Jiangsu education authorities plan to make soccer a mandatory subject in physical education courses from kindergarten to high school, according to a plan to revitalize school soccer issued by the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education.

The detailed plan, published on the official WeChat account of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education on Thursday, proposed to establish 100 soccer kindergartens in Jiangsu in five years.

All cities in the province are advised to build at least one soccer senior high school, three soccer junior high schools and six soccer primary schools, according to the plan.

The plan proposes all such schools would conduct at least one soccer class and three extracurricular activities mainly featuring soccer each week. At less 50 percent of the students in those schools should participate in soccer and learn basic soccer skills and knowledge regularly.

The percentage of girls who regularly participate in soccer should be higher than 30 percent in soccer schools.

Setting up hard rules to force students to play soccer could result in unbalanced sport practice for students without other sports being included, said Wang Dazhao, a Beijing-based sports commentator.

"But for Chinese students, the more important thing is that they only have about 1 hour every day to practice sports, which is far from enough," Wang told the Global Times on Friday.

In response to some parents who worried that young children might get injured playing soccer, an official with the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education said they would establish a soccer risk management system, including safety education and insurance, the Yangtze Evening Post reported Friday.

Soccer classes, clubs and schools have mushroomed across China after China's central reform group, headed by President Xi Jinping, passed an ambitious plan to develop and revitalize soccer in February.

China's Ministry of Education announced in August a plan to include soccer as part of an index in assessing students' overall performance and vowed to establish 50,000 soccer schools by the year of 2025.