URUMQI, May 31 (Xinhua) -- China's northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region will recruit around 9,200 bilingual primary and middle school teachers this year to promote bilingual education, local education authorities said Tuesday.

Xinjiang will hire 11,502 primary and middle school teachers in 2011 in total, 80 percent of whom can speak both Mandarin and a language of an ethnic group, the region's education department said in a press release.

This is the largest such recruitment in six years for urban and rural schools in 83 counties, cities or districts in the autonomous region, it said.

In an education development plan unveiled last October, the regional government pledged to offer bilingual education in Mandarin as well as Uygur or other ethnic languages for all 2.6 million primary and middle school students of ethnic groups by 2020.

According to the plan, this will help ethnic group students gain a command of the national language upon graduation from high school and prepare them better for jobs or higher education.