2008/ED/EFA/MRT/PI/82
Country profile prepared for the
Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2008
Education for All by 2015: will we make it?
China
country case study
Zhao Jing, Wenbin Hu
2007
This profile was commissioned by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report as background
information to assist in drafting the 2008 report. It has not been edited by the team. The views
and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the
EFA Global Monitoring Report or to UNESCO. The profile can be cited with the following
reference: “Country Profile commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008,
Education for All by 2015: will we make it? For further information, please contact
[email protected]
EFA CASE STUDY: CHINA
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
China has the largest education population in the world. In the past decade the Chinese
government has made great efforts to achieve the 6 goals of EFA and great progress has
been made since the Dakar Action Plan. The enrolment rates of primary school and
junior middle school students have increased; the differentials in primary school
enrolment between genders have been reduced; the adult literacy rate has increased and
the illiteracy rate among young and middle-age groups has decreased significantly.
However, there is still a huge gap between eastern and western China in terms of
economic, social and cultural as well as educational development. There are many
significant challenges for the Chinese government to reach the goal of education equality.
After 2003, the Chinese government prioritised universal compulsory education in
western areas and the elimination of illiteracy as the national education strategy, and
initially set up a strategic plan for the first 20 years of the 21st century which covered all
EFA aspects. There have also been some notable policy drives on national level since
2000, including revising Compulsory Education Law, reforming the finance system of
compulsory education, and implementing the National New Curriculum.
The key dimensions of disparity and barriers to education in China are poverty, gender,
social exclusion, people with disabilities and children in exceptionally difficult
circumstances. Some of the children may well match two or three dimensions and they
suffer from social exclusion even more. To promote education equity, the Chinese
government set up a series of strategies, including reforming the central rural education
finance system, providing more funds for scholarships, building new school buildings,
and providing ICT support in rural areas all of which have helped to reduce the education
burden of rural families. However, most of the government’s policies and programmes
are mainly targeted at poverty and many disadvantaged groups in other categories have
not been targeted or only targeted in a very tangential way.
With regard to promoting good quality schooling in ‘hard-to-reach’ areas, the Chinese
government has developed several policies aimed at raising teachers’ qualifications and
providing more teachers in remote areas, improving the capacity of teacher training
institutions at county level and improving teaching and management quality. Bilingual
education is encouraged in minority areas and special programmes are targeted at the
illiterate especially in poor areas, minority areas and for illiterate women. However, if
there are not enough funds to translate policies into reality, or no practical guidance to
solve problems raised during the implementation or policy, or no monitoring system to
review the progress and adjust policy, many good policies would only be effective on
paper.
In conclusion, from the viewpoint of national strategy, China has put education as the
‘highest priority among all the priorities’. The current premiership has taken many
1
actions and tried to give higher preference to rural education. However, there are still
many challenges ahead if China is to fully achieve EFA goals. For example, how to
monitor the funds used in an efficient way is a great challenge to the national
government ; how to identify the different groups of disadvantaged people ; how to have
special strategies to target their needs ; how to set up a good EMIS to have more accurate
data for EFA and how to improve the teaching quality in rural, etc. all need to be
explored by policy makers.
2. INTRODUCTION
This is a report for the 2008 GMR, on progress towards EFA in China. It will form part
of a synthesis of case studies of selected countries of East/Southeast Asia, at the “mid
term” point between Dakar and the target date of 2015 1 .
The GMR 2008 will provide a global stock-taking of efforts for the achievement of EFA,
with an emphasis on “Reaching the Unreached”. Given its focus on all the EFA goals,
the 2008 Report will be a general and non-themed report. In addition to emphasising
effective country efforts and educational policies, the report will also highlight countries
that are “off track” with regards to the achievement of the EFA goals.
The main purposes of the 2008 GMR are to:
•
•
•
Provide a detailed mapping of progress towards the achievement of all the EFA
goals since they were agreed at Dakar. This will identify where the challenges are
greatest and where more effort is needed.
Critically examine the efforts of government, international agencies, donors, and
civil society with regards to the achievement of the six goals. It will highlight
positive examples of progress and point out what more needs to and can be done,
if the goal of providing education for all by 2015 is to be realised, particularly for
countries “off track”.
Identify and elaborate on the strategies and actions required by all EFA
stakeholders to accelerate progress, this based on the assessment of the extent to
which the EFA goals can be achieved by 2015.
The study has been primarily a desk study, based on secondary data and documented
information. However, some use was made of informal interviewing and discussions to
further explore particular issues and perceptions.
The study focuses on analysing and exploring why some policies and programmes work
and why some do not, with a particular emphasis on the needs of marginalised and
vulnerable children, youth and adults. The aims are to give an account of progress, and
1
The synthesis report will cover separate studies for China, Vietnam and the Philippines, adding data from
Cambodia and, to a lesser extent, Indonesia and other countries in the region.
2
to explore the challenges faced, and to relate these to the wider socio-economic and
political context.
3. BACKGROUND
China has the world’s largest population - over 1.3 billion. About 57% of the population
live in rural areas. Over 20% of the population are under 14 years old. The adult illiterate
population was 85.07 million by 2005, or 6.72% 2 , a decrease from15.88% in 1990.
There is a rich diversity among ethnic groups and 55 minorities are legally acknowledged
by the government. But, in comparison to the majority Han, 90.56% of the total
population, minorities account for only 9.44% in total 3 . This is despite the fact that
minority groups have a more flexible policy on birth control and their populations have
increased much faster than the Han majority (Han population increased by 2.03% and
minority population increased by 15.88%, when compared to the statistical data in 2001) 4 .
One outstanding characteristic of China is the huge gap between eastern and western
China, as well as the urban and the rural areas, in terms of the development of the
economy, society and educational standards. For example, in 2006 the GDP in Shanghai,
the richest city in China, was about 7,000 USD but was only 700 USD in Tibet. In
Beijing, the investment for building a public primary school might be as much as 80
million RMB (about 10 million USD) while in western rural areas this amount could
build 400 schools ! This is a real case which vividly illustrates the huge differences
between the urban schools in most rich cities and the rural schools in poor areas.
In China, children go to school at 6 to 7 years old, which is the starting point of the nineyear compulsory education — normally it consists of 5 to 6 years primary education and
3 to 4 years junior/middle school education. The Compulsory Education Law was
introduced in 1986 and revised in 2006. Before going to primary school, most of the
children in cities (over 90%) would have had kindergarten education since they were 3
years old, but unfortunately most of the children in the rural areas would have one-year
pre-school class education or none. The overall enrolment of age 3 to 6 in China is only
41%. In some of the western provinces, such as Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region, the
enrolment is only 18% 5 . After compulsory education, some students could select to go to
high school for three years leading to university education, or could go to vocational
schools.
2
Public Notice of Main Data from 1% of Sample of National Population Survey, by National Statistic
Bureau (2005).
3
However the minority population is still over 120 million which is bigger than many countries in the
world.
4
Public Notice of the Fifth Universal Survey of National Population No.1, by National Statistic Bureau
(2001).
5
Early Childhood Development in China: Challenges and Policy Issues. By Dr Anjana Mangalagiri,
UNICEF China.
3
After the Jomtien Conference on Education for All in 1990, the Chinese government
issued several government documents and implemented a series of policies to promote
EFA. The objectives in the 1990s were mainly called the “two basics breakthrough
campaign” meaning basically universalized 9 years compulsory education and basically
eliminating illiterate adults among young and middle-age groups. By 2000, the Chinese
government announced success in realising Universal Primary Education and basically
eliminating illiteracy 6 .
After the Dakar Action Plan in 2000, more strategic measures have been implemented to
promote EFA. According to the latest national data, the net enrolment rate of primary
school students is 99.2% and the gross enrolment rate of junior middle school students is
95.0% in 2005 (See detailed figures in Table 1). The differentials in primary school
enrolment between genders was reduced from 0.7% in 1995 to 0.04% in 2004. The adult
literacy rate increased from 77.78% in 1990 to 90.92% in 2000 and the illiteracy rate
among young and middle-age groups decreased significantly (See details in Table 2).
However, according to the data in 2002, there are still 85 million illiterate people in
China—second only to India, and every year there are half a million new illiterates in the
population.
Table 1. The NER of PS and GER of JMS from 1995 to 2005 (%) 7
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
NER 98.5
of PS
98.8
98.9
98.9
99.1
99.1
99.1
98.6
98.7
98.9
99.2
GER
of
JMS
82.4
87.1
87.3
88.6
88.6
88.7
90.0
92.7
94.1
95.0
78.4
Table 2. The Adult Literacy Rate Comparison (%) 8
Adult Literacy Rate
National
Rural Areas
Illiteracy
Rate
among Young and
Middle-age Group
1982
65.51
62.26
24.06
1990
77.78
73.77
11.85
2000
90.92
88.45
4.80
6
Basically is a deliberately vague term which, in primary education for example, meant over 85% net
enrolment.
7
Data collected from National EFA Report (2005) printed by National Committee of UNESCO and
Educational Statistics Yearbook of China (2005), from MoE.
8
Data collected from National EFA Report (2005), printed by National Committee of UNESCO.
4
The overall figures seem very positive. However, the accuracy of national data is limited
by several elements. First of all, the education management information system (EMIS)
in China has not been fully developed and this has restricted the capacity of MoE in
collecting the data of EFA in a comprehensive and reliable way. Secondly, there are
many schools in very remote areas which are almost inaccessible so data collection is
very difficult. Thirdly, there are many unregistered migrants and some ethnic minorities
in remote areas are missing in the population data collection, so the total Chinese
population number may not be very accurate. This may have an impact on the enrolment
rate in the calculations. Fourthly, because of the large population in China, the data
easily hides the huge differences between different areas, different minorities and other
differentials.
It is also always the case that the last 1% to 5% of enrolment in any country is the most
difficult target to reach and sometimes it takes years for people to realize the needs of
disadvantaged groups since the very positive overall figures tend to obscure continuing
problems. But, the 1% of children out of primary school is about 1 million - larger than
the population of school age children in many countries. Thus it is a big challenge for the
Chinese government to reach equity in education and make a reality of the so-called
‘balanced education development of basic education’.
4. THE POLICY ENVIRONMENT
4.1 Government Education Policy Related to Universal Access to Quality Basic
Education
The Chinese government prioritised basic education at the strategic level nationally after
the Dakar Action Plan. The key legal document called ‘the Decision on the Reform and
Development of Basic Education’ was issued by the State Council in 2001, and covered
all the important aspects of basic education, including the objectives of the 10th 5-year
plan (2001-2005), the fiscal management system of basic education (especially in rural
areas), the curriculum reform and improving quality of education, teachers’ education
system and personnel reform in education areas, as well as encouraging the nongovernment education system, etc. This document drew a very comprehensive picture
for the next few years and some of the reforms were implemented and are in practice
currently.
In this document, the national government urged local governments to ‘take the universal
nine years’ compulsory education and the eliminating of the illiteracy rate among young
and middle aged adults as the highest priority of the priorities’. Within the period of the
10th 5-year plan (2001-2005), the enrolment of JMS should be over 90% and the literacy
rate of young and middle aged adults should be maintained above 95%, the enrolment of
high school should be around 60% and early years’ education should be improved further
through encouraging different forms of childcare and early years’ education.
Nonetheless, the gap between urban basic education and rural basic education grew larger
and larger in the early 2000s. The national government began to pay a lot of attention to
5
the equity issue in basic education after 2003, the first year of the new prime minister
Wen Jiabao and his cabinet. In that year, the State Council hosted its first conference on
rural education since the foundation of PRC in 1949. A Decision on Further Enhancing
Rural Education was issued. It was decided in the conference that comprehensive
campaigns would be mobilized to : realize the ‘Two Basics’ in western areas ; use ICT to
improve teaching and learning in the western areas ; and provide free textbooks and a
living allowance to students from poor families. These later developed into the Two
Exemptions One Subsidy (TEOS) policy 9 .
Regarding the objectives of Education for All, the Chinese government initially set up a
strategic plan for the first 20 years of the 21st century 10 . The objectives include:
¾ Universalise nine years compulsory education thoroughly and eliminate
illiteracy among young and middle aged adults and thus improve the quality
of Education for All. Its aim is that by 2007 over 85% of the population in
western areas will be covered by universal nine years education and the illiterate
rate among young and middle aged adults will have been reduced to 5% or below.
By 2010, over 98% of the population will have been covered by universal nine
years education and all illiterates from age 15 to 24 eliminated and the overall
illiteracy rate among young and middle aged adults reduced to 2% or below. The
gender disparity in primary enrolment will have disappeared. The physical
condition of schools and the quality of school education will have improved. The
enrolment rate of school-aged disabled children will have risen.
¾ Addressing early childhood care and early years’ education. By 2015, the
knowledge of early childhood care will have been disseminated widely and the
gross enrolment rate of 3-6 year olds in early years’ education will have achieved
65% or above. All children will have at least one year early years’ education.
¾ Setting up a multi-dimensional and multi-level ICT and modern distance
education system. By 2010, all secondary schools in rural areas will be equipped
with a computer classroom and all primary schools in rural areas will be equipped
with satellite receivers to receive teaching materials.
¾ Constructing a ‘Learning Society’ through improving vocational education
and continuing education/training for adults. By 2015, various types of
vocational training for adults will be organized for 200 million person/times each
year so that all the adults in rural areas will master one or two practical skills.
90% of the JMS graduates will receive vocational training for 0.5 to 1 year. A
continuing education system and community education network will be set up to
fill the needs of all the citizens.
There were some notable policy drives at the national level after 2000, including revising
the Compulsory Education Law, reforming the finance system of compulsory education,
and implementing the New National Curriculum.
9
Exemptions for textbooks and school fees, and subsidy for school boarding. See details in section 5.2.
More details see China National EFA Report (2005).
10
6
In the new Compulsory Education Law (2006), compulsory education is the ‘right of
school-aged children to receive free education’ and it is government’s responsibility to
make sure children enjoy this right without discrimination based on gender, ethnicity,
race, wealth or regional status, etc. Compared to the former version issued in 1986, the
new law makes a lot of new provisions on the quality of compulsory education and equity
issues. It also clearly defines the roles of the different levels of government with regard
to basic education services. In the former version of the Compulsory Education Law
(1986), the effort of decentralising basic education service had led to the reality that the
governments at higher level released their duties to lower levels, and it was the
township/village level government that had to take on the main responsibilities, and even
the parents had to pay for their children’s schooling or make extra contributions towards
the school building and operation. The new Compulsory Education Law (2006) makes
the county government shoulder the main responsibility for basic education services and
requires provincial governments to help to allocate funds, especially in poor areas. It is
also clearly stated that no fees and miscellaneous fees should be charged - whereas
formerly miscellaneous fees were allowed, which added a huge burden on the poor
families. There are many very positive aspects of the new law, but the challenge will be
how to set up an accountability system to implement it.
The new national curriculum is a major attempt to improve the quality of compulsory
education. It came into force in 1999 and was implemented across the county in primary
and Junior Middle schools by 2005. It focuses on children’s active learning instead of
routine study of knowledge and sets up integrated curricula to meet the diverse needs of
the students. It also took into account students’ own experience and learning interests, as
well as real ability in self-learning, problem-solving and information skills. It aims to
reform the student evaluation system and introduce three levels (national, local, and
school level) of curriculum management to give the local government and schools more
autonomy in curriculum management. The whole philosophy was well received by the
education community but there were also huge difficulties and challenges during
implementation, including lack of funds, shortage of training for teachers and
discrepancies between the requirements of the new curriculum and the current system of
students’, teachers’ and head teachers’ evaluation
There are also some other policy drivers like the ‘two basics breakthrough campaign’,
finance reform in rural education, teachers’ personnel reform and so on, which will be
discussed in more detail later.
4.2 Processes of Educational Policy Making and Monitoring
The Ministry of Education (MoE) is the highest education policy making institution. It
identifies major issues in basic education and makes policy accordingly. It responds to
enquiries and recommendations from the National People’s Congress and follows the
instructions of the State Council. It is also responsible for monitoring policy
implementation mainly through the National Education Inspection Office and other
departments within the Ministry. When a policy is made, the MoE will issue a formal
7
notice to the Provincial Education Departments as it is the responsibility of the provincial
governments to provide basic education services.
This is a “top-down” type of management. However, China is such a huge country with
so many diversities, as well as huge gaps between the city and countryside, western area
and eastern areas, and the policies from MoE are often on macro level without much
practical guidance on implementation. The advantage of this type of policy is to allow
the local government to have more flexibility in implementing the policy to meet local
needs. The disadvantage is that one policy could be interpreted in very different ways in
different areas which leads to uneven success of a policy that had good initial intentions.
Any policy on basic education is the result of broad consultation within the education
administration system at various levels. At national level, the MoE often calls a group of
experts from well-known national universities or research institutions to consult or even
draft the policy. In each province, the local experts often become part of the consulting
team of the government. However, the MoE rarely consults private or non-government
organisations, although they do get feedback from the media on policy issues. One of the
weaknesses in policy making is the lack of the voice from stakeholders outside the
administration system.
The National Education Inspection Office is an organisation under direct jurisdiction of
the State Council but the MoE is in charge of its daily operation. The office is
responsible for developing and implementing the inspection policy, regulation and
indicators system. The office is in charge of reviewing the performance of the local
governments with regard to universalizing nine years compulsory education. There are
also corresponding education inspection offices at provincial, municipal and county
levels.
However, in practice, inspection is more focused on how the lower-level governments
implement education policy according to the requirements of upper-level governments.
Until recently, quality issues in education have not received proper recognition and wellstructured inspection guidance on quality education is still in the early stages of
development. There are only 90 inspectors at national level and some of them are retired
officials and part-time inspectors. ‘The professionalism of the inspectors should be
improved’, the head of the National Inspection Office admitted11 . Regarding EFA, the
inspection office takes the main responsibility for achieving the ‘Two Basics’ and the
results of inspections are fed back into policy making.
The central government also puts a high priority on universal basic education and links
the results to the performance indicators of the county governors. That is to say, if a
county doesn’t achieve universal primary or secondary education according to its plan,
the governor would be dismissed. Many counties therefore make tremendous effort to
achieve the target leading to a ‘big jump’ in enrolment rates in some counties.
11
Setting Up a Professional Team in Education Inspection: Interview to Zheng Fuzhi, the Head of National
Education Inspection Office, China Teacher’s Daily, Feb 28, 2007
8
4.3 The Roles and Contributions of Mass Organisations, NGOs and International
Donors
NGOs are becoming more and more active in the education sector. There are three types
of NGO:
¾ GONGOs (Government Organised NGOs) with a strong government background,
such as the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF), China Youth Development
Foundation (CYDF). Before the 1980s, all the institutions and organisations
belonged to the government and there was no room for NGOs. Organisations such
as the ACWF was founded by the government and was a part of the government.
After government reforms in the early 2000s, this kind of institution gradually delinked itself from the government although they still have very strong government
backgrounds and connections.
¾ Grass-roots local NGOs are mainly founded by volunteers or people who are
interested in public issues, such as ‘Children of Farmers’ who organise university
students to teach in rural schools during their vacation.
¾ International NGOs. There are over 200 international NGOs 12 working in the
development area, some of them focus particularly on education and children’s
welfare, such as Save the Children, Trace Foundation, etc.
Generally speaking, non-government organisations do not have a very strong voice in
policy making, even though different organisations have more channels to express
themselves with the process of the openness of the whole society. GONGOs are much
more influential and their contribution to EFA is also significant. Hope Project is the
leading project for supporting basic education in rural areas, and was founded by CYDF
in 1989. They have raised billions of Yuan within China and overseas, supported several
millions of drop-out students, as well as built thousands of schools in poor areas. They
are supporting government to promote universal primary education and have become an
important supplement to the government’s education finance input. However, they are
also questioned by the media because compulsory education is a government
responsibility and they share government’s duties through raising funds from the public.
Furthermore, their accountability has been questioned because of a lack of transparency.
Local and international NGOs have expanded very quickly recently. However, they are
restricted by government policy. Local NGOs have no legal identity to be an independent
organization. They either register as a company or find a government institution as the
cover umbrella to attach themselves to. International NGOs are not, at present, allowed to
raise funds. Government is in a dilemma as to how to deal with NGOs. On the one hand,
it agrees that the NGOs could play a very important role in targeting social issues and
could be a good facility for releasing social pressure. On the other hand, government is
concerned that the NGOs could get out of control and have a negative impact on the
stability of a ‘harmonious society’. Therefore, the NGOs are in a very marginal area in
terms of policy making.
12
See China Development Brief, http: //www.chinadevelopmentbrief.com.
9
Compared with the expansion of NGOs, international donors are quickly withdrawing
from China. By 2010, there will be little funding from international donors because China
is not regarded as a country which needs external support any more given its rapid
economy development. Even at the very beginning of the years when international donors
came to China, the funds from the donors never constituted a significant financial
resource for the Chinese government. Considering the scale of finance needed for basic
education, the funds from international donors are like ‘drops of water in the sea’. The
relationship between the Chinese government and International donors, such as World
Bank, EU, ADB, UNDP, are more or less on the level of ‘political dialogues’. Their role
is not mainly in providing funds, but using funds to push their agendas on social equity
and other development issues.
One of the important contributions international donors made was to bring technical
assistance to China. Although most donor projects have been quite small in terms of
scope, they have brought a lot of important ideas and concepts to basic education in
China, such as child-friendly schools, participatory approaches to teaching, education
equity, social development, community participation, school development planning, etc.
Many good international practices were also brought in through the implementation of
the projects with technical support. This has had some indirect impact on government’s
policy making, especially at provincial or district level. For example, the DFID funded
Gansu Basic Education Project tried many different methods to favour disadvantaged
schools/children in resource allocation which has changed local government’s practice in
resource distribution and opened a crack in the door with regards to local participation in
educational decision-making.
5. POLICIES AND STRATEGIES TO PROMOTE EQUITY
5.1 Key Dimensions of Disparity/ Inequality and Barriers to Education
Education equity is not an isolated term and it is very closely related to the social,
economic and cultural environment. With the rapid development of the Chinese economy,
‘efficiency’ received more attention than ‘equity’. There are several warning signs in
Chinese society that this disparity/inequality would lead China towards a dangerous
society like some Latin America countries. Reflecting on the more and more serious
social inequality, there are several disadvantaged groups who haven’t enjoyed or shared
much of the outcome of ‘reform and openness policy’ in China, including in education
areas.
Poverty. International experience indicates that poverty is the one of the most important
barriers to children accessing education. According to the national poverty standard of
683 Yuan (about 86USD) per person per year which is only 1/3 of the average annual
income in countryside and far less than the international standard, there are 26 million
people who cannot reach this standard in rural areas, and a further 50 million people are
close to this line. There are also 2.8 million people in urban areas do not reach this
standard. If the UN standard of 1 USD per person per day is applied, there are at least
10
200 million people living in this poverty situation. The government admitted in 2006 that
the poverty population is increasing even though the total poor population has reduced
significantly during the last few decades.
Gender. China has a tradition of gender discrimination against girls and women. After
the one child policy was introduced, more and more gender selection occurred such that
the gender ration reached 118.58:100 (boy: girl) in 2005 – according to international
norms the rate should be under 107:100. In rural areas, the rates of newborn deaths, slow
growth, low weight and lack of nutrition for girls are all higher than for boys (Cheng
Mingxia et, 2003. Han Yinbin et, 2002) 13 . In education, girls’ enrolment in rural areas
and some minority areas is still low and often lower than boys. Many girls have to drop
out and help to do housework. Gender stereotypes are commonly presented in textbooks
and reflected in teachers’ attitude. Illiteracy rates for women are still significantly higher
than for men.
Social Exclusion. There are different kinds of social exclusion, such as exclusion based
on ethnicity, language or socio-economic status. Some minorities have populations as
low as 10,000 and several minority children speak a minority language that has no
written script. Minorities often live in very remote areas where education provision can
be very poor. For example, the teacher might not be able to speak the minority language
so the children have communication difficulties when they enter school for the first time.
All these elements combine together to put these kind of minority children in a very harsh
situation.
Since the 1990s, one of the most serious and obvious forms of social exclusion in
education has been schooling access for the children of migrant populations. Because of
the residency licence (hukou) policy, many children who come to cities from the
countryside with their parents, cannot access proper basic education because they don’t
have permanent residency in cities, unless they are able to pay a very high ‘temporary
posts fee’. According to a survey 14 , there are 147 million people in this ‘floating
population’, their children either come with them to cities or stay with relatives (normally
with grandparents) and are in a difficult situation. Those coming to the cities suffer from
lack of a proper education and those staying in the countryside from lack of parenting
including the danger of possible abuse, including sex abuse.
People with Disabilities. Although the government has encouraged inclusive education
to meet the needs of children with special education needs since 1987 and some more
disabled children can now go to ordinary schools, the enrolment of disabled children is
still quite low. There are about 8 million school-aged disabled children 15 , but according
to national education statistics, only 364,409 children 16 are in school, including special
schools for the disabled, special classes attached in ordinary schools or the inclusive
13
The Summary of Research on Girls Issue, By Han Jialing and Zhang Yan. 2006
1% Sample Population Survey in 2005. By National Bureau of Statistic.
15
Mainstreaming in China: History, Reality and Perspectives, by Xiao Fei. Conference Paper in Lanzhou,
2005.
16
Educational Statistics Yearbook of China (2005), People’s Education Press, 2006.
14
11
classes. In rural areas, it is a widely-accepted concept that disabled children are useless
for future labour and investment in their education is not worthwhile. Even children with
special needs in mainstream schools don’t have enough support since there is little
provision of SEN training for teachers in such schools.
Children in Exceptionally Difficult Circumstances. There are several disadvantaged
groups of children who have suffered in very difficult circumstances. The whole system
of social welfare in China is insufficiently developed to give support to these children
although much effort has been made by government. These children include orphans,
street children, children whose parents are in prison, children with HIV/AIDs, children
whose parents are suffering from or have died of AIDS, as well as child labourers.
Among 573,000 orphans, only 66,000 are taken care of by social welfare institutions.
Street children number about 1 to 1.5 million each year 17 but as there are only 130 street
children protection centres, it is clear that only a small number of street children could be
taken care of. There are accurate national data about how many children in these
exceptionally difficult circumstances could go to schools, but according to the media,
most of them are just struggling to survive and schooling is a luxury they cannot afford.
A lot of NGOs are very active in supporting these children but the scope of the projects is
too small to cover the huge number of these disadvantaged children.
Some of the children may well match two or three of the categories above, such as
disabled minority girls or orphans in poor areas. They are in much more disadvantaged
positions and suffer from social exclusion to an even greater extent.
5.2 Policies and Programmes to Increase Access, Retention and Completion of a Basic
Level of Education for Children, Youth and Adults Targeting Vulnerable Groups
a) Key Programmes and Strategies
Since 2003, the Chinese government has put more effort into improving education equity
to reach a ‘balanced development of education’ through several national projects. To
achieve universal basic education and eliminate illiteracy in the population, several
programmes and strategies have been implemented under the name of the ‘two basics
breakthrough campaign in western areas’, including:
1. Reforming Central Government’s Education Expenditure System to
Guarantee the 9 years compulsory education funds in rural areas. The main
strategy is that the central government is taking a larger and larger share of the
finance for compulsory education in poor rural areas. The Central Government
significantly increased expenditure in rural education through transfer payments
to the western and middle areas in China. With the establishment of a new
education finance mechanism, the central government has shared the financial
input with the provinces according to their economic levels, for example 80% of
the funds to cover students’ miscellaneous fees is from central government in
17
Sample Survey in 2005 conducted by Women and Children Working Group of State Council.
12
western areas, 60% in middle areas and much less (according to their financial
situation) in eastern areas. The non-personnel budget for school operation is also
calculated and shared by central government and provincial governments. Step by
step, all the expenditures for rural compulsory education will be covered by
budget allocations not by private sources. It is also clearly defined that the county
governments are supposed to take main responsibilities for compulsory education
instead of townships, villages or parents.
2. Strategy to address the cost-barriers of poor families to primary and
secondary education: Two Exemptions One Subsidy (TEOS). Before 2007,
some poor students could get free textbooks, and some scholarships were also
provided to poor students. However, the new TEOS policy will cover all students
in rural western areas from 2007 - that means, all the children in this area should
be exempted from tuition charges and miscellaneous fees, and students from poor
families should have free textbooks. The students in boarding schools should also
get a boarding subsidy. At least 23 million students have benefited from this
policy. It is planned that the central government will provide budget allocations
to each student in the rural areas with a specified quota around 2009. This will
improve the financial situation quite significantly at school level if the plan is
fulfilled successfully.
3. Strategies to ensure physical access for (and retention of) all children. Many
efforts are being put into building primary and secondary schools including
boarding schools, such as ‘Compulsory Education Projects I and II’, ‘Rebuilding
Schools in Dangerous Conditions’ and ‘Rural Boarding Schools Building
Programme’. Thousands of schools have been built in a very short time in poor
areas to meet the needs of universalizing nine years’ compulsory education.
Through the Rural Boarding School Building Programme (2003—2007), the
central government provided 6 billion Yuan to build about 5,000 schools within
the first two years.
4. Strategies to fill the gap between the urban education and rural education
through modern information technology on distance education. Working
together with provincial governments, the Central Government required all
secondary schools in rural western areas to set up computer labs and satellite
receivers and all primary schools in these areas to be equipped with VCD/DVD
players. The total investment was 10 billion RMB 50% of which came from
central government. It is intended that through distance education, the very
remote schools would get the same high quality teaching and learning resources
that urban schools get.
5. Strategies for educational provision to older youth and adults who have
missed out on basic educational opportunities. Government has put the
objective of eliminating illiteracy in the population on an equal level with
universalizing nine years compulsory education and focused on poor areas,
minority area and women. The All China Women Foundation (ACWF)
13
conducted a Women’s Action on Illiteracy’. ACWF also implemented a DFIDfunded project to train in life skills the girls aged from 15 to 18 in western poor
areas. However, central government hasn’t provided much funding for this,
mainly relying on local government to promote literacy programme in rural areas.
b) Analysis of the Policies and Programmes
Given the scope and rich diversity of Chinese Education, and the whole socio-economic
and cultural structure in China and the restriction of mass organization/NGOs,
government plays a crucial role (sometimes a unique role) in promoting equity.
¾ It is encouraging to note that equity is high on the government’s agenda. The
projects mentioned above, such as the Rural Education Expenditure System
Reform, TEOS policy, Rural Boarding Schools Building Programme, etc. are all
focused on compulsory education in rural areas. These key projects conducted by
Ministry of Education came one by one in a short period and showed a strong
willingness to improve rural education. Although ‘equity’ is not a new concept to
a ‘socialist country’, before 2003 most of the effort and resources were very much
concentrated in the well-developed areas because of a focus on effectiveness and
efficiency. Even in poor counties, limited resources would go to the best schools
in the area. The awareness of the growing gap and the political willingness to fill
the gap by the current government is a good sign for improved equity in the
education sector.
¾ It is also noteworthy that significantly more funds have been coming from central
government. This indicates that central government doesn’t just pay ‘lip-service’
but provides real support to poor areas. In the past, parents shouldered the huge
burden of ‘compulsory education’ which made their poverty situation even worse
in some areas. Now central government has divided the country into three areas:
western areas (very poor), middle areas (comparatively poor), and eastern areas
(not poor), and provided different percentages of funds to different areas. Billions
of Yuan have been invested in western areas through different projects mentioned
above. For example, 6 billion Yuan was put to building boarding schools in rural
areas in 2004 and 2005. Alongside the central government’s input, provinces in
western areas provided 2.76 billion of co-funding for implementing TEOS in
2004 and 2005. This reduced the burden of lower-level governments as well as of
parents.
¾ The total expenditure on education is increasing every year. But, compared to the
rapid growth of GDP, government expenditure in education has failed to meet
targets – especially the target of 4% of GDP on education by the Year 2000. The
government has also failed to reach this target in the last few years according to
the planned timetable (2004) - it was 2.79% in 2004 and 2.82% in 2005. In fact,
even 4% is a very low standard. The UN suggests this percentage should be 6%.
It does rely on the political willingness of the government to achieve this goal.
The National People’s Congress has been more and more proactive in monitoring
14
the progress, but at the same time, the effectiveness and efficiency of using funds
needs to be considered.
¾ Most of the funds for compulsory education come from special earmarked funds
(mainly through various projects or programmes) instead of the regular budget
categories and this has put the sustainability of funding in question. It is very
important for the government to keep and increase education expenditure at a
reasonable level to sustain the effectiveness of the efforts made up to now.
Otherwise, when projects finish, the impact from their efforts will cease or
diminish very quickly. For example, central government has invested 5 billion
Yuan to modernize distance education equipment (computers, satellite receivers
etc.). If there are insufficient maintenance fees given to schools, the equipment
and facilities will lie idle and the investment will have been wasted.
¾ The government’s first priority tends to be investment in “hardware” (buildings,
equipment, etc), but what will have the greatest long term impact will be
investment in “software”, such as training and capacity building. Up to now, the
majority of the education funds have been used for scholarships, free textbooks,
boarding subsidies, buildings, equipment and so on. International experience
indicates that although poverty is the main reason for low access to schooling,
there are also other barriers, such as long distance to schools, lack of female
teachers, huge workload at home and very poor achievement in schools, etc. The
equity issue is also very complicated and having more funds is not the only way
to tackle the issue. The involvement of the local community, the training of
parents, and improvement of schooling quality should also be considered.
Therefore, besides investment in ‘hardware’, more dissemination, training, social
activities and different strategies should be involved and budgeted for.
¾ Transparency is a big challenge when implementing projects especially major
ones. China was ranked No. 70 in 2006 among 163 countries by Transparency
International. The use of precious education investments in poorer areas needs to
be more closely monitored in term of quality and effectiveness. Several national
organisations are involved in monitoring but their actions need to be better coordinated. The Ministry of Education issued several notices on how to improve
the monitoring system and identified the main weaknesses in practice including
the fact that education expenditure was being embezzled in some places and the
quality of boarding schools was not satisfactory.
¾ Many government projects are more input-based than output-based. As mentioned
earlier, there is no comprehensive education management information system, and
the evaluation system of projects is also very weak. This makes the impact of
government projects very difficult to review. That also means, during
implementation, very little data could be collected to inform policy.
¾ Many disadvantaged groups have not been targeted, or targeted in a very casual
way. More effort should be directed to the most disadvantaged and vulnerable
15
children. The national data system is not comprehensive enough to provide
disaggregated figures for each disadvantaged groups. That leads to difficulties in
informing policy making. For example, among the out-of-school children, how
many are migrant children in the cities, street children, minority children, girls in
rural areas, etc? Currently NGOs and donors have played a very important role in
targeting the most disadvantaged groups - they should be allowed to play a more
important role with government support. International donors should provide
more technical support including using national and international consultants, or
other independent third parties to introduce more effective practices and models
for the reference of the government.
¾ The central government has been pushing for the development and
implementation of the policy on the schooling access for migrant children. The
recipient governments of the migrant workers are encouraged to take more
responsibility in providing basic education services for the children of migrant
workers as local residents. However, the residence licence system has not been
changed accordingly yet and this has blocked the effectiveness of the relevant
policy and practice by the local governments. In Beijing, as an example, there are
about 300 schools specially founded for migrant children (mainly by migrant
teachers or parents) but only 58 of them have a government licence. The
government tried to close 239 schools which were un-registered and had safety
problems. But, the public schools refused to accept the children from these illegal
schools or the parents from the illegal schools could not afford to send the
children to public schools because the public schools charged ‘temporary
schooling fee’ to non-Beijing residents.
6. POLICIES
SCHOOLING
AND
STRATEGIES
TO
PROMOTE
GOOD
QUALITY
6.1 Key Quality Challenges
Quality issues vary a lot according to the social and economic development of different
areas. In urban areas, the main challenge is to provide the same or similar quality of
education for all children because there are a lot of elite public schools who have high
quality teaching but reach a few students only. In rural areas, especially in remote areas,
the key quality challenges include:
¾ Lack of qualified teachers in remote areas, especially female teachers and
minority teachers because of the harsh living conditions. This not only sets
barriers for girls and minority children to go to schools, but also affects quality
schooling.
¾ In rural areas, local government can’t afford teachers’ salary so they use a lot of
substitute teachers who often haven’t been properly trained - their salary is only
20% to 30% of the government teachers.
16
¾ The training for rural teachers is limited, especially in-service training. Although
each teacher should have a certain number of learning hours in each school year,
the provision of such kind of training is far from enough and the training quality
is not very satisfactory. Sometimes it becomes ‘self-teaching’ or teachers have to
pay the expenses for the training.
¾ The teacher support system is very weak. There is a ‘Teaching Research Office’
or ‘Teacher Continuing Education Centre’ in each county which is supposed to
provide on-site support, but the number of the staff in those offices and centres is
very low (5 to 10 teacher research staff compared to thousands of teachers) and
they themselves have no training on how to support teachers. The government
intends to integrate the ‘Teaching Research Office’ and the ‘Teacher Continuing
Education Centre’ at the county level to avoid duplication and make the
supporting system stronger.
¾ Learning resources are insufficient in remote areas. In some areas, textbooks are
the only learning materials for students and only teaching materials for teachers.
In fact, the implementation of the new national curriculum requires the use of
quite different learning resources. However, rural schools only get a small amount
of money to cover their basic needs and no extra money is left for learning
resources.
¾ The student evaluation system is very quantitative and mainly relies on paper and
pencil. The test score is usually the only indicator to review students’
performance. As a result, rote learning is the most common method and the low
achievement of rural students often leads to drop-out.
¾ The environment of schools in many rural areas is not student friendly. Learning
equipment in poor condition, unhygienic facilities, harsh punishment from
teachers, learning content which is urban biased or out of tune with local culture
and the context of the countryside and low expectations of girls or other socially
disadvantaged groups.
¾ The provision of head teacher training in rural areas is limited and
professionalism of head teachers need to be improved. In most of the cases, the
head teachers just follow the direction from local education bureaux passively.
Their role is more like administrators instead of leaders of the schools. In rural
areas, less than 10% of head teachers are female. There is very limited
community involvement in school management.
¾ In the first Constitution of People’s Republic of China in1950s it was defined that
every ethnic minority has the right to use and develop its own language although
this policy was withdrawn in the Cultural Revolution. After the 1980s, this policy
was reintroduced and bilingual education is encouraged by the government.
However, the situation of minorities and their languages is very complicated in
17
China — among 55 minorities 33 minorities had no written language in the 1950s.
The government helped 12 minorities to create 14 kinds of alphabet-based scripts.
For some of the minorities with a mature written language, a quite comprehensive
bilingual education system has been set up but, for some small minorities with
only a small population and often living in very remote areas, bilingual education
in practice is very weak.
6.2 Policies and Programmes to Promote Good Quality Schooling
a) Key Strategies and Programmes
To establish a teachers qualification system for improving the quality of teachers. A
Teacher’s Law was formally published in 1993 and the Regulation of Teachers’
Qualification was issued according to the Law. Primary teachers should be trained in
normal schools or above. Secondary teachers should be trained in normal colleges,
universities or above. All teachers should be examined to get teachers’ professional
certifications. The government initiated the ‘National Teachers Education Network
League’ programme and used the resource of universities and other education institutions
to set up a multiple supporting networks including websites, satellites and other distance
education technologies to support and upgrade teachers’ qualification, especially in rural
areas. It is intended to train all 10 million teachers in primary and secondary schools,
upgrade 2 million teachers’ qualification and set up a pool of 1 million ‘backbone
teachers’ (key teachers).
Push the county governments to pay teachers’ salary on time and give some subsidy
to teachers working in remote or minority areas. The Teachers Law requires that the
average salary of teachers should be no less than that of civil servants. The new
graduates who go to teach in remote areas and minority area would get special
allowances. But, it is up to the local governments to pay the bill and they usually don't
have even enough revenue to pay teachers’ salaries on time. There was a big issue of late
payments in 1990s, since which time the government pushed very hard and linked this
issue to county governor’s political position, thus the situation has changed dramatically
in a positive way. However, the teachers in remote areas still get almost similar or even
less pay than their counterparts in city.
Substitute teachers would be either upgraded or dismissed. Most substitute teachers
are working in very remote areas lacking government teachers. Since local governments
have to pay the teachers’ salary but can’t afford to do so, they recruit substitute teachers
and pay them very low salaries. Some of them are not qualified and some of them are
experienced in teaching but without proper qualification. Although these teachers are
supposed to be upgraded, there seems to be neither practical guidance nor programme,
nor budget to implement the upgrading. If all substitute teachers were to be dismissed, it
would not be fair to them and would negatively affect the children they teach.
18
Some new programmes on recruiting rural teachers or supporting rural schools are
implemented, including ‘Rural Teacher Special Posts’ which encourage university
graduates to work in rural schools for three years 18 , and ‘Free Education for Normal
University Students’ under the condition that they promise to teach in rural schools for
three years, as well as ‘Internship Programme of Supporting Rural Schools’ which
encourage normal colleges and universities to organize their internship in rural schools.
The MoE urged each province to set up practical strategies to encourage urban schools to
make links with rural schools (‘hand in hand’) and urban teachers to go to teach in rural
school for a period of time. Recently, there has been a new programme called ‘Master of
Education (M.Ed) for Rural Schools’ which is a five-year programme for new graduates three years teaching in the national poor counties, plus one year master courses at normal
university and the last year staying in rural schools to prepare their dissertation, as well as
learning through ICT.
Intention to improve the teacher training institutional development at county level.
The Ministry identified the weaknesses of teacher training institutions at county level,
and issued guidance on improving them by emphasising the functions and the important
roles teacher training institutions could take, and stressed the different ways of supporting
teachers including using ICT.
Improving teaching and learning quality through New National Curriculum Reform.
As mentioned in 4.1, the new national curriculum has had a very strong impact on
teaching methodology and students’ leaning. It has challenged a lot of traditional
education philosophies during its implementation, changed the textbook development
system from one textbook covering the whole country to multi-versions which allow for
different choices in different cultural and economic areas. It also encourages a
participatory approach in the classroom. All the teachers were to be trained before using
the new curriculum textbooks.
Encourage bilingual education in minority areas. Since the 1980s, the piloting of
bilingual education has been very popular. In minority areas, different models have been
tried, including teaching subjects in native language plus treating the Chinese language as
a subject, teaching subjects in the Chinese language plus the native language as a subject,
teaching some of the subjects (such as history, geography) in the native language and
some of the subjects (such as science, maths) in the Chinese language, or teaching all the
subjects in Chinese mixed with the native language. It depends on the different language
situation and cultural contexts. Some minorities have their own oral and written language,
and a whole set of curriculum and textbooks in native language, such as Tibetan,
Mongolian and Korean. Some minorities have no written language, and mainly rely on
Chinese textbooks with oral interpretation by teachers. In some areas, there is tri-lingual
education because there are different minorities living in the same area.
To define the qualification of head teachers and their in-service training
requirement to improve the quality of school management. The MoE issued a formal
18
In 2006, there are 16,000 new graduates joined this programme and went to 2,850 rural schools to be
teachers. China Education Daily, Jan 17th 2007.
19
regulation in 1999 to define taking part in training as a head teachers’ obligation and right.
All the new head teachers should have 300 hours’ training and achieve ‘Professional
Qualification of Head Teachers’ before they formally take up their posts. All serving
heads must have 240 hours of training within 5 years to update their knowledge and skills.
Some special training for a certain number of rural head teachers has been provided by
the MoE.
To issue the first government regulation to protect street children in 2006. In the past,
the related regulations mainly targeted vagrant or beggar children and there was no
specific legal protection for these children. The regulation which was called ‘Basic
Requirement for Street Children Protection Institution’ defined the basic treatment to be
provided for street children, such as food, hygiene and living conditions. In terms of
education provision, either formal or informal education will be provided according to
needs, and vocational skill training should be provided to children older than 16. It is
notable that psychological counselling and behaviour rectification will also be provided.
Since this is a new policy implementation is on-going. UNICEF and Save the Children
co-operate with the Chinese government in some projects to share the experience gained
in this street children protection.
To reduce the population of adult illiteracy and especially focus on poverty area,
illiterate minority people and illiterate women. Some specific programmes were
implemented such as ‘Action on Eliminate Women’s Illiteracy’ by the government and
All China Women’s Federation (ACWF). This programme combined the literacy
training and the agricultural skill training, legal knowledge and women’s right training
together to target women in rural areas.
b) Analysis of the Policies and Programmes
As mentioned above, so much effort has been made and so many programmes from
central government have been implemented to improve the quality of education,
especially targeting rural schools and teachers. To a certain extent, it has increased the
number of teachers and their qualification, and students have benefited from this. For
example, the percentage of qualified teachers in rural primary schools was 98% by 2004.
It increased by 1.6% compared to the rate in 2000. In rural secondary schools, the rate is
93%, an increase of 5.6% compared with 2000. 19
The Chinese government has been quite positive in initiating many different programmes
to recruit more teachers for rural schools. Many new graduates are willing to teach in
remote areas for a certain period of time. However, there is still a shortage of teachers in
hard-to-reach areas and this puts the children in a very disadvantaged situation. At the
same time, the teachers currently working in those areas have many difficulties. Some of
them cannot get subsidies from local government 20 , some of them are substitute teachers
19
China National EFA Report (2005).
National Inspection Report on review head teachers and teachers management in 6 provinces in 2005.
From MoE.
20
20
with very low salaries and with no job guarantee for them at all from government policy.
Very few substitute teachers receive any training or any other teaching support because in
the government system these substitute teachers are not a part of the government training
plan. When looking at the policy of mobilising urban teachers or university graduates to
rural areas, the time scope is mainly between one and three years. This leaves a big
question mark on sustainability. In fact, the substitute teachers in remote areas are
prepared to stay longer but the problem is that the government seems to have no intention
of providing the budget to upgrade them. The current policy is more like ‘blood
transfusion’ instead of providing a mechanism to produce ‘blood’ itself.
Although the government identified the weakness of the teachers’ support system and
issued the notice of improving it especially at county level, an inspection report indicated
that ‘the teacher training institutions in all the counties visited are in very poor condition
and short of funds so that there is no guarantee to organize the normal training’ 21 . It is
clear that 5 to 10 teaching support staff in each county cannot meet the training needs of
thousands of teachers, unless a good supporting system is developed.
The new national curriculum is welcomed by teachers but for rural teachers there are a lot
of difficulties in implementing it. At national level, the central government funds only
support national level teacher training - mainly for elite teachers from well-known
schools. In terms of teacher training in rural schools, this relies on local budgets to
support the training at local level but the county governments don’t have such budgets.
In normal cases, teachers in rural area could get a couple of days of being lectured on
how to use new textbook (ironically the teachers are encouraged to use participatory
teaching when they go back to schools) but teachers in teaching points or very remote
areas have to use new textbooks without training because they can’t afford the travel
expense. The new curriculum tried to change the ‘textbook centred’ way - this means
more curriculum resource are needed. It is not surprising that in poor areas it is almost ‘a
mission impossible’.
The Government’s bilingual education policy encouraged minorities to improve teaching
in native languages. It does have a very positive impact on minority areas and different
models are explored to suit different context. However, in remote minority areas, there
are not enough qualified teachers who are bilingual. The teachers training in bilingual
education is still weak although many research institutions and academics are active in
this field. How to teach minority students bilingually is a big challenge and more
practical training and guidance is needed.
Head teachers play a crucial role in school management. The MoE has specific
requirements of a certain number hours of training for head teachers. However, there are
about 1 million primary and secondary head teachers but only two national head teacher
training centres so the provision of head teacher training is limited. According to the
government system, head teachers are managed by the Personnel section not the
Education section at different levels. This also brings the problem of co-ordination and
21
National Inspection Report on review head teachers and teachers management in 6 provinces in 2005.
Form MoE.
21
planning for the head teacher training. It is difficult to get an accurate figure at national
level on how many head teachers in rural areas have not been trained because of the
inaccessibility of these head teachers. However, some consultants’ field visits in donor
projects provided some anecdotes. For example, in a very remote teaching point in
Guizhou province (one of the poorest western provinces), the head teacher told the
consultants that he has stayed in this school for 37 years and his last training was 19 years
ago ! A baseline survey of an international aid project indicated that in one of the
counties in Gansu in 1999, only 4% of the head teachers from the teaching points and
village primary schools had opportunities to be further trained. How to improve the
leadership of head teachers, how to implement school development planning etc. are only
explored by NGOs or donor-funded projects, such as School Development Plan (SDP)
programme funded by UNICEF, SDP project funded by Trace Foundation.
In short, the MoE has a lot of good policies and they do recognize the issues relating to
improving quality basic education in hard-to-reach areas. However, if there are no funds
to change the policy into reality, no practical guidance to solve the problems raised
during implementation, no monitoring system to review the progress and adjust the
policies, many good policies will remain on paper.
22
7. CONCLUSIONS AND LESSONS LEARNED
From the national strategy level, China has put education as the ‘highest priority
among all the priorities’. Since the Dakar Action Plan, many national strategies and
programmes have been implemented and reasonable goals have been achieved. Without
the strong political willingness of central government, that would not have happened.
However, the pace of changing macro political commitments into practical policies and
taking measures at local level needs to be quickened and much more investment is
needed in upgrading “software”.
The current premiership took significant action and is ambitious to give higher
preference to rural education. It is clear that the transfer of central government funds to
western areas (through TEOS, rural school building programmes etc.) have been quite
effective in supporting the national strategy. Billions of Yuan are going to the western
areas to support the EFA which demonstrates the government’s strong intention to close
the gap between the rich and poor, western and eastern, and improve social equality.
However, how to monitor the funds used in an efficient way is a great challenge to
the national government, given that the transparency of the current government system.
Some kind of accountability mechanism needs to be developed to ensure that education
investments are maximised at the grass roots level.
The development of basic education in China has passed the turning point of transferring
its focus from quantity (coverage of compulsory education) to quality (more equitable
and higher student achievements) in basic education. The success of the transition
depends very much on the improvement of the “software” of basic education, and this
requires even more investment and a much longer time than the process of upgrading
hardware. To achieve the sustainability of all the successful policies and strategies,
stabilized and increased government expenditure is essential. China needs to increase
the education expenditure to 4% of GDP or above in the near future to consolidate the
achievements with compulsory education made up to now. Otherwise, all the potential
benefits from the former investments mainly in hardware would be in danger of not being
fully realized or utilized.
The equity issue is very complicated and the biggest challenge is the restriction that
comes from the rigid residence licence. There is a risk that the gap between the urban
and rural population will be enlarged quite significantly. The current residence licence
system hinders the chances of rural residents moving to the urban areas to enjoy the
benefits of economic development. More strategies should be used instead of relying
very heavily on providing more funds to rural areas even though in itself this is good.
The question is how to identify the different groups of disadvantaged and how special
strategies to target their needs should be explored by the policy makers. From
current national policies, basic education in poor areas and minority areas has been
highlighted. But, for the children who are socially excluded and in exceptionally difficult
circumstances (see 5.1), few policies and strategies are targeted to this group.
23
Setting up a good EMIS is a challenge in most developing countries, China is not an
exception. Although the MoE has set up a Compulsory Education Monitoring System 22 ,
there are still many technical problems to be solved. A good data system could provide
quality data to review the progress of EFA in a reliable way. Although the current data
indicate that the progress of EFA in China has been very good, there are still some
controversial elements. Currently, the data on EFA is mainly collected and produced on
school basis. It is up to each school to provide data according the format from MoE.
However, there is no individual student profile at school level and it is extremely difficult
to monitor and upgrade the quality of data. To produce reliable data, it is quite important
to make sure that EMIS is capable of tracking individual students. A student-based data
system is also good for school development planning as well as for giving the county
education bureau better evidence to plan their EFA within its area.
Reform of the teacher employment system will be very critical to the improvement
of the teaching quality in rural areas and also the efficient use of the education
budget. Due to the fact that the teachers get the same or even less payment in the remote
schools as the teachers in urban schools, it is almost impossible to have highly qualified
teachers take posts in the poorest areas not to mention to keep them there long. At the
same time, there are already too many teachers and fewer students in the urban areas, and
this has a very negative impact on the most effective utilization of education resources.
An effective market oriented employment system needs to be established to encourage
the mobilization of high quality teachers to rural areas and also retain them for a
reasonable period.
22
http://www.yjjc.org.cn/
24
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& Working Group of Mid-decade Review, Nov. 2006.
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13. Education Is Not Yet a Human Right, by Katarina Tomasevski.
14. The Summary of Research on Girls Issue, By Han Jialing and Zhang Yan. 2006.
15. Public Notice of Main Data from 1% of Sample of National Population Survey, by
National Statistic Bureau.
16. Public Notice of the Fifth Universal Survey of National Population No.1, by National
Statistic Bureau.
17. Public Notice of National Education Statistic in 2005. MoE of China, May 2006.
18. Public Notice of National Education Expenditure in 2005, by Ministry of Education,
Ministry of Finance and National Statistic Bureau, Dec 2006.
19. The Decision on Reform and Development in Basic Education, State Council, 2001.
20. The Education Development Plan on Western Areas (2004-2010), MoE of China.
21. Education Development Action Plan (2003-2007). MoE of China, Feb 2004.
22. Compulsory Education Law, National People’s Congress, revised in Jun 2006.
23. Teachers Law, by the President of P.R.China, Oct. 1993.
24. Regulation on Teacher’s Qualification. MoE of China.
25. The Notice of Improving Rural Education Expenditure System, State Council, Dec.
2005.
26. The Speech on National Conference of ‘Two Basics Breakthrough’ in Western Area,
by Chen Zhili, the State Councillor, Sept. 2005.
27. The Speech on National Conference of Promoting Balanced Compulsory Education,
by Chen Xiaoya, the vice minister of education, June 2006.
28. Early Childhood Development in China: Challenges and Policy Issues. By Dr Anjana
Mangalagiri, UNICEF China
29. Women and Men in China, By Ma Jingkui, et.
30. Compulsory Education for Disabled in China, by China Disable People Foundation.
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31. Rural Education and its Policy in China, by Wang Li from International Research and
Training Centre for Rural Education.
32. Mainstreaming in China: History, Reality and Perspectives, by Xiao Fei. Conference
Paper in Lanzhou, 2005.
33. Enhancing and Improving the Inspecting ‘Two Basics’ in Provincial Level, by MoE.
34. National Inspection Report on review head teachers and teacher management in 6
provinces in 2005. MoE of China.
35. Guidance on Improving Teacher Training Institution Development in County Level,
MoE, 2002.
36. Encouraging Teachers in Urban and Township to Support Rural Schools, MoE, 2006.
37. Working Plan of Teachers Education Section of MoE in 2007. MoE.
38. Guidance on Implementing National Teachers Education Network League, MoE.
39. The Guidance on Payment of Central Special Project Fund under Rural Compulsory
Education Expenditure System Reform, MoE, Ministry of Finance.
40. Suggestion on Improving the Construction of Rural Boarding Schools. MoE.
National Council of Development and Reform, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of
Land Resource, Ministry of Construction.
41. Guidance on Improving Teacher Training of National New Curriculum, MoE.
42. Regulation on Training of Head Teacher in Primary and Secondary Schools. MoE.
43. Enhancing the Bilingual Teaching to Improve the Quality Education, Language
Section of National Minority Committee.
44. The History of Bilingual Education for Minorities in China. By Dai Qingxia & Dong
Yan. Research on Minority Education, No. 4 1996.
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