In passing, it should be noted that the most important contributing factor the the drop-out rates at each level is the increasing cost of education in China. The schools are charged a variety of fees by the local authorities, which are then passed along to the students. One trade union study of primary and middle schools in Chongqing, a very large city in the Sichuan Province, revealed that the average cost of miscellaneous fees for primary students in 1994 was 95.9 yuan; for junior and senior secondary students, the average fees totaled 155.5 yuan and 257.3 yuan, respectively.