents must receive and a public welfare undertaking that the state must guarantee.