Educational Equity Policy in China: Concept and Practice (Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices) 9811602301, 9789811602306

This book investigates the educational equity in China from multiple perspectives, including rural and urban educational

114 100 1MB

English Pages 152 [148] Year 2021

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD PDF FILE

Table of contents :
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Authors
1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China
1.1 Status Quo of Equality in Urban and Rural Education
1.2 Background
1.2.1 Development of Urban and Rural Education
1.2.2 The Imbalance Between Urban and Rural Education
1.3 Educational Conditions
1.4 The Unfair Education Process
1.4.1 The Gap Between Urban and Rural Education Expenditures
1.4.2 The Gap Between Urban and Rural Areas in the Level of Teachers
1.4.3 The Unfair Compilation of Teaching Materials
1.4.4 The Inequality in Education Enjoyed by the Children of Migrant Workers
1.5 Policy Suggestions
References
2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China
2.1 The Current Situation of Interschool Education Equity in China
2.1.1 The Compulsory Education—Hardware Resource Allocation
2.1.2 The Compulsory Education—Allocation of Teachers
2.1.3 Compulsory Education—Management System
2.1.4 Compulsory Education—School Culture
2.1.5 Compulsory Education—Unbalanced Distribution of Students
2.1.6 High School Education—Human Resources
2.2 The Problems of Interschool Education Equity
2.2.1 The Historical Legacy of the “Key Point School” Policy
2.2.2 The Conflict Between Efficiency and Fairness
2.2.3 Market Competition in the Stage of Compulsory Education
2.2.4 The Unfair Distribution of Educational Resources by the Government
2.3 The Proposes Countermeasures and Suggestions
References
3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China
3.1 What is the Status of Educational Equity Between the East and the Midwest?
3.1.1 The Definition of the Connotation of Compulsory Education Resources
3.1.2 The Connotation of the Balanced Development of Compulsory Education Resources
3.2 What Problems Exist in the Education Equity in East and West China?
3.3 The Problems and Proposed Countermeasures
References
4 An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity of Compulsory Education in China
4.1 The Perspective of Admission Opportunities
4.2 The Perspective of Educational Process
4.3 The Perspective of Educational Results
4.4 The Problems and Solutions
References
5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity in China
5.1 The Classification of China’s Laws and Policies to Promote Educational Equity
5.2 The Effects of China’s Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity
5.3 Countermeasures and Suggestions
References
6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational Equity in China
6.1 Implementation Results of Fiscal Policy
6.2 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Process
6.3 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Result Aspect
6.4 Implementation of Fiscal Policies
6.5 The Problem of the Implementation Process of Fiscal Policy—Educational Results
6.6 Countermeasures and Suggestions for Implementation Problems
References
Recommend Papers

Educational Equity Policy in China: Concept and Practice (Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices)
 9811602301, 9789811602306

  • 0 0 0
  • Like this paper and download? You can publish your own PDF file online for free in a few minutes! Sign Up
File loading please wait...
Citation preview

Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices

Eryong Xue Jian Li

Educational Equity Policy in China Concept and Practice

Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices Series Editors Eryong Xue, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China Simon Marginson, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Jian Li, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

This book series explores education policy on Pre-K, K-12, post-secondary education, and vocational education, informing multiple experts from academia to practitioner, and specifically pays focuses on new frontiers and cutting-edge knowledge that transforms future education policy development. It has been initiated by a global group of education policy research centers and institutions, whose faculty and staff includes internationally recognized researchers in comparative education policy studies. The series’ mission is to advance the modernization of the education and social construction. This series provides policymakers and researchers with an in-depth understanding of international education policy from diverse perspectives. Topics include cutting-edge and multidisciplinary studies on identifying, analyzing and uncovering education policy reform and practice among the fields in education policy and pedagogy. It addresses how education policy shapes the development of education systems in different regions and seeks to explain how specific education policies concentrate on accelerating the development of quality education and social progress. More importantly, this book series offers policymakers and educational stakeholders, government, and private sectors a comprehensive lens to investigate the trends, rationales of education policy development internationally.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16621

Eryong Xue · Jian Li

Educational Equity Policy in China Concept and Practice

Eryong Xue Faculty of Education Beijing Normal University Beijing, China

Jian Li Faculty of Education Beijing Normal University Beijing, China

Eryong Xue and Jian Li share the co-first authorship and contribute equally in this book

ISSN 2730-6356 ISSN 2730-6364 (electronic) Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices ISBN 978-981-16-0230-6 ISBN 978-981-16-0231-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0231-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

This book investigates educational equity from multiple perspectives. It explores the rural and urban educational equity, interschool educational equity, Eastern and Western educational equity, administrative policies related to educational equity, the legal policies associated with educational equity, and the financial policies for educational equity. All those perspectives concentrate on examining the comprehensive development of educational equity in contemporary China. In addition, this book also aims to present some specific historical and cultural shifts for policymakers and stakeholders to offer an in-depth understanding of the educational equity strategy in a long term. Chapter 1 concentrates on exploring the educational equity between urban and rural areas in China. In particular, status quo of equality in urban and rural education. The background, educational conditions, and the unfair education process have been illustrated to examine the educational equity between urban and rural areas in China. In addition, the policy suggestions have been offered. Chapter 2 concentrates on examining the landscape of the interschool educational equity in China. Chapter 3 involves the analysis of educational equity in Eastern and Western China. Specifically, this chapter tries to answer a couple of questions, including what the status of educational equity between the East and the Midwest is and what problems exist in the educational equity in East and West China. In addition, the problems and proposed countermeasures have been offered. Chapter 4 concentrates on the analysis of the administrative policy on promoting equity of compulsory education in China. In particular, the perspective of admission opportunities and the perspective of the educational process have been fully examined. Moreover, the conclusion a Chap. 5 concentrates on the analysis of the legal policies to promote educational equity in China. Since ancient times, educational equity has been a topic and goal of people’s discussion and pursuit in China. It is the foundation of social equity, and the realization of educational equity is of great significance to the healthy development of society. Some specific legal policies play an important role in promoting the realization of educational equity. Therefore, the analysis of China’s legal policies promoting educational equity plays an important role in promoting the realization of educational equity. In theory, educational equity v

vi

Preface

in China can be divided into the equity of enrollment opportunity, the equity of educational process, and the process of educational outcome. The text will sort out China’s legal policies to promote educational equity from these three aspects (mainly aiming at the stage of compulsory education), analyze the implementation effects and problems of these legal policies, and finally put forward countermeasures and suggestions for these problems. Chapter 6 involves the analysis of the financial policies to promote educational equity in China. Specifically, the implementation results of the fiscal policy, the implementation effect of the fiscal policy of the education process, the implementation effect of the fiscal policy in the education result aspect, the problem of the implementation process of the fiscal policy of educational results, and the countermeasures and suggestions for implementation problems have been provided in this chapter. Beijing, China

Eryong Xue Jian Li

Acknowledgements

In the realization of this book, our contributors have been supportive and willing to share their opinions and perspectives on how to explore the overall Chinese education policy landscape from a concept-added policy chain perspective. We are really grateful for the generosity and positive spirit of collegiality.

vii

Contents

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China . . . . . 1.1 Status Quo of Equality in Urban and Rural Education . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Development of Urban and Rural Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 The Imbalance Between Urban and Rural Education . . . . . . 1.3 Educational Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 The Unfair Education Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.1 The Gap Between Urban and Rural Education Expenditures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.2 The Gap Between Urban and Rural Areas in the Level of Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.3 The Unfair Compilation of Teaching Materials . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.4 The Inequality in Education Enjoyed by the Children of Migrant Workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Policy Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The Current Situation of Interschool Education Equity in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 The Compulsory Education—Hardware Resource Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 The Compulsory Education—Allocation of Teachers . . . . . . 2.1.3 Compulsory Education—Management System . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.4 Compulsory Education—School Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.5 Compulsory Education—Unbalanced Distribution of Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.6 High School Education—Human Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 4 5 7 10 17 17 18 19 20 21 30 31 31 32 33 33 34 36 37

ix

x

Contents

2.2 The Problems of Interschool Education Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 The Historical Legacy of the “Key Point School” Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 The Conflict Between Efficiency and Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Market Competition in the Stage of Compulsory Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.4 The Unfair Distribution of Educational Resources by the Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Proposes Countermeasures and Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38 39 39 40 41 47 55

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 What is the Status of Educational Equity Between the East and the Midwest? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 The Definition of the Connotation of Compulsory Education Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 The Connotation of the Balanced Development of Compulsory Education Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 What Problems Exist in the Education Equity in East and West China? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Problems and Proposed Countermeasures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66 70 76

4 An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity of Compulsory Education in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Perspective of Admission Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 The Perspective of Educational Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The Perspective of Educational Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 The Problems and Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

77 77 82 85 87 88

57 58 58 58

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.1 The Classification of China’s Laws and Policies to Promote Educational Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.2 The Effects of China’s Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 5.3 Countermeasures and Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational Equity in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 6.1 Implementation Results of Fiscal Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 6.2 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Contents

6.3 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Result Aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Implementation of Fiscal Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 The Problem of the Implementation Process of Fiscal Policy—Educational Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Countermeasures and Suggestions for Implementation Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xi

119 121 129 131 138

About the Authors

Eryong Xue is a professor of China Institute of Education Policy, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University. Changjiang scholars (young scholars) are awarded by the Ministry of Education in China. He is also a research fellow of the center for science and technology and education development strategy in Tsinghua University. He is also a postdoctoral fellow in the public administration of Tsinghua University. He has published more than 100 Chinese and English papers in the field of educational research. He has produced more than 100 CSSCI articles. He has won the seventh award for outstanding achievements in scientific research in institutions of higher learning, the fifth national award for outstanding achievements in educational scientific research, and the award for outstanding achievements in political participation and discussion by the central committee for the advancement of the people for more than 40 times. More than 40 of his independent or co-authored consulting reports were adopted by decision-making departments or approved by leaders. Jian Li is an assistant professor of China Institute of Education Policy, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (ELPS), School of Education, Indiana University Bloomington. Her research interests focus on Education policy studies, and Globalization and Internationalization of Higher Education. She has published over 60 articles and books in regard to China’s education policy and comparative higher education studies. Dr. Li currently also serves as a think tanker at China Institute of Education and Social Development, Beijing Normal University. China Institute of Education and Social Development (CIESD) was co-founded by China Association for Promoting Democracy and Beijing Normal University. It was founded on the basis of China Institute of Education Policy and China Academy of Social Management of Beijing Normal University. Dr. Li’s general area of scholarship is on the assessment of education policy within educational institutions comparatively. Within this general area, she has pursued four themes: the education policy studies, globalization of higher education, higher education policy and management, undergraduate students’ global learning performance assessment, faculty academic innovation perspective within higher education and comparative higher education development as a framework for institutional research. Dr. Li has published over 30 xiii

xiv

About the Authors

articles, monographs, and book chapters, delivered over 20 workshops and seminars, and offered more than 20 keynote, peer-reviewed, and invited presentations throughout the U.S. and in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Chapter 1

Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

This chapter concentrates on exploring the educational equity between urban and rural areas in China. In particular, status quo of equality in urban and rural education. The background, educational conditions, and the unfair education process have been illustrated to examine the education equity between urban and rural areas in China. In addition, the policy suggestions have been offered.

1.1 Status Quo of Equality in Urban and Rural Education The year of 2020 is an important year in China’s fight against poverty. It is of great importance to analyze the issue of contemporary educational equity correctly in the best era of rapid economic development. We analyze the role of the government and its problems in education in recent years and try to give predictions and prospects for the future, which is the basic idea and treatment method. These places, which made great contributions to the Chinese revolution, are also leading the fight against poverty. We review the education poverty alleviation work in these areas, hoping to find a common experience for other poor areas to win the battle against poverty in education, to provide reference, but also to encourage the education system, education as long as the initiative can work miracles in the most difficult places. Let’s take a look at today’s China from multiple dimensions, from different levels of thought, and what the education situation is like in those once poverty-stricken areas: From studentfaculty ratios, statistics show that 2017 student-faculty ratios are just as prescribed by the state, the first central school and district central school student-faculty ratios respectively. From the perspective of the state financial expenditure on education, it reached 280,353 billion yuan in 2016, of which 127.699 billion yuan in rural areas increased by 13.67% compared with 2015. However, the increase of rural compulsory education expenditure was lower than the national average.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Educational Equity Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0231-3_1

1

2

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

From the point of view of educational hardware and software facilities, it is obvious that in most areas of China, the hardware level of cities is better than that of villages. Only from the point of view of the data, we believe many people have been able to independent about the basic condition of the fairness between urban and rural areas, and great philosophers, thinkers and leaders of the proletariat Marx once stated education fair question: inspect education fair without contact with the nature of the production relations and development situation, education fairness rooted in production relations of justice. Below, we specifically analyze why there is a relatively obvious equity gap between urban and rural education: Analysis from the theory of educational function. In the explanation of social psychologist mead to German sociologist, symbolic interaction theory is mentioned, that is, people can interact with each other through various symbols, and people can understand others’ behaviors by means of symbols, and also evaluate the influence of their behaviors on others. From the extension analysis of the theory of symbolic interaction, some groups can obtain symbols through education, while others will not. China’s urban and rural economic situation analysis. Modern China’s urban and rural dual economic structure can be traced back to the fifties of the last century, our country begins to implement planned economy system, in order to ensure the priority development of heavy industry, agriculture and rural made great sacrifices, such sacrifices are constantly deepened along with the economic development and curing, eventually evolved into urban and rural dual economic structure, and we know that the economic base determines the superstructure, which in turn led to the countryside in the cultural and education resources behind the city. Class solidification brings the education bat. The solidification of social class makes it difficult for the people at the bottom to move across classes, while the children of the upper class who have the advantages can easily inherit the jobs created by their parents. “Daunting”, “Zanying family” appeared again, if the application of popular network language to say simply, is a variety of foppish, that is, the socalled “rich second generation”, “the official second generation. If there are more and more social selection is more about relationships and family background, the economic conditions and social status is not the dominant impoverished families can only watched that they were mercilessly eliminated, and this kind of unfair to those who have broad connections, rich resources of families, has become a kind of “advantage”, according to the “Matthew effect”, this will make the stronger the strong, the weak weaker. The income from human capital investment in higher education declines. Nowadays, the popularization of higher education industrialization makes the loud “college students”, “title” has lost its past glory, tens of thousands of college students’ graduation means “unemployed”, college students’ employment has become an indisputable social reality, but, at the same time, with the cost of college is high, and has a rising trend year by year. At present, China’s socialist market economy system has been basically established, but the relationship between governments has not formed a legal and fixed rights boundary and interactive framework. How to scientifically define the relationship between responsibilities and rights between

1.1 Status Quo of Equality in Urban and Rural Education

3

governments to meet the requirements of modern public management and social services and to fundamentally reduce the phenomenon of educational inequality remains to be further solved. Among the four levels of government organs stipulated in the constitution of China, county and township (town) governments are at the bottom, with a large number and a wide range of areas. After the implementation of the “county-oriented” education management system, many counties only made clear the division of financial resources and power between the central government and the provincial government due to the weakness of county-level finance. All the provincial governments have followed the central government’s practice and strengthened the financial resources of the governments at the same level, thus resulting in the increase of local financial resources below the provincial level, and the construction of the standard transfer payment system is relatively lagging behind, which has caused the financial fund of the county-level governments to be more constrained. In some localities, there is a large concentration of financial resources at the provincial and prefectural (municipal) levels, and the intensity of transfer payments is very small. As a result, there is a large gap in financial resources in the vertical direction, and it is difficult for grassroots financial departments to pay salaries (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016). Article 14 of the Education law of the People’s Republic of China stipulates that secondary and lower secondary education shall be administered by local people’s governments under the leadership of the state council. Article 57 provides that the additional educational fees in the overall planning of rural townships shall be collected by the people’s government of the township, administered by the administrative department of the people’s government of the county or by the people’s government of the township, and shall be used for the educational undertakings at the township and village levels within the scope of the township. The specific proportion and specific administrative measures of the rural education surcharge in the overall planning of townships shall be prescribed by the people’s governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government. Article 59 provides that, with the approval of the people’s government at the county level, the people’s government of a township, nationality township or town may raise funds to run a school within its administrative area on the basis of the principle of capacity. Clearly, the legislation is not clearly the central government in narrowing the gap between urban and rural compulsory education development of responsibility, serious neglect between regions in China, there is a huge gap between the urban and rural public service supply special background, led directly to the government at the grass-roots level responsibility education input layers of passing down and government education investment serious insufficient. Thus, it can be seen that the newly built, rebuilt and expanded schools implementing compulsory education are invested by the state finance in the cities and counties, that is, with the money of the public taxpayers, while in the countryside they are invested by the townships and villages. Under the very weak condition of township finance, we can only continue to pass the buck and invest by the village. And the village is no financial ability of the villager’s self-government organization, so, finally, can only be

4

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

implemented to the head of the farmers. Therefore, this legislation seems to be able to widely mobilize the enthusiasm of all sectors of society to invest in compulsory education, but in fact it provides an institutional basis for the transfer of government responsibility (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016). In economic theory, education is a quasi-public good with “spillover effect”, which can benefit the educatees themselves and their families, and the society. The beneficiary of compulsory education is the whole nation, which means that the central government should shoulder the corresponding educational responsibility. The author believes that in today’s China, pure through the reform of the urban and rural education policy didn’t really realize urban and rural education fair, only through complete urban and rural household registration system reform, gradually break the urban and rural dual structure system, to realize the economic balanced development, and exert the redistribution function of the government, from the education system to ensure the status of priority to the development of rural education. Establish the integration of urban and rural compulsory education system, clear responsibilities of urban and rural education main body, perfect basic education public finance system, on the basis of balancing of interests to establish education resource balanced mechanism, pushing rural students education opportunities to obtain and the improvement of the situation in the distribution of education resources, so as to achieve the benign development of the rural education and rural students through the school education to realize the social mobility of prospects.

1.2 Background President Xi Jinping at Beijing normal university points out that” two one hundred” is the realization of the goal the realization of the dream, the great rejuvenation of China. The development of education is the important measure to realize the revitalization of the Chinese nation, and the fairness of education is to develop avoid don’t open an important link in the process of education, is the important foundation of social justice. Chinese government has also clearly put forward to take educational equity as a basic state policy. However, the urban–rural dual structure caused by various factors for a long time makes the integration of urban and rural development difficult, and the development of urban and rural education is also very different. It is generally accepted that the fair performance of education is equal to the starting point, the process and the result of education. The difference between urban and rural education originates from the inequality of educational opportunities, which is the starting point of inequality. As the foundation for local governments to run schools and develop education, economic strength also further affects the fairness of education process between urban and rural areas. The unfairness of the starting point and process of urban and rural education inevitably leads to the unfairness of the educational results, which is not conducive to the development and social mobility of children and their families in the vast number of poor rural areas, nor conducive

1.2 Background

5

to the realization of the “two centenary goals” and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. If urban and rural education is allowed to develop freely, it would be difficult for rural areas with relatively weak economic strength to improve their education, let alone catch up with urban areas. To that end, countries establish a series of laws, regulations and policies related to education funds, construction of teaching hardware facilities, students’ nutrition improvement, teacher team construction, information construction aspects of multi-level, 18 on the fifth plenary session through “much starker choices-and graver consequences-in planning” is put forward to promote education fair in depth of targets, are aimed at a targeted in poor rural areas, safeguard regional education development between the education fair, let every child can get fair education opportunities, let everybody can through own education to change the fate. In the education law newly revised in 2016, it is explicitly required that “the state shall take measures to promote educational equity and promote balanced development of education”, thus “educational equity” is clearly defined in legal form, transformed from social responsibility to legal requirement, and then increased to national responsibility. The fair and balanced development of education is bound to be further promoted by various forces.

1.2.1 Development of Urban and Rural Education Achievements in educational development in poor rural areas. Since the report of the 18th national congress of the communist party of China (CPC) clearly requires that “vigorously promote educational equity, rationally allocate educational resources, and give priority to rural, remote, poor and ethnic minority areas”, and with the socio-economic development and the disintegration of the urban–rural “dual structure”, educational development in poor rural areas has made considerable progress. The equity of the primary educational starting point can be roughly reflected in the enrollment rate of school-age children. According to the education statistics on the official website of the ministry of education, PRC, we can see that the net enrollment rate of primary school-age children has been basically increasing year by year, and 99.9% of school-age children have been enrolled since 2016. Since statistics show that the majority of school-age children who are not enrolled in school come from rural areas, the increase in the national net enrollment rate of school-age children can be seen as the disappearance of children from poor rural areas. In rural areas, the average education fund for primary school students increased steadily. In 2012, the growth rate was the fastest compared with the previous year, reaching 26.30%. The average public expenditure for primary school students also increased year by year. In 2012, the growth rate was the fastest, reaching 35.89%. In 2018, the growth rate dropped to 1.99%. From 2012 to 2018, the year-on-year growth rate was 27.38%, 16.30%, 5.61%, 16.86%, 9.94%, 7.77% and 3.46% respectively. In 2012, the growth rate of public expenditure per junior high school student was as high as 32.99%. In 2014, it decreased by 1.79% compared with the previous

6

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

year. In terms of specific value, it decreased from RMB 2,968.37 per student in 2013 to RMB 2,915.31 per student. On the whole, with the support of the state, governments at all levels and all walks of life, education in poor rural areas has made great progress. The net enrollment rate of primary school-age children and the retention rate of nine-year compulsory education remain at a high level, basically ensuring every child’s equal access to education nationwide. In addition, the central government’s allocation of per student education funds and the investment of local governments in education funds also increased year by year, so as to ensure adequate expenditures on daily education and teaching activities of primary and secondary schools and the construction of school hardware facilities and the maintenance of teachers’ salaries. On the basis of the basic implementation education starting point fair, the development of the urban and rural education in China is more and more attention to the education process and the result of the education fair, emphasize the pursuit of quality education fair and education balanced development, in recent years also issued a series of measures to guarantee the education development of poor rural areas, strongly promote to achieve the goals of education fairness, such as: in order to make the teachers in rural areas have the opportunity of learning, communication, and constantly improve their own quality, and reduce the loss of high quality teachers in poverty-stricken areas, guarantee the education quality of teaching, namely the fairness of the process of education, 2013, 18 the third plenary session of the communist party of China put forward to promote the principal teachers exchange job rotation policy, key between rural and urban areas, the high quality between schools and weak schools, township primary school and village elementary school to teach the communication between rotation; The support plan for rural teachers (2015–2020), which was deliberated and adopted in 2015, has made clear plans for improving the treatment of teachers, unifying the teaching staff in urban and rural areas, and exchanging and learning between urban and rural teachers. The state has also launched a national training program for primary and secondary school and kindergarten teachers, which has invested about 2.6 billion yuan to train 3.5 million rural primary and secondary schools and kindergartens in the central and western regions. In order to ensure the healthy development of extremely poor rural students, let them have enough energy into study, countries launched a continuous destitute area in rural compulsory education student’s nutrition improvement plan, benefiting more than 3000 students, 699 counties. in order to better use of information technology methods to education development, improve the quality of education in poor rural areas, promote the education process and the result of the education fairness, education department and other departments have jointly issued the “build effective mechanism of informationization means to expand the coverage of high quality education resources of the implementation of the plan, “The plan” pointed out: “by building effective mechanism of informationization means to expand the coverage of education resources, accelerate the education informationization ‘three links two platform (broadband network JiaoJiao quality resource classes, and everyone on the network learning space, education resources public service platform and education management platform of public service) construction and application of realizing a complete coverage of all levels of educational institutions of all kinds broadband

1.2 Background

7

network, high-quality digital education resources sharing, information technology and the education teaching comprehensive depth fusion, gradually narrow the gap between regions, urban and rural, interscholastic.” through this initiative education informatization, Aims to realize urban and rural education resources sharing, the city of quality education teaching methods and content, excellent teaching staff through a cable to connect to the rural areas, promote the balanced education resources configuration, greatly promote the development of basic education in poor rural areas, high quality, let the children in remote areas can also enjoy the school teacher education resources. In a word, the government and the ministry of education have made great efforts to promote the fair and balanced development of urban and rural education (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011).

1.2.2 The Imbalance Between Urban and Rural Education Since the beginning of the new century, great achievements have been made in education and teaching in poor rural areas, but it is undeniable that there is still a large gap between urban and rural education level, which is highlighted by the imbalance of school hardware, equipment, teachers and cultural environment between urban and rural areas. Hardware facilities gap between urban and rural schools. School buildings and hardware facilities are the basic guarantee for running a good education. However, due to the gap between urban and rural economic development for a long time, the hardware conditions of rural schools are far from those of urban schools. In recent years, with the support of the state and all walks of life, the hardware facilities of schools in rural areas have been greatly improved, but there is still a big gap between them and urban schools. According to statistics from the official website of the ministry of education, the area of dilapidated primary schools in rural areas was still huge in 2018, accounting for 72.65% of the total area of dilapidated primary schools in China. In recent years, with the increase of national financial investment, the area of teaching, office and living rooms in rural schools is constantly increasing, but the number of books, computers, network multimedia classrooms and teaching equipment matching them has not caught up in time, and the gap with urban areas is still large. Education is the foundation of a century-long plan. With the development of social economy, the status of education in national life is getting higher and higher. The ultimate value orientation that human society pursues is social fairness and justice. For modern countries, educational equity is an important dimension and basic performance of social equity. Educational equity is not only a vision of a better society, but also an embodiment of the core values of modern countries. Education is closely related to everyone’s interests, and as the most important part of education equity, the issue of urban and rural education equity needs urgent attention. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the current situation of urban and rural education development in China, analyze the existing problems and put

8

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

forward reasonable solutions. First, it provides theoretical research for the integrated development of urban and rural education. To balance the development of education between urban and rural areas is not only an urgent problem to be solved in order to achieve social equity in China, but also a focus and an important issue in the field of education reform. Second, it provides scientific cognition for deepening the concepts of urban and rural education, balanced development and equitable development. The balanced development of education is a kind of goal in the concept that we pursue, and it is a dynamic process of promotion. Education can not only promote the stable development of social economy, but also promote the continuous progress of social civilization. Third, to provide strategic support for solving the problem of urban–rural education equity, through the study of the current situation of urban and rural education in China, put forward feasible countermeasures to provide strategic support and path reference for the problem of urban–rural education equity in China. With the development of economy, the society needs more and more qualified talents suitable for the social development situation. Education is particularly important. The state attaches more and more importance to the issue of educational equity and has taken some measures to solve the issue of urban and rural educational equity and achieved some results. However, the realization of urban and rural education equality is not achieved overnight, which requires the joint efforts of the country, society and various groups (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012). Different starting points in urban and rural education. Starting point equity is the first link of educational equity. The equality of educational starting point focuses on the equality of foundation and more specifically refers to the equality of educational right and educational opportunity. Only when urban and rural residents have equal access to education can they achieve further equity in the educational process and the educational outcome. The fairness of the education starting point requires that any member can have the right to receive education, the opportunity to receive education and the opportunity to go to school without being affected by various factors. The difference in the starting point of urban and rural education is mainly manifested in the compulsory education stage and the higher education stage. There are obvious differences between urban and rural compulsory education opportunities. According to data verified on the official website of the national bureau of statistics, the enrollment rate of school-age primary school students in China was 99.1% in 2000 and increased to 99.8% in 2014. It rose 0.7% over that 15-year period. However, the number of school-age students in China is quite large, with 124 million in 2000 and 91 million in 2014. In 2013, the fewest years, there were 89 m. The total number of school-age children in the country is falling, and the graduation rate is increasing. But despite such high enrolment rates, the number of children not in school reached more than 1.1 m in 2000 and 1 m in 2014. Although the figures do not compare urban and rural areas, they do take into account gaps in the pace of economic development and educational development. In cities, with the exception of a few rare cases, there is virtually no problem of school-age children not attending school at school age. Based on an analysis of the above information, from 2000 to 2014, almost all of the school-age children who were not enrolled in school were from rural areas. To the gap of primary school stage had simple understanding,

1.2 Background

9

so the situation of the middle school stage city and countryside education has what kind of gap again? Almost all primary school students in the cities go to secondary school, compared with only 64% in the countryside, and much lower in some areas. The reality is that as the cost of education increases at the junior high school level, so does the dropout rate of rural junior high schools. However, there are a large number of problems in rural areas, such as especially difficult economic conditions, inconvenient transportation conditions, family labor needs and other issues, which hinder rural school-age children to go to school and receive education. Although the graduation rate has increased and the dropout rate has decreased, the number of rural dropout children is staggering. This is contrary to the nine-year compulsory education advocated by our country (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012). There are obvious differences in the opportunities of higher education, with few opportunities for rural students to go to a good university. Because of the gap between urban and rural education from the beginning of basic compulsory education, the current enrollment system and urban preference policy, resulting in the rural students in higher education opportunities are much less than urban students. In recent years, it is not difficult to find that some of China’s major cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, have an acceptance rate of up to 70%, while provinces with a majority rural population have an acceptance rate of less than 50%. The gap between urban and rural access to higher education remains statistically clear. It cannot be denied that, on the basis of the continuous development of our economy and the continuous progress of our society, our educational cause is becoming stronger and stronger. China has implemented the policy of expanding the enrollment of students in higher education, which absorbs those middle-level students to a certain extent but has little effect on rural students. In 1997, education was implemented and merged. The cost of higher education brought great economic pressure to students and their parents in rural areas, and the compensation system of higher education was not perfect, which made many rural students unable to enjoy higher education. With the strength of the country and the development of the society, the number of rural students and urban students going to university is increasing year by year, but the proportion of rural students going to university is far lower than that of urban students. Differences in the educational process between urban and rural areas. The equality of education between urban and rural areas is not only the difference of educational starting point. A fair and equitable educational process is an important part of it. Fairness in the educational process also needs attention. If the fairness of educational starting point focuses on the fairness of opportunity, the fairness of educational process emphasizes the fairness of educational policy. The inequities in the process of urban and rural education are manifested in the social environment, educational funds and teachers.

10

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

1.3 Educational Conditions There are obvious differences between urban and rural social environment. Environment has a profound and lasting influence on one’s study and life. A good environment can shape and achieve learners. Urban students live in a relatively developed and prosperous social environment since their childhood, and they are exposed to a modern way of life, with convenient transportation and communication. Information flows relatively quickly, the first time to obtain new information. The rural areas are relatively isolated and backward, and they are not so sensitive to the perception of information. Urban students are familiar with electronic facilities, and computers are a part of their study and life, while most rural students can only stay at the theoretical level, without practical application. The living conditions of rural students are relatively poor, which does not greatly help their study. For students, school education is the most direct education, and the educational environment outside the classroom can also affect students’ learning. The construction of campus culture in urban schools is quite rich. Every inch of the campus reflects the unique culture of the school, which exerts a subtle influence on students. But in the countryside, hardware facilities and environment are not perfect, how can we have their own campus soft environment? The difference of social environment between urban and rural areas makes rural students do not have a good learning environment and do not develop good learning habits, so the gap between urban and rural education will only get bigger and bigger (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011). The educational resources of the city have a huge advantage over the countryside. School education is the most important and direct source of knowledge for students. School education is nothing more than in-class and out-of-class education. In cities, almost every school has a library where students can borrow books and consult materials. There are laboratories for students to do experiments; There are multimedia classrooms for students to receive more vivid and intuitive knowledge; There are gymnasiums for students to take part in extracurricular sports activities. The teaching building, playground, schoolhouse and other hardware facilities are perfect. These depend not only on the support of national policies, but also on the enthusiastic contributions of the community. And rural schools, with the development of social economy, rural schools also have multimedia equipment, but because of the difference of rural students’ educational background, as well as teachers’ teaching habits, many multimedia facilities have become decoration. Libraries, laboratories, teaching buildings, school buildings and other hardware facilities are still in a backward state, not perfect. According to relevant data, the area of dilapidated buildings in rural secondary school’s accounts for 49% of the country’s total area, while that of rural primary school’s accounts for 82% of the country’s total area. The per capita book ownership of primary and secondary school students and the gap between urban and rural experimental equipment is even greater.

1.3 Educational Conditions

11

Funding for education. The sufficient, reasonable distribution and effective utilization of educational funds are important prerequisites for the healthy development of national educational undertakings. With the development of social economy, China’s total investment in education is increasing every year, but from the level of investment and the actual situation, the overall level has not reached the level of developed countries. The gap of education expenditure is mainly manifested in two aspects, one is the shortage of the total investment of education expenditure, the other is the different investment of education expenditure between urban and rural areas. The total investment of education funds is insufficient. For education spending, there is a numerical target of 4%. As early as in 1993, the program for education, reform and development of China stated that “the proportion of government expenditure on education in the gross domestic product (GDP) should gradually reach 4%.” This is what our country has always wanted to achieve. According to data released by the ministry of education, the central and local governments allocated 3.280646 trillion yuan for education in 2014, an increase of 8.04% over the previous year. It can be seen from the government report that the increase of the central government’s expenditure on education is increasing, the total investment in education is slightly insufficient, and the national financial education has been lower than the average level of the world for a long time, which has seriously hindered the development of China’s education. Up to now, the state budget for education has exceeded the target of 4%. Education is a national foundational project. Only adequate education funds can maintain the seriousness of the government’s commitment and guarantee the healthy development of national education. Continue to work towards 4.5% of the world average in education. There is a gap between urban and rural education funding. It is not so much the lack of education funds as the lack of equality. Education funds between urban and rural areas are in a serious imbalance, resulting in rural education imbalance, weak, and further widening the gap between urban and rural education. “Contemporary Chinese social class structure from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences research” in 2004, the contemporary Chinese social mobility report released data show that in 2002, the whole society for the education investment is one hundred million yuan more than 5800, of whom 77% used in city (urban population is less than 40%), and accounted for over 60% of the total population, rural population got only 23% of the education resources. The huge gap between urban and rural education funds leads to the unequal development of urban and rural education. Minority cities enjoy the lion’s share of investment in education, while majority rural areas enjoy only inadequate funding for their educational development. The lack of funds for rural education has been a major problem. Education must be sustained and healthy by the power of the economy. In both primary and secondary schools, the average urban student gets a lot more money than the average rural student. Although the gap is narrowing, urban students enjoy far more state funding than rural ones. The financial advantage brings convenience and unfairness in other aspects. The imbalance of education funds between urban and rural areas is a prominent manifestation of the inequality in education between urban and rural areas. Teachers are the direct teachers of students’ education. Teachers are in a critical and critical position in

12

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

the development of education. A good team of teachers is a striking indicator of a school’s educational development. Only the teachers have the strong comprehensive quality, the school education can get the good development (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016). The unbalanced teaching resources in urban and rural areas. The imbalance of urban and rural teachers mainly refers to the ratio of students to teachers. The socalled student teacher ratio refers to the number of students taught by each teacher. The ratio of teachers to students can not only reflect the teachers’ strength of a place, but also reflect the rationality of teachers’ and students’ allocation to a certain extent. In less developed rural areas, where there are not enough teachers, a teacher may teach several classes at the same time. In the relatively backward primary schools, there will be such a phenomenon, that is, a teacher may be able to teach any subject, so that students study unprofessional. The students’ mastery of the curriculum is imprecise. A considerable part of the school class size is too large, the teacher load is too large, the teacher burden of the major problem is highlighted. The insufficient allocation of rural teachers, the heavy task and the large teacher-student ratio gap do not reflect the gap between urban and rural teachers to some extent. The unequal treatment and quality of urban and rural teachers. The rural areas are economically underdeveloped, the local government finances are weak, and due to the country’s insufficient investment in rural education funds, the shortage of funds leads to the lack of effective guarantee for the salary of rural teachers. In addition to salary, teachers in rural areas are unable to get training opportunities and improve their own quality, which hinders teachers’ self-development and selfrealization. In terms of prospects, teachers in the countryside are denied promotion for a long time. There is a huge gap between urban and rural teachers in terms of cultural quality and comprehensive ability. Those teachers with advanced education and experience all prefer urban schools or key schools. The educational level of rural teachers is lower than that of urban teachers. In addition, the outflow of rural teachers is even weaker. As a result, the gap between urban and rural areas continues to widen. Differences in educational outcomes between urban and rural areas. Educational outcome equity emphasizes that every member of society can get better development opportunities, no matter what kind of social members can make progress, and then achieve equal educational results. The equity of educational outcome can also be said to be the equity of educational quality. Educational outcomes equity is intended to enable every student of any background to change his or her own destiny through education. However, the inequity in the starting point and process of urban and rural education determines that the result is not fair. When we talked about the equality of educational opportunity, we analyzed with the data that the number of rural students in key universities is small, so they will not have an advantage in employment. Rural college students had hoped to rely on knowledge to change the fate, but the dream has not been able to set sail, in the face of reality has landed. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2013 for four key undergraduate universities, four domestic ordinary undergraduate course colleges and universities of four higher vocational and technical college students employment, according to the report from

1.3 Educational Conditions

13

the perspective of the graduates of sources of urban and rural ordinary undergraduate course colleges and universities graduate from rural students to be the most difficult employment groups, the unemployment rate is as high as 30.5%, compared with urban students, differ by 12.2%. This is partly the result of unfair education. Now the employment situation, enterprises and institutions are more willing to want those “985”, “211” school graduates. To some extent, it raises the threshold of employment. And the opportunity that rural student enters key university is little originally, when facing obtain employment, do not have advantage more. The essence of education is to make contributions to the society by training a large number of talents, the more important purpose is to realize their own value. But most of the rural students are low-educated, and most of them get vocational education and have vocational skills. Starting from a lower base than the city, it is harder to achieve high social status. The same is the flowers of the motherland, can also make contributions to the society, if the emphasis on the cultivation of the city, then urban and rural education results will never be fair. The fairness and justice of the starting point, process and result of education should be valued. Efforts to provide a relatively fair environment for urban and rural students, everyone can develop in an all-round way, to achieve their own value, for the future of society to make a contribution (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011). The urban and rural education equity problems. Looking back at history, we can see that China has indeed made historic achievements in promoting universal education. At present, all kinds of education in China reach or exceed the average level of middle- and high-income countries and meet the basic needs of the people for education. However, the imbalanced development of education in urban and rural areas still becomes the fundamental factor to check and balance the people’s share of fair education. Educational starting point equity is the first link of educational equity. The equality of educational starting point focuses on the equality of foundation and more specifically refers to the equality of educational right and educational opportunity. Only when urban and rural residents have equal access to education can they achieve further equity in the educational process and the educational outcome. The fairness of the education starting point requires that any member of the society can have the right to receive education, the opportunity to receive education and the opportunity to go to school equally without being affected by subjective discrimination and objective factors. The difference in the starting point of urban and rural education is mainly reflected in the compulsory education stage, and the enrollment rate and graduation rate of rural school-age children and children of migrant workers are not guaranteed. The unfair admission opportunities. China has implemented nine-year compulsory education since 1986, with the goal of making nine-year compulsory education universal in 85% of the population by 2000. By 1997, nine-year compulsory education had been extended to 65% of the population in China, and the enrollment rate in primary schools was 98.9%, in junior high schools’ 87%, and in senior high schools’ 40.6%. According to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics, long before the release of the compulsory education law in 1985, the Chinese town has popularized the elementary and junior high school education, and the rural school-age

14

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

children enrollment rate is less than 95%, only 65% of rural primary school to junior high school, and lower than the average 13 provinces and regions, including three provinces of Guizhou, Guangxi and Tibet is less than 50%. By 1999, the graduation rate of rural primary school graduates had risen to 91%, but there were still 15 provinces and autonomous regions with a rate lower than 90%, among which 72.4% in Guizhou and 75.7% in Inner Mongolia, and 38.1% in Xizang. In 2000, many large and medium-sized cities had made high school education universal, but by 2004, there were still at least 10% of rural areas had not made nine-year compulsory education universal, and some counties had not even made primary education universal. After 20 years of development, the gap between east and west is still large. Because the area is remote, the financial investment is insufficient or the traffic is inconvenient and so on the element limit, compulsory education has unequal on the enrollment opportunity. In the 15 years from the promulgation of the compulsory education law in 1986 to 2000, about 150 million children of farmers in China failed to complete their secondary education. This includes nearly 32 million people who are not enrolled in primary schools, nearly 38 million people who are out of primary school, more than 50 million people who fail to go to school after primary school, and more than 30 million people who are out of secondary school. According to the estimation of experts from the Shanghai academy of education sciences, in 2001– 2002, the completion rate of nine-year compulsory education for the population aged 15–17 was only 75% and 76.6%, respectively, and there were seven provinces and regions below 60%. Although the net enrollment rate of primary school has reached 99%, the graduation rate is only about 89%, a gap of nearly 10 percentage points. The gross enrollment rate of junior middle school has reached 90%, but the graduation rate is only about 76%, a gap of nearly 14 percentage points. They conclude that in recent years about five million school-age children have not completed secondary school each year, and nearly two million of them have not completed six years of primary school. These children are, of course, rural. It can be seen that the inequality of school entrance opportunity has become the most significant manifestation of the inequality of compulsory education and has the most direct impact on the realization of educational equity(Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016). The insufficient input in rural compulsory education. The unfair starting point of rural education is reflected in the insufficient investment in national compulsory education. Due to low levels of urbanization, more than 60% of China’s population lives in rural areas. In 2001, the number of primary school students in rural areas accounted for 68.6% of the total number of primary school students in China, the number of secondary school students in rural areas accounted for 48.5%, and the number of rural students in compulsory education accounted for 61.8% of the total number of students in rural areas. However, with the basic popularization of compulsory education and the adjustment of the development direction of education, in recent years, educational investment and resource allocation have been inclined to higher education and noncompulsory education. According to the data of the national bureau of statistics, from 1996 to 2001, the total expenditure on education increased from 226.2 billion

1.3 Educational Conditions

15

yuan to 426 billion yuan, nearly doubling, and the proportion of total expenditure on education in GDP increased from 3.33 to 4.8%. In terms of the distribution of education funds, the growth of higher education funds is significantly faster than that of secondary education and primary education. From 1996 to 2001, the expenditure on higher education more than doubled, while the expenditure on secondary education and primary education increased by only 0.6 times. The different growth rates of tertiary education investment bring about the phenomenon that the proportion of educational expenditure investment is seriously inclined to higher education. From 1996 to 2001, the proportion of higher education investment increased from 16.3 to 27.8%, an increase of 11.5 percentage points. Compared with the growth trend of higher education, the proportion of investment in secondary education and primary education has been decreasing continuously, which has decreased by about 6 percentage points respectively (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020). As far as rural school-age children are concerned, many school-age children are unable to receive preschool education in time or drop out of school in the stage of compulsory education due to the influence of family values, economic conditions and social factors. What our country implements at present is 9 years compulsory education, it is to ought to ensure everybody to have education level above junior high school namely. According to statistics, there are still a large part of the rural population whose educational level is not up to that of primary and secondary schools, and many of them cannot complete the nine-year basic compulsory education. According to the survey results, there are almost no people with primary education or below in the urban population, while the relevant proportion in the rural population is up to 44%. In cities, 3% of the population has an education level of junior high school or below, compared with 63% of the rural population. Thirteen percent of the urban population has a high school education or less, and 11% of the rural population; In cities, 71% of people have a university education or less, compared with 4% of the rural population. In the cities, 13% of the population has more than a university education, while in the countryside there is almost no population with more than a university education. The main reason for this situation is that the rural family economic conditions cannot afford the children’s tuition and miscellaneous fees. Although compulsory education is exempted from tuition and miscellaneous fees, it still requires some other fees. Some poor rural families cannot afford to support their children’s education. Some are influenced by the family concept, think that the cultural knowledge is not useful, as early as the family to add a labor force; Others are affected by social factors. For example, some rural areas only have primary schools, which require them to go to a further place to go to a junior high school, which requires them to face traffic problems and so on. There are obvious differences between urban and rural compulsory education opportunities. Compulsory education is in a basic and leading position in the national education system. Therefore, it is of great significance to narrow the gap between urban and rural education to make up for shortcomings and promote the integrated development of urban and rural compulsory education. After a long period of efforts, although China has made some achievements in the field of urban–rural education equity, the retention rate of nine-year compulsory education in China has

16

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

reached 93.8%. However, due to such factors as the large population base, the diversity and complexity of the urban–rural dual structure, and the gap in the level of economic development, there are still many problems to be solved, and there is still a long way to go before the real realization of urban and rural education equality. General secretary Xi Jinping has called for “greater support to the western regions, rural areas, and old revolutionary bases, border areas and poor areas, in particular” to optimize the allocation of educational resources and gradually narrow the gap between regions, urban and rural areas and between schools, so that the fruits of educational reform and development will be more equitably Shared by all the people. The balanced development of compulsory education in urban and rural areas is the internal requirement of realizing the fairness of urban and rural education. Compulsory education is basic education. Compulsory education means that schoolage children and adolescents must go to school for education, which is compulsory by the state, socially responsible and supported by the family. According to the survey, the number of students in the compulsory stage of our country is 180 million, the implementation of compulsory education, the degree of equity is related to the realization of education equity, but also related to the protection of students’ basic right to education. According to the official website of the national bureau of statistics, the enrollment rate of primary school students in China rose from 99.1% in 2000 to 99.8% in 2014. It rose 0.7% over that 15-year period. However, the number of school-age students in China is quite large, with 124 million in 2000 and 91 million in 2014. In 2013, the fewest years, there were 89 m. The total number of school-age children in the country is falling, and the graduation rate is increasing. But despite such high enrolment rates, the number of children not in school reached more than 1.1 m in 2000 and 1 m in 2014. Although the figures do not compare urban and rural areas, they do take into account gaps in the pace of economic development and educational development. In cities, with the exception of a few rare cases, there is virtually no problem of school-age children not attending school at school age. Based on an analysis of the above information, from 2000 to 2014, almost all of the school-age children who were not enrolled in school were from rural areas. Except for serious diseases or highly disabled cases, urban children are generally able to attend school and receive compulsory education. However, there are a large number of problems in rural areas, such as especially difficult economic conditions, inconvenient transportation conditions, family labor needs and other issues, which hinder rural school-age children to go to school and receive education. Although the graduation rate has increased and the dropout rate has decreased, the number of rural dropout children is staggering. This is contrary to the nine-year compulsory education advocated by our country (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020). In addition, in addition to the unfair educational opportunities for rural students in different stages of education, there is also a special group that faces a more serious injustice, namely, the enrollment and enrollment of children of migrant workers. In response to this situation, Chinese government departments have made corresponding countermeasures, aiming at the problem of floating children, we have adopted the policy of “two-oriented” (mainly management of the flowing place, mainly public schools), stipulating that the enrollment of floating children is the responsibility of

1.3 Educational Conditions

17

the local government and the public schools. However, due to the rural household registration of migrant children, their compulsory education funds are returned to the management of the local government, so the local government does not have the financial allocation but has to bear the education funds. Therefore, migrant children are often excluded by the local government and need to pay “borrowing fees” and “sponsorship fees” to enter public schools. And because the water level of education, floating children performance is poorer, defined public schools also have resistance, and rural and urban cultural conflicts, floating children and not really learning into the city life, but only in migrant schools, the migrant schools in many aspects such as the condition, the environment, the teachers, are all great gap with public schools, which is the main performance of the urban and rural education starting point injustice.

1.4 The Unfair Education Process The long-standing dual economic structure and social system of urban and rural division and opposition in Chinese society are the social system reasons for the serious difference between urban and rural education. The urban–rural dual economic structure leads to the prominent “urban orientation” in the Settings and arrangements of the education system, which naturally constitutes a serious difference between urban and rural education. Urban and rural dual economic structure and dual educational structure have been internalized into the different educational consciousness and concept of urban and rural population, which will react on the existence of urban and rural education differences. In fact, there is still a serious gap between urban and rural areas in China’s current education system, and there is a certain tendency of inequality in the allocation of educational resources. The education gap between urban and rural areas is the core of the education gap. In the process of education, there are great differences between urban and rural areas, which are reflected in the following aspects.

1.4.1 The Gap Between Urban and Rural Education Expenditures 1. Urban–rural differences in per student education expenditure. In 2001, the average expenditure of primary school students in cities and towns was 1484 yuan, and that in rural areas was 798 yuan, 1.86 times that in cities and towns. The average education expenditure for junior middle school students is 1,955 yuan in urban areas and 1,014 yuan in rural areas, 1.93 times of that in urban areas. 2. Differences between urban and rural areas in per capita educational budget. The average is 953 yuan in urban primary schools and 558 yuan in rural areas, 1.71 times that in urban areas. The average budgetary educational expenditure

18

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

for junior middle schools is 120 yuan in urban areas and 667 yuan in rural areas, 1.68 times that in urban areas. 3. Differences between urban and rural areas in the per capita budgetary public expenditure. The average per student budget of primary schools in China is 95 yuan in urban areas and 28 yuan in rural areas, 3.39 times of that in urban areas. The average budget of junior middle school students is 146 yuan in urban areas and 45 yuan in rural areas, 3.24 times of that in urban areas. The school buildings are mainly in the countryside. In 2001, the area of dilapidated primary schools in China was 38.033 million square meters, 1.883 million square meters in cities, accounting for 4.95%, and 3.1175 million square meters in rural areas, accounting for 81.97%. Although the above data is from 2001, it also reflects the problem of education equality between urban and rural areas since the reform and opening up: the economic level of urban and rural development is different, and the per capita education expenditure of rural students is much lower than that of urban students. At present, China’s education investment is mainly based on government investment. In the education investment system, it is generally based on cities and key schools. The key schools in these cities have the highest education funds, followed by the schools in cities and counties. The difference in the investment in education makes the gap between the school conditions and the teaching staff widen. Under the circumstance of the great difference in the level of urban and rural economic development, the investment of compulsory education is expanding. The gap in education investment between urban and rural areas leads to the disparity in educational opportunities and quality between urban and rural areas, which also makes excellent teachers reluctant to stay in the countryside. The fiscal expenditure of junior high schools nationwide was 6,541.86 yuan, compared with 4,896.38 yuan in rural areas, which was 1.33 times that of the latter. This shows that even though the country is emphasizing the equalization of compulsory education at the present stage, the fact is that the educational expenditure in rural areas is significantly lower than that in urban areas, especially in per capita expenditure. After nearly 20 years of development, although the gap between urban and rural education funding has been reduced, the gap between urban and rural education funding is increasing. This shows that the issue of fairness in education funding in urban and rural areas has not been well resolved and the problem is still very serious.

1.4.2 The Gap Between Urban and Rural Areas in the Level of Teachers Teachers are the key to the quality of education. The gap between urban and rural teacher level is widening day by day under the background of the great improvement of teacher level in our country. There is a serious shortage of effective demand for teachers in rural areas. The focus of China’s education is in the countryside, and

1.4 The Unfair Education Process

19

the focus of rural education is on teachers. The gap of teachers’ academic qualifications mainly exists between urban and rural areas, especially the gap between urban and rural areas with a higher educational level. The overall average difference of educational qualifications of primary and secondary school teachers in urban and rural areas is about 30 percentage points. The educational requirements of teachers in China are relatively low. If the educational requirements of teachers are raised to a higher level, 70–80% of rural teachers will become students. The qualified rate of rural teachers is lower than that of urban teachers. Rural schools cannot keep good teachers. Excellent teachers flow to the city, in addition to the city superior environmental factors, mainly due to the rural teachers’ salaries is not high, other than salary welfare gap bigger (city makes up a missed lesson the teacher has a lot of students, each teacher in the make up a missed lesson income than wages), although teachers’ income has increased in recent years, but the main benefit urban teachers, most of the rural teachers’ life is hard. The gap between the quantity and quality of teachers in rural and urban areas also contributes to the inequality of students’ educational process and leads to the difference of educational results. The irrationality of the flow of talents makes urban and rural education “dual” in terms of teachers. Now the teaching team in the rural areas is seriously deficient in the whole, in the face of the lack of education funds, the long-term wage arrears, social welfare injustice, the dull cultural environment, most of the rural teachers excellent and then go, so, rural schools become the training base for excellent teachers. On the contrary, few city teachers go to the countryside. We must see the education in rural areas are common phenomenon: the more poor rural people more hope their children can go to school, “go out”, once go out, don’t want to come back again, the result of poor rural talents to be transported to the city, and the original rural poverty due to the lack of talents and become poorer, rural education didn’t enjoy the fruits of their industriously, rather bear all the cost of farming, the city became the reaper of rural education (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016).

1.4.3 The Unfair Compilation of Teaching Materials The formulation of education policies is often based on the development of urban education. The education policy makers are usually located in cities, and it is difficult for them to conduct in-depth and detailed investigation on rural education issues. Therefore, it is difficult for them to formulate policies in line with the reality of rural education and implement them. This situation is also reflected in the curriculum preparation and curriculum content selection in primary and secondary schools. Rural primary and secondary schools use national textbooks, written in the context of urban life, that offer little in the way of the knowledge, skills and ideas needed to function effectively in rural environments. Some scholars call this “urbanism.” Such as the new primary school Chinese book 8 assign a composition assignment: “do you like the activities organized by the school? As a result, rural primary and secondary

20

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

education, which prepares students for college, does not improve agricultural labor productivity, and on the contrary, drives a large number of talented young people to leave the countryside to serve the cities.

1.4.4 The Inequality in Education Enjoyed by the Children of Migrant Workers After the reform and opening up, a large number of surplus rural labor force to the city, the city has become a huge special social group. Migrant workers’ children’s education problem is prominent. The children of migrant workers generally cannot enter the city’s high-quality public schools. Their children are either separated from their parents in the local education, in the absence of love in the environment of learning, so that their children in learning, physical, psychological, behavior, etc. are facing confusion; Even when they enter public schools, the children of migrant workers often feel discriminated against by the schools, such as unfair treatment in the evaluation of prizes, the daily speech of teachers and classmates, group activities and even homework correction. The inequality caused by model school policies. Because demonstration school in government financial support, facilities, faculty has advantages in many aspects, coupled with the schools can charge Gao Jiawei corruption or the teacher can make up a missed lesson to earn a lot of capital, so, the presence of these schools at present has become the influence of urban and rural education gap is further widening and important factor in the production of education corruption. The unequal distribution of resources. A large number of farmers flow to cities and towns, especially urban areas. In remote rural areas, there are unmanned villages or micro-villages with less than 10–20 people. Rural schools have no students, and the number of students in most rural schools is less than 100. Farmers are forced to leave the land and take unfamiliar jobs in order to send their children to a good school. A great deal of land was wasted. A large number of farmers become poor because of education problems. A few key schools in the city have abnormal development. Playground and classroom infrastructure. The playground is still loess playground, a wind, the whole campus is yellow sand sky, there is no air conditioning in the classroom, even without any heating equipment, to the winter, the children in the classroom cold shiver. Guangzhou south national Olympic park has plastic playground, green football field and sports facilities since its establishment. Each classroom is equipped with two air conditioners to ensure children study in a comfortable environment. Differences in teaching equipment. Guangzhou south national Olympic park primary school opened a library, students can consult extracurricular reading materials at will, and the central primary school to buy books can only be a small number of old books, resulting in the students to read in quantity. In the countryside, teachers also use the blackboard, chalk, and urban teachers more use of multimedia teaching is

1.4 The Unfair Education Process

21

not only lively, and environmental protection. Differences in extracurricular activities In the countryside, the expectation of students, parents and teachers is the success of the carp jumping Longmen, the pressure on the students’ expectations and the objective environment of the restrictions, rural students have few opportunities for entertainment and leisure, understanding of social history and other extracurricular knowledge opportunities are few and far between. And the town’s parents in the holidays, the habit of taking their children out for a visit, outing, in this process, parents, children not only had a good emotional exchange, visiting places of interest to make students extracurricular knowledge, horizons are broadened. In addition, the rate of Internet use in urban families is much higher than that in rural areas, and students are more exposed to technology products for learning and communication. These differences not only affect students’ knowledge and values, but also determine their adaptability to modern life. Differences in social material environment. Urban students have been used to modern urban life since childhood, while rural students are still at a loss about everything around them after entering university. Compared with cities, there is a big gap between rural areas in municipal construction and modernization of community services. This makes life convenient for urban people, and the characteristics of large urban information flow make people living in the city have progressive and open thoughts and a wide range of knowledge, while people living in the countryside seem backward and closed. In addition, there is a big gap between urban and rural areas in social security and other aspects. The Curriculum. Rural primary and secondary schools tend to put all the curriculum on the study of scientific and cultural knowledge, the curriculum is all the so-called main courses, and music, sports, art and other courses shortage. This makes the students in the school day is all in the intense cultural knowledge study, the thought is nervous tired, the study efficiency, the study enthusiasm is not high, cannot discover the student’s hobby specialty, this seriously hinders the student allround development. In math, physics, chemistry and other examination subjects, rural teachers often use traditional teaching methods, while many new elements are added to urban teaching. For example, many experimental courses are commonly offered in urban schools, which can not only arouse students’ interest in learning, but also help students better understand what they are learning (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016).

1.5 Policy Suggestions Based on the above situations and problems, the author proposes the following policy Suggestions from the three dimensions of the starting point, process and outcome of urban and rural education development in China, aiming at narrowing the gap between urban and rural education development and promoting educational equity. In today’s China,

22

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

First, we should attach importance to fairness from a conceptual and institutional perspective. Starting point equity is undoubtedly the fundamental premise to achieve overall educational equity. If the right and opportunity to receive education are not guaranteed, all subsequent discussions on education are meaningless. In order to respond to the situation of high unfairness in urban and rural education development, we must recognize the existing problems in concept and system and take countermeasures. Understand rural education from a comprehensive perspective. The huge difference in the development of education between urban and rural areas and the inequality that goes with it is a special problem in China. This dual household registration system and the subsequent series of dual management systems are inherently nested together, which, of course, promoted the development of China’s industry and cities in a specific historical period, but it is undoubtedly unfair for the majority of farmers. In this context, the allocation of educational resources and elements also reflects the emphasis on the city and the neglect of rural characteristics, so that the issue of urban and rural education equity in China has a deep historical basis. Along with the reform and opening up as well as the urbanization wave, developed a kind of voice that to follow the logic of the development of the education, rural education development of rural education should eventually be “elimination”, and this is definitely a dangerous, not only to avoid the development of urban and rural education inequality, unfair status quo, and easy to cause our country in response to the new rural construction, food security and the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure and so on a series of fundamental problems ignored rural may play a great positive role. After all, we used to tend to understand the relationship between urban and rural areas as a simple mode of binary opposition and deprived the independence of rural education existence by the “general law” of industrialization discourse. Now, we must go beyond the limitations of the “blind urbanization” mode of thinking and put the countryside, rural education and its problems in perspective. We should reconstruct our understanding of the countryside. The countryside is not an “outsider” in the development of modern society, which makes the countryside marginalized in the process of economic and social development, instead of treating it as an active force, which is not in line with the fact of economic development in the first place. As the main area of agricultural production, rural areas are of great significance to the country’s agricultural revitalization and food security. In addition, the new rural construction in our country, under the background of science and technology revolution and industry transformation, the development of ecological tourism industries and the ideal of garden city is required first embarks from the reality, we see the independence of the country itself exists and advantages, which can be in between the city and the country to establish the relationship of equality, cooperation, complementary advantages. Whether considering the sustainable development in the economic or social sense, the countryside plays an indelible role in the future development of China, which is bound to be something that the city cannot provide. The depression and decline in some rural areas is an obvious social problem and the result of inaction. It is an important basis to talk about rural education to pay attention to the potential and possibility of rural economy.

1.5 Policy Suggestions

23

Second, we should seriously reflect on the development of rural education and improve the level of investment and construction. Even if it is admitted that the modernization development of rural education only follows the development logic of urban education, the current development level of rural education is not enough, and there is a significant gap with the average level of urban education. The negative relationship between the urban–rural per capita consumption expenditure difference and the urban–rural compulsory education equity index by selecting the indicators of the average operating expenses of primary school students, the average operating expenses of junior high school students, the academic qualifications of fulltime primary school teachers and the educational qualifications of full-time junior high school teachers. Wu also pointed out that rural education in China is facing the dilemma of losing students, losing excellent teachers and finding it increasingly difficult for rural students to get into top universities. On the one hand, the lack of investment in education system makes it difficult for rural schools to develop, and the lack of students and the distrust of parents exacerbate this vicious circle. On the other hand, although some rural children may have the opportunity to receive an education in the city (a process that is actually quite arduous) because their parents go out to work, many rural families cannot afford to send their children to school, so they have to leave their children to receive an education in the country where they were born. In other words, these truly disadvantaged groups have no (if not deprived) right of choice in the first place, and they are “eliminated” from the starting point of education. If we do not pay attention to the development status of rural primary schools, if we do not improve the level of investment and construction, these problems will never be solved, and the landscape pastoral that could have been loved by people is doomed to become a forgotten corner beyond the wave of modernization and urbanization. Thirdly, there should be a more profound reflection on the style and status of rural education. Which exists objectively, our country rural education school is small, geographically dispersed characteristics, management of the resulting inconvenience, in difficult, difficult to determine the teacher preparation and a series of problems, countries to implement the policy of “from” junior high, or cancel the villages in small school, start with a certain scale, is advantageous for the centralized management of the school. From the perspective of economics, this arrangement is undoubtedly very reasonable, which can effectively improve the efficiency of the allocation of educational resources, so that the rural education in China can develop on a large scale and faster. However, this approach is also cause more and more questions: first, on the level of local education financial allocation, withdraw some junior high make it possible to have a zero-sum game. Second, withdraw some action makes the starting point of education for junior high increasingly become a process of “race”: according to the analysis of Guang-hui pan, family and capital and cultural capital always has remarkable effect on their children to school to, select a school unable to pay the cost of the family can only stay in the village on there is no school, original intention to shorten the gap between urban and rural education development, promote the education fair instead, move easily into reproduction “indulge” education inequality and the risk of social inequality. In the end, the popularity of removing points and combining schools still continues a binary opposition, and one

24

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

of the results must be the defeat of the village. It not only makes it more difficult for children to go to school, leads to the outflow of excellent teachers in rural areas, and damages the harmonious home-school relationship in rural areas, but also fundamentally pulls the cultural space of school out of the context of rural areas, and the dilemma of “hollowing out population” and “hollowing out culture” has become an unavoidable issue. In the final analysis, although the idea of standardization provides the foundation for the delicate development of education, it can only solve the limited problems of education, which still hides the prejudice of city standard. The situation of rural education can be truly improved on the basis of respect for the countryside, which requires policy makers to consider the issue not only from the perspective of economics, but also from the perspective of sociology and ethics. In order to better development of rural education, narrow the gap between it and the city education, it is necessary to do deep research into the sociology and anthropology, to meet the national standards of the specific cultural and ethical education form with the local space organic blend, make rural schools become the lifeblood of rural development, and should not deny rural education to modern coat to country life (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016). Break the unfairness of development by taking the system as the breakthrough point. Conceptual analysis can help us to clarify the understanding of rural education and the relationship between urban and rural education, so as to establish values that can build social consensus, conform to the interests of the people and conform to the direction of social evolution. The analysis at the institutional level can provide us with specific action strategies and tools, so that the aforementioned values can be put into practice. According to analysts at Tian Zhilei and others in the province of fiscal decentralization is the influence of urban and rural compulsory education fair level differences between the main decisive factors: the development of rural school education fiscal funds depend on the county and township level, and the latter with education finance at the provincial level and municipal education finance in “on–off” structural relations. Zhang wang, on the other hand, put forward the idea of the integration of urban and rural education. To sum up, the problem of inequality in urban and rural education is largely a problem of the financial system. On the one hand, governments at the county and township levels should be given relatively more financial funds for education to enable them to improve local education, on the other hand, the development of rural education should not be at the expense of the urban education stagnation that sacrifice, should maintain necessary between the balance, based on this you can try to establish a provincial level of the education finance appropriate system as a whole, by the provincial education departments have, proceeding from the overall situation of the whole region development of prefecture and county and township level of funding a comprehensive arrangement, as to avoid the awkward situation of empowerment is not paying, and urban and rural education “ZhuMenJiuRouChou and dying way with the development of” state of inequality. To realize process equity from multiple perspectives. Educational process equity is the fundamental guarantee to realize educational equity. And the process of education, is also in the real society of each link of education, the most likely to breed

1.5 Policy Suggestions

25

an unfair link. Therefore, in order to realize the fairness of educational results, we must solve the problem of the unfairness of educational process. In order to eliminate the unfairness of urban and rural education as far as possible, policies should be made from three aspects: social environment, educational fund and teacher resources, and in combination with local conditions, so as to guarantee the fairness of students’ right to receive education in different regions. Start with the social environment. Since China’s reform and opening up, the party and the state have always taken improving the quality of the whole nation as a fundamental task in the overall socialist modernization drive. However, the reality is that with the continuous increase of urban population in China, the urban–rural dual structure divides urban and rural residents into two categories, resulting in obvious differences in the amount of social resources. Due to the unequal distribution of educational resources in different regions and the differentiation of social classes, people are still in the process of continuous differentiation. Therefore, people have a strong pursuit for high-quality education and hope to realize the leap-over of social classes through education. However, in the next stage of acquiring educational resources, it is usually necessary to have excellent performance as a steppingstone, and excellent performance is often related to the education level of this stage. Therefore, people strive for the best quality educational resources within the scope of their ability at each stage, and the concept of exam-oriented education is hard to be replaced by quality-oriented education. Some governments also have the view of educational achievements, and there is a subjective bias in the allocation of public education expenditure. Therefore, in order to solve the problem of fairness in the educational process, it is necessary to solve the inequality brought by the social environment. Governments at all levels should change their view of educational achievements, abandon the idea of focusing on “running famous schools” and “running key schools”, and avoid creating unequal hardware and treatment conditions among schools. Ideologically, we should make education satisfactory to the people the goal of our efforts and adhere to the people-oriented concept of educational equity. At the government level, the goal of quality-oriented education should be firmly established, so as to avoid the government’s pressure on schools and make the purpose of learning utilitarian. For all students with special status generated in the process of urbanization, such as children of migrant workers in cities, it is necessary to make efforts to make them enjoy fair and high-quality education. Change the traditional concept of urban and rural areas, can insist on the same treatment of urban schools and rural schools, equal investment. Fundamentally, the unfairness of urban and rural education is the reflection of the urban–rural dual structure in education. The key to solve the problem of education inequality between urban and rural areas is to reform the urban–rural dual structure, break the traditional urban–rural separation model, integrate urban and rural resources, realize the synchronous development of urban and rural areas, and narrow the urban–rural economic gap. Reform the household registration system, avoid the discrimination of household registration in enrollment and school entrance,

26

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

solve the education problems of the children of migrant workers and left-behind children, and solve the inequity of urban and rural education from the social environment as a whole. Start with education funds. The inequality of educational expenditure between urban schools and rural schools is reflected in the gap of inter-school hardware facilities. Cities, especially developed cities, have an earlier economic development than rural areas, a higher economic level than rural areas, and a more advanced understanding of the significance of education. As a result, the investment and development in education are much earlier than in rural areas. Due to the existence of urban–rural dual structure, the proportion of early public education expenditure in urban schools is much higher than that in rural schools. The study found that from 2010 to 2017, the Gini coefficient of education in the whole eastern region was between 0.19713 and 0.20935. The Gini coefficient of education in the middle part is between 0.19868 and 0.21073. The Gini coefficient of western education is between 0.25138 and 0.27245. According to the data analysis, the Gini coefficient presents an increasing trend from the east to the west, that is, from the east to the west, the proportion of education expenditure shows a decreasing trend, and the education level is the highest in the east, followed by the middle, and the lowest in the west. From the perspective of the economic development of the four dimensions of promoting educational equity in the new era of east, central and west China, since the middle and late 1990s, the gap of per capita GDP in east, central and west China has gradually widened. In 2013, per capita GDP in east China was 1. 758 times, 1.913 times in the west. According to the data comparison, education level is closely related to economic level, showing a positive correlation on the whole. Therefore, the imbalance of urban and rural economic development will inevitably lead to the inequality of education level. At present, the proportion of public education expenditure in rural schools keeps increasing, but there are still some problems in rural schools, such as backward equipment, shortage of educational resources, dilapidated buildings and scattered schools. As a result, some rural students choose to study in cities with their parents who work in cities, and some choose to give up the chance of education and enter the society in advance. Both options have led to the loss of students from rural schools. The loss of students makes it more difficult for rural schools to develop, and the distribution of public education spending is bound to decrease. In this way, a vicious circle is formed. Therefore, in order to achieve the long-term development of education in rural areas, it is necessary to continuously strengthen the investment in rural schools and reduce the gap of hardware facilities between rural schools and urban schools. A substantial increase in the central government on the rural education investment, local governments should shift from “strategy on the basis of the region” to “” focusing on the urban–rural integration strategy, realize the priority to the development of rural education, make up the problem of poor rural backward level of education, education resources, implementing compulsory education in rural and urban areas of a fair, reasonable and balanced development (Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016). After the policy stipulates that primary school and junior middle school are compulsory education, the investment of social support force in primary school

1.5 Policy Suggestions

27

and junior middle school education is reduced. In various universities, some social forces have set up awards and bursaries to ensure that students can complete their studies and help their families to make a normal living. However, there are only a small number of poor students in high schools and universities, and there are still a large number of students from poor families who give up their studies in primary schools and middle schools in order to survive. However, compulsory education can only ensure that students do not charge fees for their schooling process but cannot guarantee the normal survival of the families behind the students. Therefore, social forces should not only focus on the poor students at the university level, but also start from the starting point to ensure that all students have equal access to the opportunity to study, not because of their families. Various social public welfare organizations may, in light of the actual situation, allocate supplementary places for poor students to rural schools. By the school specific investigation each student’s family condition and the actual difficulty which faces, decides the auxiliary place allocation. The quota allocation process should be open and transparent and subject to public supervision and guidance. At the same time, governments at all levels should also supervise the distribution process and public information to ensure the fairness of social forces. With the increasing distribution of public education expenditure in rural areas in recent years, the hardware facilities of schools in rural areas have been constantly improved, and the gap between urban schools and rural schools has been narrowing. Therefore, as long as policies are formulated to ensure that public education expenditures can be reasonably distributed between urban schools and rural schools, and social support for rural schools is increased, the gap in hardware facilities between urban schools and rural schools can continue to be narrowed, and the hardware facilities of urban schools and rural schools will be no difference in the end. Therefore, the most important thing to eliminate the inter-school gap is to eliminate the inter-schoolteacher gap. Start with the faculty. The inter-schoolteacher gap is mainly due to the environmental gap between urban and rural areas. When urban schools and rural schools can provide the same conditions, teachers are more inclined to choose to work in urban schools with more favorable conditions. However, the reality is that urban schools are often better than rural schools in terms of salary and accommodation. Therefore, it is difficult for rural schools to attract and retain excellent teachers. However, education has a huge driving capacity for the regional economy. The backward regional economy lacks high-quality teacher education, which makes it difficult to drive the regional economic development and forms a vicious closed loop. To eliminate the inter-schoolteacher gap, regions with backward education must be able to attract and retain teachers, which requires the government to formulate policies to eliminate differences as much as possible. In 2015, the general office of the state council promulgated the rural teacher support plan (2015–20,202) and issued it to the people’s governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government. The policy stipulates the basic principle, which requires teachers’ morality to be the first and people to be virtuous. Appropriate scale and reasonable structure; Improve the quality, improve the treatment; Reform the mechanism and stimulate vitality. The policy also stipulated the main measures, including

28

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

comprehensively improving the ideological and political quality and moral level of rural teachers; To expand supplementary channels for rural teachers; Improve the living conditions of rural teachers; Unified urban and rural teaching staff staffing standards; Professional title (position) evaluation and employment to rural schools; To promote the mobility of excellent urban teachers to rural schools; Comprehensively improve the ability and quality of rural teachers; Establish a rural teacher honor system. According to a report by xinhuanet.com at the beginning of 2019, 84.85% of rural teachers are satisfied with the rural teachers’ support plan (2015–2020) after its implementation. 83.46% of rural teachers would like to continue teaching in rural schools (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016). However, there are still many steps to be taken to improve the quality of teachers in rural schools. First, the treatment of rural schoolteachers must be improved. In remote mountainous areas, for some teachers, not only need dedication, but also need some material incentives, in order to attract some excellent teachers to teach, only good pay, to retain teachers, teachers can further maintain stability, quality can be further enhanced. Only by ensuring that the treatment of teachers in rural schools can be consistent with that of teachers in urban schools and even better than that of teachers in urban schools, can it be attractive enough to attract high-quality teachers in urban schools to work in rural schools. Secondly, urban schools should do a good job in helping others. In a short time, the urban and rural economy is difficult to reach the same level, rural schools are difficult to provide superior conditions to attract high-quality teachers. It is necessary for urban schools to give full play to the spirit of “the rich first lead the rich later”, and they can arrange high-quality urban teachers with advanced teaching experience to volunteer in rural areas by means of “pair support” and so on, so as to bring advanced teaching experience to rural schools. Help rural teachers improve their teaching ability, so that rural schools can produce their own excellent teachers. At the same time to help rural schools to establish excellent teaching team, so that the education experience can be transferred, so that rural schools really achieve their own “hematopoietic". Finally, the assessment of professional titles should be skewed towards rural schools. For teachers, promotion of professional title is a big wish, and the preference of professional title evaluation to rural schools is conducive to the balanced development of educational resources. In rural schools more conducive to professional title evaluation, on the one hand, can give rural schoolteachers a job security; On the other hand, it can attract urban teachers under the condition of insufficient funds. It can not only avoid the loss of excellent teachers, but also attract foreign teachers, and ultimately improve the overall teaching force of rural schools. Policy Recommendations for Outcome Equity Guarantee the fairness of results at the institutional level. The issue of result equity is also an important aspect of the inequality of urban and rural education development: even though rural students are as hardworking and hardworking as urban students in terms of cognition, it is more and more difficult for them to get into top universities compared with urban students. As the economy and society developed,

1.5 Policy Suggestions

29

farmers’ incomes gradually increased and rural children had more opportunities to go to school, but the proportion of them going to higher vocational colleges and universities declined. In recent years, the proportion of rural freshmen in many key colleges and universities in China has been on the decline. It is true that students in rural areas are unable to enter first-class universities due to their “lack of ability”, “failure to grasp the opportunity”, “small vision” and other cognitive problems, but behind these cognitive categories there are a lot of hidden social processes: poor economic conditions, limited social insight, narrow interpersonal network. It must be noted that China has launched a number of policies in recent years to improve the possibility of rural students being admitted to the top universities and even the top universities. Our government for the university admission notice has already got the family difficulties students provides a lot of help, “with the university admission notice, family economic difficulties students can apply for enrollment to the local department of student financial assistance to student loans, credit to pay the tuition and accommodation, to go to school during the interest paid by the state. For freshmen from poor families in the central and western regions, they can also apply for financial aid for freshman enrollment and receive travel allowance and short-term living allowance.”. In addition, the public education system of normal university students is also of typical significance in this respect. It enables “the national public normal university students to enjoy the policy of tuition exemption, accommodation fee and living allowance, and effectively implement the teaching school and post for each graduated public normal university student through two-way selection, so that students from remote and disadvantaged backgrounds can have access to first-class education. While much has been done to ensure fair outcomes for rural students, there are still some details to consider. For example, how to qualify for poverty? This process is intended to screen out the students who really need help, but it often falls into an awkward situation in the formal investigation of actual operation. Rural students from disadvantaged backgrounds have to prove their poverty in various ways. Although they have received financial aid, their self-esteem has been greatly damaged, which has a negative impact on their environmental adaptation, academic performance and interpersonal communication during their study. In addition, some policies set restrictions in the admissions process are controversial. Take Beijing normal university as an example: the enrollment quota of Beijing normal university in Qinghai province in 2019 is reserved for government-funded normal university students, which essentially limits the right of students to pursue further education. Students from poor areas, even if they have a “weak foundation”, have the same right to learn more advanced professional knowledge and engage in more skilled jobs. How to strike a balance between individual demands, urban and rural equity, school interests and national will is still worth pondering, and policy makers should have a deeper reflection in these aspects (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016).

30

1 Educational Equity Between Urban and Rural Areas in China

References Ding, D., & Zheng, F. T. (2015). Removing points and merging schools: Integrating educational resources or reducing educational investment?–Provincial panel data analysis based on 1996– 2009. Economics (Quarterly), 14(02), 603–622. Li, J. (2020). Compulsory Educational Policies in Rural China since 1978: A Macro perspective. Beijing International Review of Education, 2(1), 159–164. Li, J., Yongzhi, Z., Eryong, X., & Zhou, N. (2020). Faculty ethics in China: From a historical perspective. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(2), 126–136. Pan, G .H. (2017). “Removing points and merging schools”, family background and enrollment opportunities. Society, 37(03), 131–162. Tian, Z. L., Yuan, L. S., & Zhang, X. (2011). Research on the difference between urban and rural compulsory education equity between regions. Education and Economy, 11(02), 43–48. Wu, Z. H. (2012). Discussion on the core issues of the integrated development of urban and rural compulsory education in China. Research on Education Development, 32(17), 8–13. Zhang, W. (2012). Integration of urban and rural education: An era demand for educational equity. Education Research, 33(08), 13–18. Zhao, P. G., Zhao, Z. X. (2016). Thinking of “relocating and merging” rural primary schools in mountainous areas--A case study of Mashi School District in Tongjiang County, Sichuan Province. Education Development Research, 36(04), 11–18.

Chapter 2

The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

This chapter concentrates on examining the landscape of the interschool education equity in China. Specifically, the current situation of interschool education equity in China, the problems of interschool education equity, and the proposes countermeasures and suggestion have been explored in this chapter, contextually.

2.1 The Current Situation of Interschool Education Equity in China A large number of studies have shown that inter-school inequality is far more serious than inter-regional inequality. At present, the primary task of compulsory education research is to narrow the gap between schools and solve the problem of unfair development between schools in the region. In this paper, the inter-school unfairness mainly refers to the unfairness between different schools in the same administrative area. This kind of unfairness, the education economics mainly use the education resource allocation to reflect. The unfair allocation of inter-school resources is embodied in the explicit differences in the local government’s special fund allocation, teachers’ team, teaching equipment and students’ source, as well as the implicit differences in social influence and the school’s external environment. This chapter focuses on comparing the differences of teachers and management system between key schools and non-key schools in the same region. Studies have shown that there are the following five principles of equity in the distribution of educational resources: (l) the principle of equal distribution of resources, that is, to ensure that the distribution of public education resources is equal to all students. (2) the principle of fiscal neutrality, basically defined as “differences in public education expenditures per student cannot be related to the affluence of the district. (3) to adjust the principle of special needs, that is, to safeguard preferential policies for the compensation of disadvantaged groups. (4) principles of cost sharing and cost compensation, that is, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Educational Equity Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0231-3_2

31

32

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

specific measures to coordinate the overall balance of limited educational resources in the process of implementing the above equity principle. (5) the principle that public resources flow from the rich to the poor, which is the ultimate criterion to measure the fairness of the distribution of educational resources. Based on these five principles, this paper analyzes the situation of intercollegiate unfairness and the causes of intercollegiate unfairness in resource allocation and puts forward the countermeasures. Through the investigation of the difference between a city key school and a city non-key school, it can be seen that the difference in educational resources distribution is very obvious.

2.1.1 The Compulsory Education—Hardware Resource Allocation According to the survey on the differences between key and non-key schools in the region, it can be seen from one part that the differences between them are very obvious. In an inland area with general economic development, there are 12 secondary schools, 3 key secondary schools and 9 non-key secondary schools in the urban area. In terms of school buildings, in 1998, the average school building area of primary school students in east, middle and west regions was 4.06, 3.99 and 3.58 m2 respectively, and the average school building area of middle school students was 6.50, 6.30 and 5.12 m2 respectively. At the end of the 2000 national average elementary school buildings of the dangerous house, according to the statistical data is less dangerous house area (1000 square miles) in Shanghai, and Tianjin (7000 square miles), Beijing (8000 square miles), Shandong (14,000 square miles), order is a larger area (309,000 square miles) of Guizhou, Heilongjiang (407,000 square miles), Jiangxi (472,000 square miles), Guangxi (582,000 square miles). In terms of teachers, in 1998, the passing rate of primary school teachers in China was 94.59%, higher than the national average level of primary school teachers in provinces and cities, the proportion is 75% in the east, 66.7% in the middle and 20% in the west. On the other hand, there are 5 provinces and cities with a failure rate of 8.55% or more among primary school teachers in China, all of which are in the western region, namely Xizang (40.93%), Guizhou (17.44%), Yunnan (13.74%), Gansu (11.57%) and Shanxi (8.55%), while the 10 provinces and cities with a failure rate lower than 3.57% are all in the central region. In terms of education expenditure, according to the statistical data of education expenditure of national average primary school students in 2000, Shanghai (3,106.81 yuan), Beijing (2,253.39 yuan), Zhejiang (1359.96 yuan) and Tianjin (1357.78 yuan) are in the forefront of the country. At the bottom were Guizhou (363.38 yuan), Shaanxi (402.27 yuan), Henan (408.82 yuan) and Anhui (524.89 yuan). In 2000, Shanghai (4,127.29 yuan), Beijing (3,737.25 yuan), Tianjin (2,079.31 yuan) and Zhejiang (2,101.29 yuan) ranked the top in the average education expenditure of

2.1 The Current Situation of Interschool Education Equity in China

33

primary and secondary school students. At the bottom were Guizhou (566.10 yuan), Shaanxi (738.59 yuan), Henan (799.75 yuan) and Anhui (803.01 yuan). The above data shows that the difference between regional schools is positively correlated with the level of regional economic development. Due to the current implementation of the education management system of “local responsibility, hierarchical management”, the more developed the regional economy is, the more investment in education, the better the school conditions. The inter-school gap between economically backward regions and economically developed regions is very serious, even reaching dozens of times in some indicators. Most of the schools in the poor areas of the west are in no way comparable to those in the economically developed areas. Due to the lack of investment in compulsory education, poor teachers and relatively weak school infrastructure in economically backward areas, this will inevitably pose a greater threat to the popularization and consolidation of compulsory education and is not conducive to improving the overall quality of compulsory education (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007).

2.1.2 The Compulsory Education—Allocation of Teachers In addition, in terms of the unfair teaching force, teachers believe that there are significant differences between different schools, from teaching level to educational technology ability. At the same time, there is a shortage of teachers in ordinary schools, especially in rural schools. What teachers teach is not the subject they have learned, and they are often engaged in jobs unrelated to teaching. Recruit some teachers think that because of the famous universities from all over the country have a certain level of teachers, and some schools in recruiting teachers backbone teachers, as a direct result of a range of excellent teachers all together, and the school is lost, a good teacher makes between schools colleges, resources, opportunity, unfair, hardware equipment management, faculty and students condition, financial investment, school development opportunities, teacher development channels, working conditions, comparison evaluation, management policy, teachers unfair phenomenon more and more serious.

2.1.3 Compulsory Education—Management System In terms of the management system, we draw on the dialogue between the principal of a key primary school and an ordinary primary school in xi ‘an. When asked the question “how do you think your school’s social influence is?”, the principal of the key primary school said, “our school is quite famous. It is a key primary school in Yanta district and a key primary school in xi ‘an city (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007).

34

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

2.1.4 Compulsory Education—School Culture The more intuitive manifestation of educational equity is curriculum equity. In fact, it should ultimately be implemented in school cultural factors such as students’ learning conditions, system and environment. Currently promoting the balanced development of compulsory education, within the same area need not only in hardware construction, faculty, funding is largely tend to be balanced, and needs on the basis of the same culture of different schools in the area of the status quo, promote the course of fairness, namely to let the students under the condition of relatively balanced “soft power”, it is fair to accept education, let more students to the practical experience of curriculum reform. School culture, probably means, “by the members of the school education, teaching, scientific research, organization and the long-term life activity and the evolution process of co-creation, international community has the character of mental and physical, such as the education and management concepts, historical tradition, behavior, interpersonal relationships, customs, education environment and system, and therefore the school spirit and school spirit.” Every school has its own culture and the culture is a school since the precipitation of history, its connotation includes material culture and spiritual culture connotation, main body of the cultural connotation, the system of cultural connotation and cultural connotation of classroom teaching, the spirit of the cultural connotation is the core of school culture. School culture has the characteristics of characteristics, standardization, invisibility, and so on. It has a far-reaching impact on the professional improvement and progress of teachers and the overall development of students. Cohesion, whether a school has culture is not only depends on whether the hardware facilities of the school quality, the construction of teachers strength is abundant, whether capital is abundant, the curriculum is complete, as well as with the physical form, teachers, funds guarantee, curriculum configuration, whether got the reasonable effective organization, and whether the school let various cultural elements in the whole form, and finally to diffuse impact on the development of the teachers and students. Under the general background of balanced construction of “hard conditions” such as financial input, material security and curriculum setting, school culture has become a perspective that cannot be ignored when considering the fairness of compulsory education curriculum in the region. Curriculum equity means that the subject of curriculum implementation treats every student impartially in the course activities to promote their development. Of course, this kind of fairness is not absolute. It is a system in which students are treated equally in the course and ensured to achieve it under the spirit of fairness. Therefore, curriculum equity is not only a kind of idea, but also a kind of system. Curriculum equity is closely related to school culture. If the cultural characteristics and level of schools are very different, then even if the hardware facilities, financial security, teachers and other roughly the same, curriculum equity is still difficult to achieve (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007).

2.1 The Current Situation of Interschool Education Equity in China

35

School is the main place for curriculum implementation. Once the school culture is formed, it becomes a lasting way of life that permeates every aspect of the organization and its members. It is closely related to curriculum equity. Driven by the new curriculum reform concept, school educators gradually understand the curriculum from the perspective of process. The curriculum not only contains the knowledge that students need to master, but also includes the learning process of students in various school environments. The objectives of the course include not only knowledge and skills, processes and methods, but also emotions, attitudes and values. People’s understanding of curriculum is changing from the static curriculum view of “curriculum is knowledge” to the dynamic curriculum view of “curriculum is knowledge”. The influence of all cultural factors on students’ learning activities in school is related to the curriculum, but the presentation of the curriculum is different. The new curriculum reform puts forward a broader perspective for the reconstruction of curriculum concept and the measurement of curriculum fairness. The spiritual ideas nurtured by the school culture work in a hidden and experiential way through the involuntary self-experience of teachers and students. For example, the name of the road sign, the name of the teaching building, the artificial natural environment and the connotation of the school all exist in the form of materials, but give teachers and students the edification of education; The school spirit, school motto, school song, school philosophy, history and culture, and other spiritual cultural background are all the members of the organization’s knowledge, feelings, ideas, action; The campus culture formed by carrying out colorful educational activities on campus affects the personality and character development of teachers and students, the change of thinking process and the adaptability to the environment. It can be seen that school culture itself is an important curriculum resource. The reasonable allocation of curriculum resources is a key factor affecting curriculum equity, and school culture is an important curriculum resource influencing the development of students, which is related to the provision of students’ knowledge conditions and other important aspects. Therefore, school culture is as important to curriculum equity as air and water and is one of the important dimensions affecting curriculum equity (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007). School culture and curriculum equity complement and promote each other. The fairness of compulsory education curriculum emphasizes to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas and regions. What kind of culture is provided to the students, will produce what kind of students. What kind of cultural influence a school provides to its students is a direct reflection of the degree of equity in the curriculum. Under the inspiration of fair curriculum, it is urgent to narrow the gap between schools in the region and build school culture. To judge whether a school has cultural taste, the key is to see whether the people, things in a particular school and the various educational management methods that organize people and things, whether there are different characteristics from other schools, and whether they adhere to the purport of humanistic care. From the perspective of recessive curriculum, the manifestation of school culture is mainly reflected in teacher’s character, teaching and research customs, campus environment, curriculum micro-system and other aspects.

36

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

2.1.5 Compulsory Education—Unbalanced Distribution of Students To realize the balanced development of compulsory education schools, the first is to realize the balanced allocation of educational resources. In the various resource conditions affecting the development of compulsory education schools, in addition to the education funding, education teaching equipment and condition such as teachers, students the resources plays a more and more important role, the student quantity, quality, funding for a school, course setting, teaching quality and school atmosphere is crucial impact on every aspect and so on, thus affecting the development of the school, this is a broad consensus in practice. However, at present, the distribution of students among the schools of compulsory education is very unbalanced, which brings a lot of practical problems. To some extent, compulsory education has shown an abnormal development trend. At present, the distribution of students in compulsory education schools is polarized to a certain extent, with some schools having too many students, crowded and overcrowded, while others have few students. This situation is widespread in both urban and rural areas. It is mainly manifested in the fact that the hot schools in cities (including cities and counties, the same as below) are full of students, some of the general schools in cities and rural schools below the township level have a serious loss of students, and some village primary schools are nearly empty. When new school year enrolls students, some average elementary school each grade has one class only, and some “elite school” each grade actually as many as 10 classes, even dozens of classes. For a long time, although the education sector has been calling for citizens to change their educational concept and the government to keep pace with The Times to carry out teaching reform, but in practice, it has not been effectively implemented into action. As we all know, the task goal of compulsory education is to face all students, comprehensively improve students’ ideological and moral, cultural and scientific, labor skills and physical and psychological quality, and promote students’ lively development. This requires that primary and secondary education must fully implement the educational policy and comprehensively improve the quality of education. In fact, most primary and secondary schools are still engaged in the “exam-oriented education” to a large extent, the one-sided pursuit of enrollment rate, enrollment rate has become the only basis for measuring the quality of a school. Under the influence of this view of talent and education, it will inevitably lead to some undesirable phenomena in the compulsory education stage of primary and secondary schools. Due to historical reasons, there are serious unreasonable phenomena in the allocation of educational resources in some places. This is mainly reflected in the fact that some primary and secondary schools with good original conditions always get “special care”, while those schools with poor original conditions and remote geographical locations are in a state of “hunger”. In this way, good schools will become better and better, and poor schools will become weaker and weaker. In this case, many of the educational condition is poor but not for a long time to improve schools, the teachers and the annual enrollment plan can implement, as well as the students will choose

2.1 The Current Situation of Interschool Education Equity in China

37

a better school, of course, would have either gone, teachers affected, see the student number so little, don’t focus on their work, which has caused a serious decline in the quality of education. The formation of key schools has its historical reasons. At the beginning, the government may implement preferential policies in order to increase more talents and rapidly increase the number of talents and improve the efficiency of education. They want to focus on the construction of a number of schools. However, today, the existence of such key schools and non-key schools directly leads to the unequal distribution of quality teaching resources in the same region, and further leads to the unequal competition in fact. As is known to all, during the implementation of compulsory education, all citizens have the obligation and responsibility to send their children to schools to receive basic compulsory education. At the same time, on this basis, they also want their children to receive better compulsory education as far as possible, resulting in the phenomenon of school choice. More and more people want to go to the key schools, but the school’s resources are limited. The school has to adopt a way to continue to test for many years, to select students by scores, scores of the students will enter the school. Most parents are more or less influenced by conformity when it comes to choosing educational resources for their children. Looking at nearby of friend and other parents are better for the children choose school, influenced by the people around me, oneself also blindly choose school, among the more or less likely to have the influence of the concept of face, “other people’s children to school, my children also want to go to the school, children learn what others, my child will learn what” what kind of school education is the best, as to whether their children for reading what kind of school, many parents may not be very clear, and most children by age and other issues also will listen to the arrangement of the parents, to the way of “choice”. Become a member of the army of school choice, into the smoke-free war. In turn, enrollment has become a manifestation of educational inequality.

2.1.6 High School Education—Human Resources At present, China’s high school education is not compulsory education, high school education according to the attributes of public goods can be considered as a quasipublic goods. As a quasi-public product of non-compulsory education, it should be mainly provided by the government. Second, educational institutions can be private or private, funded by the government; Three it is ok to accept certain tuition fee. The unfair allocation of interschool resources in high schools in China is caused by the shortage of educational resources. According to the establishment standards of primary and secondary school teaching staff in China, the ratio of teachers to teachers in county and town is 13:1. The municipal demonstration high schools and weak high schools in this county fail to meet the requirements of the establishment standards of primary and secondary

38

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

school teaching staff stipulated by the state. The passing rate of teachers in provincial demonstration high schools is close to 100%, that is, most teachers have bachelor’s degree or above, and the proportion of teachers with senior teacher titles and intermediate teacher titles is very high, especially the proportion of teachers with intermediate teacher titles is twice that of weak high schools. Good teachers for the provincial model high school to create a good teaching team and quality teaching quality. From the proportion of full-time teachers in the total number of teaching staff, the ratio of weak high schools varies greatly, while that of high-quality high schools is relatively stable, so the turnover rate of teachers in weak schools is relatively high. The report of the 17th national congress of the communist party of China makes it clear that education is the cornerstone of national rejuvenation and educational equity is an important basis for social equity. In the process of building a harmonious society, it has become an important issue for China’s current educational reform and development to maintain educational equity and promote balanced development of education. And the issue of interschool education equity is the focus of social concern from all walks of life. The unbalanced economic development between urban and rural areas is an important reason for the unbalanced development of inter-school education. The unbalanced development of inter-school education not only leads to the serious imbalance of educational equity, but also brings bad effects on schools, teachers and students (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007).

2.2 The Problems of Interschool Education Equity The purpose of compulsory education is to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to receive education, while the current situation of limited educational resources and the realistic reasons for social and economic development make it impossible to achieve the goal of educational equity at a higher level, that is, “everyone can enjoy high-quality education”. At present, the educational equity in China includes the educational equity between urban and rural areas and between regions. Compared with the inter-regional education equity issue and the overall urban–rural education gap, the inter-school equity issue within the same region is closer to the public life and has a more obvious, direct and huge impact on the behavior of the people. Area intercollegiate unfair problem is the same type school compulsory education stage have a material difference is the root cause of quality, directly involved in the same area in government funding, staffed with type school, teaching facilities equipped with the difference of resource acquisition, easy to cause the local public school choice behavior tendency, hinder the local compulsory education balanced development goal. The school gap includes not only the explicit differences of the same type of schools in the same level of education, such as educational expenditure, teachers, teaching equipment and students, but also the implicit differences in social influence and external environment.

2.2 The Problems of Interschool Education Equity

39

2.2.1 The Historical Legacy of the “Key Point School” Policy China’s policy of “key schools” has a long history. Before the promulgation of the new compulsory education law, it is China’s consistent educational policy to run some schools in key areas well. The obvious differences between these “key schools” and other schools are mainly reflected in the aspects of funds, teachers, equipment and buildings. From the perspective of average student expenditure, the average student expenditure of key schools is generally 15–20% higher than that of non-key schools. The salaries of faculty and staff in key schools usually account for about 60% of the recurrent expenditure, while the salaries of faculty and staff in non-key schools usually account for about 80%. In terms of teachers, the key schools are much superior in terms of the composition of teachers’ academic records, the ratio of teachers to students, the ratio of promotion to senior professional titles, the opportunity for further study, and the honor of special-grade teachers. The differences in equipment and school buildings are also huge. The policy bias and the influence of the “brand effect” caused by the hidden gap is not negligible. Some local governments have created an army of “super schools” to maximize their own profits. On the other hand, the long-existing policy of key schools has been firmly rooted in people’s consciousness. People’s demand for key schools has not weakened, but more and more people begin to choose schools. We must realize that the school is no longer a key school in the face of high quality schools to the world, just changed a name, for the public, is still the so-called “key schools”, which is one of the reasons for the repeated prohibition of school choice in China.

2.2.2 The Conflict Between Efficiency and Fairness The conflict between efficiency and fairness has existed for a long time in China, which is closely related to the policy of “efficiency first” established in the early stage of China’s reform and opening up. The concept of efficiency first has greatly stimulated the social productive forces and accelerated the process of China’s modernization. Under the guidance of this concept, it became the practical norm for many local governments to concentrate their efforts to accomplish major tasks. Under such a big background, the education work also made great strides forward, which was reflected in the emergence of a large number of key schools in China, which provided a guarantee for China to “quickly produce talents and excellent talents” at that time. However, with the continuous development, the education gap between regions, between urban and rural areas and between schools continues to widen, and the society’s desire to realize educational equity is increasingly strong. Therefore, China has gradually determined the policy of “giving priority to efficiency and giving consideration to equity”. For the problem of interschool education equity in the same region, the blind pursuit of efficiency and the concentration of educational resources to cultivate excellent talents will inevitably widen the inter-school gap. Compensation

40

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

for disadvantaged schools and local interests may be in conflict and contradiction, but in terms of long-term interests and overall interests, they are consistent. Efficiency is indeed something that should be considered, but it should not be considered at the expense of equity. Without timely and effective compensation for the disadvantaged schools, it is not conducive to the mobility of people among all social strata and the narrowing of the gap between them, and it is not conducive to the promotion of social stability and national development (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007).

2.2.3 Market Competition in the Stage of Compulsory Education In the stage of compulsory education, there is market competition, but restricted by the nature of the natural “profit” factor in the market mechanism. It is bound to lead to the emergence of the “law of the jungle” in the stage of compulsory education, resulting in the imbalance between supply and allocation. Firstly, the market mechanism will naturally form an unbalanced allocation of resources in the compulsory education stage. The resources in the market are always flowing in the direction of rich profits, and the allocation of resources in the compulsory education stage is no exception. Although the schools in the compulsory education stage are not for the purpose of making profits, the differences between different schools will have an important impact on the choice of the public, thus inducing the phenomenon of school choice. In the stage of compulsory education, schools with good quality are bound to win the favor of the public, so “school choice by right”, “school choice by money”, “school choice by share” has become the norm. “To the right of choosing” made the schools and the combination of authority, open the door for the policy advantage, “in choice of money” as the school provides a large amount of additional revenue, while the “choice” for the school offers a rare defining “human” resources, leading to a large number of students, the backbone teachers into the quality school, expanding gap between the compulsory education stage. Secondly, there is a large amount of information asymmetry between the school and the community (parents), resulting in the two-skin phenomenon of school and community which is criticized by the society in the current era. The school is not relying on the community and serving the community but has evolved into an island “suspended” outside the community which follows the governor’s will and builds a wall by itself. Because the community cannot make an accurate judgment on the “floating” island—the school, the public opinion from the society becomes the most important reference factor for the community (parents) to choose the school, which inevitably leads to the competition for the educational resources of the good school in the public opinion.

2.2 The Problems of Interschool Education Equity

41

2.2.4 The Unfair Distribution of Educational Resources by the Government Government departments have considerable power over the allocation of educational resources and faculty. In the performance of local government and the north index under such interests, especially the education of local government departments for their own education achievement, on the policy guidance and the allocation of resources, the area of the key middle school usually configuration even more high quality education resources, for the key middle school area, is the configuration of the relevant education resources is relatively small, teachers as key middle school. In a period of time, this practice of the education sector has cultivated a group of excellent talents to participate in the social construction, but in the long run, it is not conducive to the development of education equity. Such allocation of educational resources sacrifices the opportunity of many students to get a fair education and enables a small number of students to enjoy more and better educational resources than most students. Such practice is contrary to educational equity. At the same time, it also makes the gap between schools on both hardware and teachers gradually widen. “Super high schools” have great appeal to some local governments. “Super high schools” can help local governments improve their performance in education, improve local indicators of the north, and generate social influence in certain areas. At the same time, “super high school” has brand effect. Meanwhile, “super high school” attracts students from surrounding areas by siphoning through its strong popularity, which makes the number of students in the school of super high school very large and the economic activities brought by it significantly increase the financial revenue of local governments. In the early stage of the implementation of the policy of key middle schools, some weak schools were created in the early area because the local government tended to focus on key middle schools in the allocation of educational resources. Weak schools refer to those schools with poor infrastructure, weak leadership and management, unstable teachers, weak comprehensive quality, poor students and low teaching quality. According to a 2005 survey of schools in Haidian district, Beijing, schools are divided into three categories: key schools (which include municipal, district and quasi-key schools), general schools and weak schools. The survey also showed that in rural areas, 72.2% of primary schools and 62.5% of primary and secondary schools were weak schools. In cities and towns, 24.1% of primary schools, 18.2% of secondary schools and 27% of full secondary schools are weak schools. For the current weak schools, there is not only a gap in hardware related facilities, and there is a gap in the teachers, followed by a growing number of students due to the school’s reputation. At present, there is a gap between schools in terms of material resources, human resources and students. In recent years, with “on further strengthening comprehensive improvement of poor region compulsory education work in relation to the weak basic conditions for offering education middle school notice [13], in 2017, the central government issued the provinces weak school reform

42

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

subsidy funds of 35.8 billion yuan, more than 2016 2 billion yuan, under the condition of the pressure of fiscal expenditure growth for four years (Li et al., 2020; Li and Li, 2019; Xue and Li, 2020; Zhang, 2007). The unfair admission opportunities. Because at this stage let every student can go to school, and not to meet the needs of the masses of the people, let the children enjoy quality education resources become the majority of parents wish. In order to meet parents’ demand for high-quality education resources, schools have integrated high-quality education resources through reconstruction, expansion and other ways, becoming the “super middle school” eagerly pursued by students and parents. And high-quality secondary school students are generally through the following three ways: admission, money to school, school district housing school choice. 1. Choose the best. Selective admission is the basic way to recruit students in senior high schools. However, due to the continuous spread of school choice fever, students from primary school to junior high school and then to senior high school have been admitted by independent examination. Merit in a certain extent, the maintenance education fair, guarantee rural as well as in some economically backward areas of students can get high quality education resources, but with the continuous development of economy, also produced many problems, due to the present social class differentiation, leading to a family with a comfortable family income is not difficult to improve the level of learning through relevant education training institutions, to achieve optimal test requirements, to a certain extent caused the curing of class. 2. Choose a school by your money. Choosing schools with money means that parents can pay a certain school choice fee to ensure their children receive highquality educational resources. Meanwhile, high-quality high schools can improve the teaching environment and promote the improvement of education quality by collecting school choice fee. The government can also ease the pressure of education funding shortage. Using money to choose schools is gradually allowed by laws and regulations in our country but using money to choose schools results in the unequal enrollment opportunities of students from families with different income levels, which does not accord with the principle of educational equity. According to the 2017 white paper on China’s family education consumption, education spending accounts for more than 20% of household spending. According to the questionnaire showed that the super high school in the nan city high and has a more than forty percent (43.5%) of students through the choice to enter the school to go to school, of which the school selection fee is high, the figure according to quite a few students in between 15,000–35,000, this high school selection fees also makes many students haven’t to go to college and the heavy economic burden of the back of his family; In contrast, there are nearly 30% (28.7%) of students whose basic cost is between 88,000 and 15,000 yuan. For these school fees, families with different incomes are at a disadvantage when they face the same education expenditure, while those with backward economic incomes are at a disadvantage. When children after graduating from junior middle school to high school selection fee pay to attend the key middle school, the family income poor parents considering the weak economic foundation and expensive tuition costs, and lower return on education, tend to give up to key

2.2 The Problems of Interschool Education Equity

43

middle school, and family are relatively wealthy family can pay high school selection fee to key middle school. In the context of generally low educational returns, the high cost and high investment of school choice fees keep rural students out of the school gate, so the enrollment opportunities of rural students and urban students are not equal. At the same time, it will cause the tearing of social classes and form a hidden profit chain in the field of education (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007). 3. School district housing school choice. And the school district housing choice is through the school district division to force the students to attend the school, to a certain extent, it is also roughly, in the key middle school district housing prices near the price hike, bid up the price. Although to some extent through the relevant policy rigid division but will inevitably lead to a part of the population through, high price to buy the school district housing, to achieve the purpose of entering the key middle schools. The unfairness of the educational process. In the process of education, education equity requires schools and teachers to treat every student equally and educate every student equally. However, in fact, due to the objective existence of inter-school gap, parents, students and schools around the examination for their own purposes, excessive pursuit of graduation rate, for top students and students who temporarily lag behind in learning to adopt different approaches. At the same time in order to deal with entrance and all aspects of the competition, in order to ensure the key high school graduation rates, and to make some better middle or high school students to enter, part of the middle school to carry out some key class, shall be borne by the more excellent experienced teachers teaching, it caused the second competition between students, at the same time learn temporarily by train to pick out the backward students to improve school graduation rates. Schools also pay too much attention to the school’s educational performance and the graduation rate; some key middle schools adopt to marginalize some students with poor performance. Students who lag behind in their studies are hardly treated well in key schools. In the middle school, teachers in key middle schools are always responsible for the top students who are expected to enter the school and some of them even work overtime to make up for the students and expand the classroom knowledge. In contrast, teachers are more likely to marginalize students who fall behind. These differences in treatment also reflect the great harm to educational equity in the case of inter-school education gap. Especially in the teaching management, teachers tend to be more tolerant and fuller of expectations for the students who are expected to go to school, while they treat the underachievers in a relatively strict and authoritarian way. Such practice violates the objective law of educational development and also causes the phenomenon of unfair education among students. At the same time, education resources are relatively concentrated in key middle schools, making the majority of the students admitted to the north of the Qing dynasty are usually from key middle schools, and it is difficult for other schools to get a share of the spoils. Therefore, in the case of excessive pursuit of graduation rate, educational inequality among students has been created (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007).

44

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

Compliance with and implementation of relevant laws and regulations. The law on compulsory education and the law on education, in the form of the basic law, stipulate the fairness and equity measures for Chinese citizens to receive education. However, in reality, these laws and regulations have not been universally observed and implemented, especially in the stage of compulsory education. To formulate and improve policies and regulations is a necessary condition to ensure the development of education, but only when these policies and regulations have been effectively implemented, they can play their due role. Social class differentiation and utilitarian educational view and school choice concept. Social class differentiation is an important reason for the inter-school gap in China. People in a society, due to the property, appeared on the allocation of resources and opportunities of inequality, and thus be distinguish in latitude, such as politics, economy and society of different classes, and children from different social classes, and have not equal opportunities for education, that is to say, parents’ social status, income and education degree decides the family have economic resources and cultural resources, these resources and in different ways to influence their children’s education process and the employment situation. Education is often seen as balance social interests distribution between different social classes, promoting the flow of important tool, in order to keep their children should also own advantage position or jump out the weakness of the current status, parents always have let them pursue higher and better, the urgent request of education to their children have a higher social and economic status. At present, the educational system of our country is seriously restricted by the utilitarian educational view, which is mainly manifested as the strong demand for upward circulation through exam-oriented education. There is nothing wrong with relying on education to realize the mobility of one’s own class, but if everyone has an unrealistic illusion about the mobility of class through education, this kind of education is toxic and not conducive to the overall development of the country. The idea of school choice is still universal in parents’ cognition of education in the stage of compulsory education. But there are school choice behavior is complex, according to the survey, in parents select a school for this problem, parents value most school factor’s ranking is in turn: the school faculty and enters a higher school, the school reputation and school rankings, school facilities, school environment and the surrounding environment, school geographical location and convenient transportation. According to the survey shows that more than eighty percent of parents believe that sending children to super high school can make it better to go to a good high school or university, less than five percent of parents believe that as long as children can learn to let the children happy independent schools were selected, and it shows in Henan local parents for children in the school have been a strong trend. The growing notion of school choice is partly driving parents’ desire to send their children to elite schools. Such a concept also makes the balanced development of the overall education level in the basic education stage greatly affected. In the stage of compulsory education, such school choice behavior is unfair to most people. To some extent, it infringes the interests of most people and violates the compulsory education law. The craze for school choice has also led to a shortage of places for all key

2.2 The Problems of Interschool Education Equity

45

schools. Some schools have violated the government’s enrollment ban and competed for high-quality students in surrounding areas or even other places to recruit more students than planned. Such irrational choice behavior, first, to the child has brought a lot of psychological pressure, no doubt on the gap between students at the same time, the choice of parents for a further wedge between the intercollegiate development gap, second, on the teachers, school choice behavior occurs, the key school will no doubt become a better platform, attract more excellent teacher, make some super high school in the province occupy absolute advantage, and with the region’s other schools due to siphon effect, the education level is relatively lower. Third, this kind of school choice behavior is actually the purchase of educational resources of different levels by means of purchase under the market economy, which will increase social stratification and widen the gap between the rich and the poor for a long time, thus further affecting educational fairness. In the long run, school choice is not conducive to the balanced development of compulsory education. Issues related to nearby enrollment policy. The law on compulsory education promulgated and implemented in 1986 clearly stated that primary schools and junior middle schools in the stage of compulsory education should be exempted from examinations for nearby enrollment. In 1997, the state education commission proposed in a document that public schools in big cities with difficulties could recruit students of choice. In 2001, the ministry of education also banned school choice. In 2010, the outline of the national program for medium - and long-term education reform and development (2010–2020) was promulgated, but the problem of school choice in the compulsory education stage in big cities is still an educational problem. The prohibition of school choice policy has been repeated for several times, resulting in the fact that the national policy has not only failed to solve the current education problems, but also made the education problems continue to spread, and the prestige of the national policy also continues to decline. The most direct result is that students and parents turn a deaf ear to the national policy and continue to carry out school choice, which has a very negative impact on the development of education (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007). In recent years, with the implementation of the policy of nearby enrollment, “school district housing” has become an important means for parents to choose schools for their children. Although in 2017 the ministry of education issued the about to do a good job of 2017 years of compulsory education enrollment admission notice emphasized in education resource allocation imbalance, choosing impulse strongly for people, “the school district room” problems, actively yet prudently proceed with more school scribing (random lottery, central allocation), old and new district set a deadline for a reasonable transition change, but recently as the key school surrounding the rise of new town, each township family presented a new home ownership, “famous” heat also spread to every corner of the county, in order to let the children into the better schools, Some parents bite the bullet to buy key primary schools, junior high schools near the school district housing; Some parents turn over all human relations, through human relations, gifts, dinner and a series of unconventional practices, for their children to get into the school places.

46

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

There are many interest groups involved behind the repeated prohibition of school choice. Specifically, among the groups that resist the ban on school choice in disguise, the main interest groups include famous schools, famous teachers, local governments and training institutions. In order to maintain their “hegemonic” position in the education field, elite schools usually make “transactions” with departments or individuals that are useful to them by using their enrollment rights. Meanwhile, they can obtain a large amount of school selection fees through school selection, which can be used to improve school management and improve school quality. For famous teachers, out of their own interests, they often go to famous schools to teach, in order to obtain “fame and fortune”, while famous schools open the door of school selection to guarantee the treatment of famous teachers, forming a chain of interests, and constantly cut. By choosing for local governments, often thought to cause the competition between schools, increase the vitality of school development, through the development of “the law of the jungle” shaping a batch of famous universities, thus promote the development of local education, so the local government for the state ban on school choice behavior are selectively, form rather than substance. In addition, many education and training institutions signed development contracts with famous universities and charged high training fees to help them compete. The interest alliance formed by famous universities, famous teachers, local governments and training institutions to resist the national policy of forbidding school choice is extremely detrimental to the development of education, and it can be said that the cost is quite high. Collectivization of school running. The collectivization of compulsory education has been practiced for nearly 20 years since its birth. It has made important contributions to promoting the quality balance of compulsory education and realizing the fairness of high education in China. However, there are many problems in the process of the development of collectivized schools, which arouse the questions and discussions from all walks of life. Focusing on the two themes of quality improvement and quality balance, the collectivization of compulsory education focuses on developing relatively weak schools, narrowing the inter-school gap, promoting quality balance of compulsory education, improving the overall level of member schools, and realizing educational equity. Narrowing the inter-school gap is a process in which weak schools gradually develop into quality schools. However, in practice, there are differences between different schools in the same education group in the government financial allocation, the overall level of teachers, the ratio of teachers to teachers, the hardware quality such as school buildings, the source of students and the export of graduates. There are also differences in the degree of closeness between different member schools and core schools in the same group, and there are also differences in the amount of output resources they can enjoy from core schools. For some groups with large inter-school disparity, the core school has obvious advantages, while the weak school is in a position of catching up and being dominated in terms of hardware equipment, teachers and management system, and lacks the right to speak in the group.

2.3 The Proposes Countermeasures and Suggestions

47

2.3 The Proposes Countermeasures and Suggestions According to the above analysis shows that the present education of intercollegiate unfair problem is more serious and pressing, we also analyze the cause of the problem above, in view of the problems on these problems, in order to solve the compulsory education between intercollegiate resources unfair problem, the local government has taken many measures in our country, such as adopted a policy of “education” difference of Xuzhou region; The standardization construction project of primary and secondary schools in Shanghai; To strengthen the reconstruction and construction of weak schools in Guiyang; Wuhan district implementation of the teacher rotation system and so on. 1. Enhance inter-school exchanges and promote the balanced development of inter-school education. Teachers have always been an important educational resource. In a 1974 study, Coleman found that teachers’ language, ability, and so on, as factors affecting students’ academic achievement, led to greater racial inequality. It can be seen that teachers, as important human resources, have a great influence on the fairness of the distribution of educational resources. Therefore, we can adopt the system of regular rotation and turnover of teachers, which is the concrete embodiment of the principle of equal distribution of resources and the principle of public resources flowing from rich to poor areas. The so-called teacher rotation system refers to a teacher in a school after several years of continuous teaching, by the department of education administration to arrange his rotation to teach in other schools. Japan and South Korea already have similar regimes. Japan’s education law stipulates that teachers must move every four to five years. South Korea’s education policy states that every teacher must move every four years. Both countries believe that teacher mobility ensures a relative balance of teachers and education levels between schools. In our country, help to implement this system within the scope of the greater good backbone teachers should play the role of radiation and demonstration effect, so as to guide and stimulate more teachers, faster growth, flow to the key demonstration school of common and weak school teacher, also can get more quickly in the good atmosphere, so that the teachers flow presents a positive dynamic balance, gradually realize the schools teachers on the basis of the balance of power, to realize the overall improve the quality of teachers, to promote education fairness between intercollegiate. 2. Intensify the transformation and practical application of educational research results. First of all, we should intensify the transformation and practical application of educational research results, and make scientific educational methods and ideas contribute to the promotion of educational equity. First, the administrative department of education should play a strong role in promoting, sharing the achievements of excellent educational reform and transforming them into the productive forces of education and teaching in time, so as to accelerate the balanced development of education. Second, key schools should shoulder their due responsibilities. By holding hands with ordinary schools, pairing up with them and providing special support, ordinary schools can enjoy the excellent teacher resources of key schools

48

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

and carry out inter-school exchanges and cooperation. Thirdly, educational administrators should pay attention to the protection, development and utilization of the soft resources of high-quality schools. The school’s soft resources are rich in content and broad in variety, including the empirical results produced by years of education practice, scientific research results produced by education research, halo effect produced by famous teachers in famous universities, good accumulation of school discipline and school spirit, the honor brought to the school by successful students to serve the society and the new energy generated by the optimization of education management. All these resources can make the educational wealth increase and promote the development and progress of education. 3. Establish a standardized school running system and implement the standardized school running of compulsory education. According to the principle of equal distribution of resources, China’s compulsory education system should strive to achieve standardization and standardization. As for the issue of school running standards, the current common practice in China is to stipulate the student average standard, which is relatively scientific for schools with a certain scale, but not so scientific and correct for those rural schools without a certain scale. Therefore, our country should formulate the national primary school and junior high school standard school running system and want to maintain “bottom line”. This work is not only related to the promotion of the standardization construction of primary and secondary schools, but also related to the improvement of the overall level of compulsory education in China. In the 1970s, South Korea implemented the policy of “equalization of education level”, which may also provide some references for China’s strategy of promoting the balanced development of compulsory education. According to the above, we suggest that around in promote the building of the standardization of primary and secondary schools, from the legal provisions on the standards of the construction of the school, to supervise the government should allocate education resources reasonably, make each middle and primary school can be in accordance with the statutory standards, with roughly equal material conditions and the conditions of teaching staff, so as to form a fair competition in the field of compulsory education environment. From a certain point of view, the standardized school system is to ensure the fairness of the “bottom line”, can make the inter-school education has a roughly the same “starting line”. 4. Reduce the inter-school differences of school-based courses. School-based course belongs to the national and local duties outside the scope of the task, the school students based on the actual development needs and characteristics of independent development, management and implementation of a class type, its function is to form whole together with the national and local curriculum, balanced curriculum structure, create conditions for students to realize the all-round development of personality. School-based curriculum development emphasizes that the school or teacher has the right to choose, adapt, and compile new textbooks according to national curriculum standards, and emphasizes that the school or teacher is highly involved, so as to realize the adaptability of the curriculum to the actual situation. Many schools, however, the current confusion of school-based curriculum development tasks, not based on actual

2.3 The Proposes Countermeasures and Suggestions

49

demand to develop the school to the student individuality development of schoolbased curriculum, but the “national curriculum”, “local curriculum” as the mission range of school-based curriculum development and implementation of school-based curriculum loses its status as a result, lead to imbalance in the structure of school curriculum and function disorder, resulting in the intercollegiate the unfair of student learning and personality development opportunity. Furthermore, the inter-school differences in the technological links of schoolbased curriculum development lead to the inter-school differences in the quality of school-based curriculum, resulting in unfair opportunities for students’ learning and personality development. On the one hand, the school does not pay attention to the development of school-based curriculum, which leads to the deviation between the value function of school-based curriculum and the specific task orientation. Students tend to formal class, do not realize the importance of school-based curriculum for the development of students’ personality; The course implementation can’t realize the value function of school-based course under the restriction of the traditional teaching paradigm. From the perspective of “exam-oriented education”, the evaluation of teachers’ rewards and punishments and the single evaluation method of students’ examination both show a strong narrowness and utilitarianism. These problems seriously restrict the quality and effectiveness of school-based curriculum development and lead to the unfair opportunities for students’ learning and personality development between schools in the region. 5. Eliminate inter-school differences in school-based courses and promote regional equity in basic education. Courses related to policy in China has been the national, local and school three-level curriculum development and management of the scope of duties made some rules, however, there are of course development and management functions of fuzzy conditions, and not to the development and management of local education administrative departments of the local curriculum “range of tasks and functions to make specific provision, to the development of school-based curriculum specific task space,” school-based curriculum “and” local curriculum “the relationship between vagueness and uncertainty. In fact, the schoolbased curriculum developed by many schools belongs to the local curriculum, and inter-school differences in the scope of school-based curriculum development tasks caused by this phenomenon should be prevented. Curriculum management policy in our country, therefore, need to be further set national, local and school level 3 course development and management responsibilities, clear the area of responsibility of the school-based curriculum development and task space, to eliminate the range of differences between school school-based curriculum development tasks, ensure the balance and coordination of the whole structure of the school curriculum, provide fair platform for the development of students’ learning and the individuality and opportunity. 6. Strengthen the review of school-based curriculum structure to ensure the survival space of school-based curriculum. Local administrative department of education in the school-based curriculum planning scheme by the school, to work together with the school to strengthen the review of school-based curriculum structure, to those in the national curriculum “school-based” developed in some extend

50

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

classes out of the school-based curriculum, to ensure the survival space of the schoolbased curriculum, provide fair conditions and opportunities for the development of students’ personality. In order to provide practical technical support for improving the quality of school-based curriculum development in these schools, it is necessary to strengthen the specific operating procedures and standard training of school-based curriculum development. To clear the school educational philosophy and the direction of the procedure and specification, student needs analysis and assessment of technical procedures and specifications, characterization of school-based curriculum target and specification, selection and organization of technical application and school-based curriculum, school-based curriculum implementation method and, the school-based curriculum plan quality and its effect evaluation technique and standard, and so on. 7. Solve the contradiction of school choice. In order to solve the problem of school choice in the interschool education equity, we must establish a school system and school structure that are suitable for compulsory education, which is the requirement of the principle of equal resource distribution. In China, we suggest that primary and secondary schools should be separated from each other and a “nine-year system of schools” should be established in all secondary schools, which can not only guarantee the integrity of the compulsory education, but also alleviate the conflict of school choice in the compulsory education to some extent. Compared with the traditional compulsory education system of primary school and junior high school, the nine-year compulsory education system can effectively reduce the administrative intervention, decentralize the decision-making power of education, and create conditions for the realization of fairness in the field of compulsory education. Currently about 35% of the national people’s large and medium-sized cities and economically developed areas of the basic education stage entrance peak has been shifting from junior middle school to high school, this is actually for the “decoupling” provides a very good foundation conditions: a batch of key middle school middle school’s out, the expansion of school, this can solve the difficulty of average high school entrance, on the one hand, on the other hand can relieve the contradictions of middle school “school choice” fierce. Therefore, in this case, the establishment of a “nine-year system of schools” is more necessary. This approach can be said to kill two birds with one stone. 8. Implement the policy of “nearby enrollment”. To solve the problem of “school choice”. The state implements the policy of “nearby enrollment” to close the identity gap between schools, but in large and medium-sized cities, municipalities directly under the central government and provincial capitals, the problems of “choosing schools with money” and “choosing schools with right” are still very prominent. This exacerbates the unfairness of students’ admission opportunities and is not conducive to the rational allocation of educational resources. Education departments and relevant authorities should promote the decoupling of junior and senior high schools, expand the senior high schools, solve the problem of enrollment difficulties, reduce administrative intervention, and decentralize the power of educational decision-making. In accordance with the principle of adjusting special needs and the principle of transferring public resources from the rich to the poor, the government should

2.3 The Proposes Countermeasures and Suggestions

51

accelerate the transformation of weak schools, so as to narrow the gap in interschool resource distribution, expand the supply capacity of high-quality education resources, and improve the overall level of compulsory education. The reconstruction of weak schools is a comprehensive project, in addition to the hardware construction requires the government’s financial inclination, the software construction also needs the corresponding supporting measures provided by the policy. The differences in software in weak schools are mainly reflected in the poor quality of the teaching staff and the loss of a large number of excellent teachers, which are accompanied by the serious problem of the aging of the teaching staff and the insufficient supply of young teachers. Therefore, the basic task of the reconstruction of weak schools is to increase the special investment of local finance in infrastructure construction and equipment purchase; Improve the level of education management, education managers and teachers to carry out regular training, to help them improve their own quality, improve their education methods and ideas. At the same time, on the basis of this, we must pay attention to the construction of the incentive mechanism of the teacher talent team, we must find a way to train excellent young teachers and retain excellent teachers (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007). To support “weak schools”, we should adopt a number of measures to narrow the gap and promote the transformation of “weak schools” from quantitative change to qualitative change. On the one hand, we should adhere to the “compensation principle” for the disadvantaged, give priority to the disadvantaged areas and schools in terms of quantity, increase the supply of high-quality resources for weak schools, and increase the share of education financial allocation for weak schools. On the other hand, we should integrate the educational resources of disadvantaged areas or schools, consider the implementation of the special allowance system for rural teachers, optimize the staffing of teachers and promote the professional development of teachers. In addition, a lot of school because of poor students, would have “broken falls” mentality, to treat the education teaching work enthusiasm is not high, should be the backbone teachers and personnel take special incentives, restore to the concept of “improve the quality of education” as the core, at the same time, the teachers and management personnel training on a regular basis, learning advanced education concept, improve the method of backward education. To achieve the above, the government mainly relies on the policy preference of the weak schools to make the weak schools gradually catch up with the education level of the better schools, so as to eventually promote the inter-school equity that we pursue. In terms of education concept, we should change the elite education thought, attach importance to basic education and insist on teaching students according to their aptitude at the same time, so as to cultivate versatile talents who can meet the needs of market development. The over-emphasis on competitive and selective examinations in compulsory education should be alleviated. In terms of education funding, we will raise the standards for “non-key schools”, increase support for these schools, increase capital input and the supply of hardware facilities, and improve teaching equipment. In terms of teachers, we will introduce a large number of talents, select excellent normal college graduates to teach in key schools, and increase the

52

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

proportion of senior teachers and backbone teachers. In terms of curriculum setting, add quality-oriented education courses to cultivate students’ abilities. In this proposal we propose a relatively new concept, that is, the concept of “cost compensation”. This measure is rooted in the principle of cost-sharing and costcompensating compulsory education. The specific content is that the government can charge a certain amount of fees to students enjoying high-quality education and use the fees to compensate schools and students with poor education quality. The cost of compulsory education refers to the sum of direct and indirect living labor and materialized labor consumption paid by students in compulsory education. As compulsory education is characterized by external diseconomy, that is, the individual benefit of education is obviously less than the social benefit, which often leads to the education sector and education bill. The financial funds for education will no longer give preference to high-quality schools to narrow the inter-school gap. This advice is based mainly on fiscal policy. We know that to narrow the gap between school education, the gap in material conditions is undoubtedly a very important aspect. Then we based on the principle of fiscal neutrality, calls for the government in regional internal implement education fiscal funds no longer blindly to quality school tilt policy, on the contrary, the education should increase in funding for weak school funding share, to redress the balance between the schools teaching quality level, reduce the allocation of resources between intercollegiate unfairness caused by the gap between school. Within the same region, the direction of public policy is crucial, and we know that the long-term impact of policies such as “key schools” and “model schools” has led to different levels of financial support among different schools within the region, and to some extent, increased differences among schools. So we want to change this situation, education management organization should be recommended in the same area under the auspices of, in a planned way to the compulsory education stage of the implementation of strong, weak schools between union school, artificially smooth inter-school, the gap between education voucher and duly extending, give parents the right to choose the school, so as to promote inter-school competition, improve the efficiency of the use of education resources and configuration. The specific way to implement the above policy recommendations needs to be decided by each city according to the specific local conditions. Of course, there are also some difficulties in the implementation of these policies. For example, the “regular rotation system of teachers” will be resisted by high-quality schoolteachers, and it is difficult to adjust the interests. The regional monopoly of high-quality schools will weaken the competitive consciousness of schools, which is not conducive to the diversified development of education. Because of the shortage of quality education resources, it is likely that most students will flock to a few famous universities, causing more problems. Of course, no matter what policy plan is adopted, the government should provide the most basic equal education services for school-age children and adolescents, improve the conditions of running schools and the quality of education, and increase the financial allocation for compulsory education. The key of this measure is that the governments at all

2.3 The Proposes Countermeasures and Suggestions

53

levels, especially the education departments, should change the current practice of resources favoritism to “key schools”, which should not only be considered from utilitarian aspects such as “enrollment rate” and “cost rate”, but also consider the fairness of education, especially between schools. Promoting inter-school equity in the stage of compulsory education. There are great differences between urban and rural areas, regions and schools in the stage of compulsory education. The premise foundation to guarantee the fairness of interschool compulsory education in China is to promote the balanced allocation of school resources in the compulsory education stage and promote the balanced development of compulsory education. At present, with the weight of the our country compulsory education fair policy gradually from the pursuit of entrance equal opportunity to pursue education fair process and result, comprehensive and in-depth assessment of our country compulsory education fair present situation, the process and results as well as the process fairness will affect the result fair to promote our country compulsory education fair and in-depth development of relevant policies to provide useful reference basis. There are great differences in the quality of mathematics education between urban and rural areas, regions and schools. The quality of mathematics education in urban schools is much higher than that in rural schools, and the quality of mathematics education in eastern schools is much higher than that in central schools. The allocation of financial resources and teacher resources in urban and rural areas, regions and inter-school compulsory education is very unbalanced. City schools, education funds investment and expenditure level and quality of teachers is much higher than rural schools, the eastern part of school education funds investment and expenditure level and quality of teachers is significantly higher than central school district, school teachers and education funds investment and expenditure level quality difference is bigger, and compared with the junior middle school, elementary school’s gap is more obvious. From emphasizing the fairness of starting point of compulsory education to emphasizing the fairness of outcome of compulsory education. The fair starting point of compulsory education emphasizes that every school-age child can enjoy the opportunity of free nine-year compulsory education, while the fair outcome of compulsory education emphasizes that every school-age child can receive the same quality of compulsory education. Therefore, narrowing the differences between urban and rural areas, regions and inter-school compulsory education quality and ensuring the fairness of compulsory education results will be the direction of China’s efforts to achieve the fairness of compulsory education in the future. To realize the balanced allocation of school resources in the stage of compulsory education is the fundamental condition to guarantee the fair outcome of compulsory education. In the stage of compulsory education in China, the allocation of educational resources between urban and rural areas, regions and schools is very unbalanced, and the imbalance of the allocation of educational resources between urban and rural areas, regions and schools determines the inequity of the quality of education between urban and rural

54

2 The Overview of Interschool Education Equity in China

areas, regions and schools to a large extent. Therefore, the fundamental condition to narrow the gap between the quality of compulsory education in China and guarantee the fairness of the result of compulsory education is to promote the balanced allocation of school education resources in urban and rural areas, regions and inter-school compulsory education. To sum up, the central idea of our proposal is to suggest that government policies related to education should be more biased towards weak schools between weak schools and better schools, which is also based on the idea of fairness that is more biased towards the weaker side. The main measures include the balance between the hardware facilities, teachers, financial allocation, students and other aspects, including the use of legal means, political means, financial means and other means in economic means. Moreover, before these practices are implemented, it is also crucial to change the awareness of government workers, especially those working in the field of education, and to increase their awareness and understanding of interschool education equity. Government staff and policy makers in the field of education should realize that interschool education equity is an important part of overall education equity, and that interschool education equity has the most direct and intuitive impact on students. The problem of interschool educational equity is multifaceted, so it needs to be analyzed from multiple angles, and at the same time, a variety of ways are used to promote interschool educational equity. Measures in the implementation of the level, the implementation of the school fair mainly depends on the local government, local government in the local education policy can reduce the “graduation rates” and “the ratio of utilitarian considerations, and pay more attention to the fairness of the school, in formulating and implementing the education policy in place, can the initiative to help the weak schools, to promote fair between school as much as possible. Educational equity is an important basis for promoting the development of education and realizing social harmony. At present, there is still a phenomenon of unbalanced inter-school education in China, which brings great burden to schools, students and parents. To realize the healthy development of compulsory education, we must set up the balanced development of the school values, the correct understanding of the connotation of the compulsory education school development, understand balanced development is by no means egalitarianism, will the rest of the characteristics of the development of education and improve the efficiency of education view and organic combination of dialectical, in practice to explore a variety of patterns, flexible use. Promote interschool education in a scientific and harmonious way to ensure the comprehensive development of all children and social progress (Li et al. 2020; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2007).

References

55

References Li, J., & Li, J. (2019). Educational policy development in China in the 21st century: A multi-flows approach. Beijing International Review of Education, 1(1), 196–220. Li, J., Shi, Z., & Xue, E. (2020). The problems, needs and strategies of rural teacher development at deep poverty areas in China: Rural schooling stakeholder perspectives. International Journal of Educational Research, 99, 101496. Xue, E., & Li, J. (2020). What is the ultimate education task in China? Exploring “strengthen moral education for cultivating people” (“Li De Shu Ren”). Educational Philosophy and Theory. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1754539,1-12. Zhang H. (2007). The current situation, causes and countermeasures of the unfair distribution of inter-school resources in compulsory education in China. Research on Education Development, 7(9), 15–45.

Chapter 3

The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

This chapter involves the analysis of education equity in Eastern and Western China. Specifically, this chapter tries to answer a couple of question, including what the status of educational equity between is the east and the Midwest and what problems exist in the education equity in east and west China. In addition, the problems and proposes countermeasures have been offered. Educational equity is not only restricted by internal factors, but also influenced by external factors, including political system, cultural development, social class and population development. The educational equity is relative and dynamic, with historical and regional concepts. As an important value orientation of education development, educational equity, as early as more than 2,000 years ago, educator Confucius put forward the idea of “education equity without class”. The rutting of history slowly forward, until now, educational equity has been particularly concerned by educators. Educational equity means that every member of the society is given equal rights and opportunities to receive education, can enjoy the same public education resources services, can be treated the same education, so that they can enjoy the same opportunities to achieve academic achievements and employment prospects, and to achieve equity, its rationality is a necessary consideration. So, what is the rationality of educational equity? Some scholars define the connotation of educational equity as three reasonable principles for the allocation of educational resources. Secondly, in view of the differences of the individual qualities, the difference principle is put forward, that is, the difference caused by the differences of their own conditions. Then it focuses on the differences in the allocation of educational resources due to objective conditions, such as differences in economic conditions. Education is the foundation of the socialist modernization drive. To develop the economy, education must be given priority in the strategic position of development. China has a large population and a vast territory. For the convenience of management, there have been a variety of regional division methods. At the beginning of the founding of new China, the country was divided into northeast, north, east, central and south China. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a division of “first-tier, second-tier © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Educational Equity Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0231-3_3

57

58

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

and third-tier” areas. After the 1980s, the country was divided into eastern, central and western regions to meet the needs of reform and opening up and economic development. But there is disagreement over which provinces and cities to include in the east, central and west.

3.1 What is the Status of Educational Equity Between the East and the Midwest? 3.1.1 The Definition of the Connotation of Compulsory Education Resources The resources of compulsory education refer to the resources of people, money, materials and information needed for the activities of compulsory education. Human resources include teachers, administrators, etc. Educational financial resources consist of public funds and private funds, including income, expenditure, investment and donation. Material resources include school land, buildings, teaching equipment and other tangible materials available. Information resources include books, periodicals, computer networks and so on. Compulsory education resources cover a wide range of contents, the amount of resources and regional and national education development is closely related to the necessary support to ensure the quality of education. The investment of compulsory education resources will directly or indirectly cause the difference between educational opportunities and educational results (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020).

3.1.2 The Connotation of the Balanced Development of Compulsory Education Resources The balanced development of compulsory education is a concept transplanted from the balanced development of economy, which means that the country provides relatively equal basic educational opportunities and conditions through the formulation and adjustment of policies and the allocation of resources. The balanced development of compulsory education is not an “average” development, but a comprehensive and sustainable dynamic balanced development and a balanced development with regional differences. The balanced development of the allocation of compulsory education resources is a part of the balanced development of compulsory education, which is the balanced development of the allocation of people, money and things between regions and within regions under different geographical scales. In China, the balanced development of the allocation of compulsory education resources between provinces and between cities and villages is mainly concerned. This paper only from

3.1 What is the Status of Educational Equity Between the East and the Midwest?

59

the differences between the eastern and western regions to observe the balanced development of the distribution of compulsory education resources. Overall progress in education. In 2018, there were 2.518,800 schools of all levels and types, 5,017 more than the previous year. Schools of all types and at all levels nationwide have a floor space of 33.573 billion square meters, an increase of 154 million square meters or 4.5% over the previous year. The total value of teaching and research equipment assets of schools at all levels and of various types nationwide was 1,021.821 billion yuan, 102.726 billion yuan more than that of the previous year, up 11.2%. Stage of compulsory education (school conditions). The average school size of compulsory education continues to be expanding and the average class size is relatively stable. In 2018, the average number of primary schools was 639, 35 more than the previous year. The average size of junior high school is 895 students, 39 more than the previous year. The average number of classes in primary schools was 38, the same as that in the previous year, and that in junior middle schools was 46, one less than that in the previous year. The number of large classes for compulsory education has been greatly reduced, and the proportion of large classes continues to decline. In 2018, there were 165,800 large classes (56–65 students) in ordinary primary schools, 17,200 fewer than the previous year. There were 80,400 large classes in junior middle schools, 19,000 fewer than that in the previous year, and the proportion of large classes was 8.0%, 2.5 percentage points lower than that in the previous year. The proportion of oversize classes (66 or more) in ordinary primary schools and junior high schools has dropped to less than 1 percentage point, to 0.5 and 0.6% respectively, down 1.6 percentage points and 2.5 percentage points from the previous year. The allocation of teaching equipment in compulsory education schools continued to improve, and the gap between urban and rural areas narrowed. In 2018, the average value of equipment for primary school students nationwide was 1,558 yuan, an increase of 153 yuan or 10.9% over the previous year. Rural primary schools accounted for 75.8% of urban primary schools, an increase of 4.4 percentage points over the previous year. The average equipment value of junior high school students nationwide was 2,453 yuan, an increase of 188 yuan or 8.3% over the previous year. The level of information allocation in schools of compulsory education has been continuously improved, the coverage of high-quality resources has been gradually expanded, and the in-depth integration of information technology and education and teaching has been gradually strengthened. In 2018, there were 11.1 computers per 100 students in primary schools, up from 10.5 in the previous year, and 15.2 in secondary schools, up from 14.8 in the previous year (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). The proportion of compulsory education schools connected to the Internet is higher and the gap between urban and rural areas is smaller. In 2018, 97.8% of primary schools nationwide were connected to the Internet, including 98.3% of urban primary schools and 97.7% of rural primary schools. The urban–rural gap is less than 1 percentage point. In China, 99.0% of junior high schools, 98.2% of urban junior high schools and 99.2% of rural junior high schools are connected to the Internet. There is no gap between urban and rural areas.

60

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

The proportion of compulsory education schools building campus networks continues to increase, and the gap between urban and rural areas remains large. In 2018, 67.6% of primary schools and 77.3% of junior high schools were set up with campus networks, an increase of 3.2 percentage points and 0.6 percentage points over the previous year, respectively. The proportion of rural primary schools and middle schools with Internet access is 64.5% and 74.4%, respectively, which are 18 and 12 percentage points lower than urban schools. The gap between urban and rural areas is still large. In addition, the floor area of schools in ordinary primary schools (including teaching sites) was 786.195,300 m2 , an increase of 35.3107 million square meters over the previous year. The proportion of schools with facilities and equipment up to standard is 88.47% of the schools with sports ground (hall) area up to standard, 94.23% of the schools with sports equipment up to standard, 93.89% of the schools with music equipment up to standard, 93.70% of the schools with art equipment up to standard, and 93.72% of the schools with natural experimental equipment up to standard, which is higher than that of the previous year. The building area of junior high school buildings was 64,368,130,000 m2 , an increase of 33.613,900 m2 over the previous year. The proportion of schools with standard facilities and equipment is 92.58% of the schools with standard sports ground (hall) area, 95.91% of the schools with standard sports equipment, 95.45% of the schools with standard music equipment, 95.21% of the schools with standard art equipment, and 95.64% of the schools with standard science experimental equipment (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). Construction area. The eastern region has a large advantage, while the central and western regions are relatively lagging behind in the average floor area of middle schools. In 2015, the average floor area of middle schools nationwide was 10,503.21. Among the 31 provinces and cities, 13 exceeded the national average level, with 7 in the east, 2 in the middle and 4 in the west. The average floor area of primary schools nationwide is 3535.08, with 16 exceeding the national average, including 9 in the east, 4 in the middle and 4 in the west. In 2015, the average building area of middle school students in China was 12.77 m2 , which reached the national average level in 18 provinces and cities, including 8 in the east, accounting for 66.67% of the total in the east. Six in the central region, accounting for 66.67% of the total; There are four in the western region, accounting for 40% of the western region. In terms of the average area of students in middle school, the average floor area of students in middle and eastern regions is the same as that in western regions. Four in the central region, accounting for 44.44% of the nine regions in the central region; There are seven regions in the west, accounting for 70% of the ten regions in the west. In terms of the average per student area in middle school, the overall level of the average per student school building area in the eastern and western regions is not much different from that in the central region. The whole compulsory education stage, the eastern region overall level is higher, the central and western region overall level gap is larger (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). Student books. The book resources in the central and western regions are insufficient to meet the needs of student development and education. In 2015, there were 1,397,856,013 general books in middle schools nationwide, with an average of 32.42

3.1 What is the Status of Educational Equity Between the East and the Midwest?

61

books per student. Among the 31 provinces and cities, 13 have more books per student than the whole country, accounting for 41.94%. Nine in the east, two in the middle and two in the west. Shanghai, Zhejiang and Liaoning are the top three in average book ownership. The average number of books per student is 59.26, 45.70 and 45.44, which all meet the requirements of “China education monitoring and evaluation statistical index system” of “40 books per student (excluding e-books)”. In terms of differences, the distribution of the extreme value of the average student books in China is [16.92, 59.26], with a difference of 42.34 volumes between Chongqing and Shanghai. There are 1,981,448,509 volumes of general books in primary schools nationwide, with an average of 20.44 volumes per student. Among the 31 provinces and cities, 15 have more books per student than the whole country, 10 in the east, 2 in the middle and 3 in the west. The three national books are three municipalities directly under the central government in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, China books available volume were 33.28, 31.33, 31.09, have reached the “China education monitoring and evaluation of statistical index system of” the requirements of the “China book 30 volumes (excluding Ebook)”, China is located in Chongqing municipality directly under the central government in the west of the 14.53 books, both in its more than two times (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). School average computer. Modern teaching equipment computer number, the western region resources at present, the rapid development of science and technology, our country has entered a comprehensive information age, information age can’t depart from the support of Internet and computer equipment, and the number of computer teaching in a school and the number of multimedia classrooms in a certain extent with the school’s proportion to hard power and information. In 2015, there were 5,455,667 teaching computers in middle schools nationwide, with an average of 104.11 in schools, and 8196,205 in primary schools nationwide, with an average of 43.02. Among 31 provinces and cities throughout the country, high school for teaching computer places more than the national average of 13, including 9 of the eastern region, accounting for more than places 104.11 69.23% of the total provinces, accounting for 75% of the 12 provinces in eastern, central region 0, the western region has four, 30.77% of the total, at the same time in 10 provinces and cities in the western area of 40%. Shanghai has the highest number of computers per school, while Jiangxi has the lowest number, with the former 4.1 times that of the latter. There are 15 provinces and cities with the average number of computers used for teaching in primary school exceeding 43.02. Among them, there are 10 in the eastern region, accounting for 66.67% of the 15 provinces and cities, and 2 in the central region, accounting for 13.33% of the 15 provinces and cities. Obviously, there are 3 in the western region, accounting for 20% of the 15 provinces and cities (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). In terms of the average floor area per student, the difference between the eastern region and the central region is small, while there is still a certain gap in the western region. In terms of book resources, the eastern region has the largest advantage in the share of the average number of books in the middle school and primary school students. Only two provinces and cities in the central region have surpassed the national average. The western region is comparable with the central region. In the modern multimedia teaching equipment

62

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

resources, the central region is the most backward (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). In order to study the ratio of students to teachers in the east and west of China, we should first analyze the ratio of students to teachers. The student–teacher ratio, that is, the ratio between the number of students and the number of full-time teachers, to some extent reflects the utilization rate of teacher resources and the inclination of teacher resources on students. In different stages of teaching, due to the difference in students’ ability to accept knowledge and the complexity of knowledge itself, the requirements for teacher to teacher ratio are also different. For example, the standards for setting secondary vocational schools revised in 2010 stipulates that “teacher to student ratio of secondary vocational schools should reach 1:20”. The interim provisions on the establishment of ordinary undergraduate schools released in 2006 stipulated that “the total number of full-time teachers should generally make the ratio of teachers to students no higher than 18.1”. But what they do have in common is that the ratio of students to teachers is an important measure of educational equity at all stages. Under the premise that all full-time teachers try their best to cultivate students, when the ratio of teacher to student is too low, it reflects the overflow of teacher resources, the utilization rate of teacher resources declines, and the unfair situation in the teacher industry is formed to some extent in the case of profit loss. However, when the student–teacher ratio is too high, the inclination of teacher resources on students is insufficient, which will reduce the educational quality of schools to a certain extent, and the loss of interests will be more serious in the long run. Therefore, the teacher-student ratio or teacher-student ratio reflects the issue of educational equity to some extent. If the factors that the eastern region is more developed than the central and western regions are considered, it is assumed that the ratio of students to teachers in the eastern region is the best among the three. In addition to the east, west and central data than ordinary primary school teacher in 2012 and 2013–2018 in and out of larger, favorable to speculate if student/teacher ratio in 2012, after 2013 get damp should implement relevant policies to promote student/teacher ratio, for some reason not rule out the possibility of failure to raise the student/teacher ratio is 2013–2018 years of division ratio on each region is relatively good, or a more realistic, so here for 2013–2018 years of division than to discuss (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). In 2012, the ratio of teacher to student in the central region was much higher than that in the eastern and western regions, and with the development of the years, since 2013, the ratio of teacher to student in the central region has remained around 17.5. As for the central region as a whole, first of all, its middle geographical location determines that it cannot open to the outside world as much as the eastern region and cannot make the same positive contact with the outside world. Compared with the western region, the central region is more developed and has not become the object of national education poverty alleviation. Second, the central region is relatively superior geographical environment gave birth to the more population, the number of people each year to participate in education is more, even if the number is more, but still can’t avoid, high student/teacher ratio in this regard, Henan is the best example, as the most populous province, even with more resources for teachers and education

3.1 What is the Status of Educational Equity Between the East and the Midwest?

63

resources in the student/teacher ratio is not dominant, but elite players. Thirdly, the middle geographical location of the central region makes it possible to reach other places in a short distance, so as to facilitate the communication between teachers and obtain better educational resources and experience. In this regard, the unique advantages of the central region to some extent make up for the differences between students and teachers (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). The number of students in the western region was relatively high in 2012 and remained around 16 from 2013 to 2018. Compared with the eastern and central regions, the western region has a lower student–teacher ratio. Considering that the educational resources in the western region lag behind those in the eastern region and the educational level is also low, the state implements a series of educational poverty alleviation programs, and the teacher resources flow to the west. Therefore, the lower student–teacher ratio in the western region is explained. To sum up, in terms of the ratio of students to teachers in ordinary primary schools, the state has different policies to support different regions. The population of the central region is large, but there are few policies to make up for it. The difference in the ratio of students to teachers between the western and eastern regions is no more than 1. Looking at the economic differences between the eastern and western regions, it can be seen that the country has made up for the western regions in terms of policies. Therefore, in order to promote the equity of the ratio of students to teachers in the east and west, the next step for the country is to pay more attention to the central region (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). School culture. In order to study the school culture in the east and west of China, we should first analyze the “school culture”. School culture is a cultural characteristic formed by a school that makes full use of various factors and has its own unique values, beliefs, means, language, environment and system. It is generally divided into three parts: material culture, institutional culture and spiritual culture. School culture has guiding function, cohesive function and normative function. The core of school culture is the ideology and behavior of each group, among which the most decisive is the ideology, especially the value concept. Schools in the stage of compulsory education carry out the work of building students’ values or world outlook in line with the core socialist values. The focus is to let students form a correct cognition, possess certain academic knowledge and establish their own moral baseline in line with social values. Therefore, it is difficult for schools at this stage to have their own cultural parts, and the premise of compulsory education makes it difficult for them to build their own cultural buildings. However, there are schools with a certain history in each region, which obviously have a strong cultural background. For this kind of difference, its root is not the difference in the local source, but the difference in the history of its existence and the difference in the establishment time of the school. Of course, these schools are different or different, but the leveling effect of compulsory education makes students themselves not too different, and schools at this stage pay more attention to the part of compulsory education by the state. In view of the special nature of compulsory education, the school culture of compulsory education stage is not analyzed in detail. For each school in senior high school, different from the

64

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

compulsory education stage, the differences caused by school culture tend to be obvious and have a profound impact on students. In high school, the school culture that most easily affects students is the material culture of the school, which is embodied in the school’s architectural style, architectural history, campus facilities and campus activities. As far as the material culture of high schools in east and west China is concerned, it is clear to see the difference, because the material culture difference arises from the development of east and west. Due to national policies and relevant measures, east coast high schools generally enjoy better economic development than the central and western regions, which means that east coast high schools have better material resources to build the material and cultural part of school culture. In addition, most high schools in central and western China target at famous high schools in eastern developed cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and some hardware facilities are also based on them, which also shows the unfair material culture between eastern and middle and western high schools. In this context, some middle and western high schools also have excellent school culture and distinct self-characteristics in material culture and have not completely imitated the model of eastern high schools. These schools have unified characteristics, they are all famous historical schools, with profound cultural heritage (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). School culture also includes institutional culture and spiritual culture. In terms of system culture, the high school system has a high degree of unity. Before emphasizing quality education, no matter in the east or the central and western regions, they try their best to imitate the militarized management mode of “Hengshui middle school”, a famous school in Hebei province, because of its exaggerated learning efficiency and outstanding talent cultivation results. However, such education was completely defeated by quality-oriented education, because the militarystyle management learning could not be connected with the mode of higher education, leading to many students’ maladjustment and temporary loss of learning ability corresponding to their entry into higher education. Therefore, most high schools in the eastern and western regions establish corresponding systems with quality-oriented education as the center and retain some characteristics of military-style management to ensure the efficiency of students’ learning, and to ensure the double improvement of students’ study and quality. Nevertheless, east to the Midwest high schools have also appeared some differences, due to the geographical differences, the eastern coastal city of open degree, and have more learning foreign education system, at the same time, China’s top universities in the north, on, broad and deep “density is bigger, have more opportunity to communication with the east high school, better join high school and university learning, can more quickly to let the students to adapt to study life after graduation. For example, many high schools in Beijing took the lead in implementing the teaching system of walking classes, leading and innovating the national teaching system of high schools. This innovation is bold but in line with the development of high school teaching, because the teaching of walking classes is more suitable for college education. However, only the high schools in the eastern region have the courage to innovate, while the other regions all present the form of observation, which reflects the differences in the system culture of high schools

3.1 What is the Status of Educational Equity Between the East and the Midwest?

65

in the eastern and western regions caused by the joint action of region, economy and school history. In terms of spiritual culture, the most important manifestation is the spirit of the school motto of each high school, followed by a series of student group activities carried out by the school. The latter has certain requirements for the material culture of the high school itself, better “hardware” can certainly have better “software”, but the essence of student group activities is to reflect the spirit of the school motto, and establish correct values for students, honor and disgrace view, to show the correct spirit of competition to students. From the three aspects of school culture, material culture, system culture and spiritual culture, it can reflect the local unfair phenomenon between eastern and western education in China, which originates from regional development and is also affected by the historical and cultural deposits of each high school. In a word, the difference of school culture presents the unfair phenomenon of education, but this unfair phenomenon cannot be completely eliminated. The objective reason will disappear with the development of China, while the subjective reason depends on each high school itself. Good subjective influence will cultivate all kinds of talents; Bad subjective influences can be misleading. Therefore, do the correct guidance work, and try to eliminate the objective causes of the unfair phenomenon is the final solution direction (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). Expenditure on education. The amount of educational expenditure is an important index to measure the educational equity between regions, and it can even be said to be a fundamental factor that causes the educational inequality. However, the current researches mainly focus on the differences in educational opportunities, educational results and the imbalance between urban and rural education development, while little attention is paid to the differences in per capita expenditure of education funds between eastern and western regions. This part will focus on the difference of fiscal education expenditure in different regions in the stage of compulsory education and compare and analyze the changes of educational expenditure in the three regions with the years in recent years. 1. Overview of the investment of education funds in the national education stage. According to the ministry of education, PRC ‘statistics on national education expenditure, the total investment in education in 2016 was 3.8866 trillion yuan, an increase of 7.57% over the previous year. This figure includes 3.1373 trillion yuan for education from the state budget (which mainly includes education from the general public budget, education from the budgets of government-managed funds, funds from enterprises in running schools, and funds from school-run industries and social services for education), an increase of 7.36% over the previous year. The total appropriation for compulsory education nationwide was 1760.3 billion yuan, an increase of 9.76% over the previous year. The average expenditure on education for primary school students nationwide was 11,398 yuan, an increase of 8.88% over the previous year. The average education expenditure for junior middle school students nationwide was 16,010 yuan, an increase of 10.50% over the previous year. In 2017, China spent 4.2557 trillion yuan on education, an increase of 9.43% over the previous year. This includes 3.420.4 trillion yuan for government education and 1.935.8 trillion yuan for compulsory education. The national average expenditure on

66

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

education for primary school students was 12,177 yuan, an increase of 6.82% over the previous year. The average education expenditure for junior middle school students nationwide was 17,547 yuan, an increase of 9.60% over the previous year. In 2018, the total investment in education nationwide was 4.613.5 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.39% over the previous year. This includes 3.699 trillion yuan in government funding for education, an increase of 8.13% over the previous year. The total appropriation for compulsory education nationwide was 2.0858 trillion yuan, an increase of 7.73% over the previous year. The national average expenditure on education for primary school students was 12,733 yuan, an increase of 4.56% over the previous year. The average education expenditure of junior high school students nationwide was 18,481 yuan, an increase of 5.32% over the previous year. From the above data, combined with the previous statistics (not listed here), we can draw several conclusions. First, the state financial funds for compulsory education increased year by year. This shows that over the years, the national finance has attached more and more importance to compulsory education. Second, for a long time, the main source of education funds in China is the state financial input, more than 70% of the total education funds are made up of the state financial education funds (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020).

3.2 What Problems Exist in the Education Equity in East and West China? Through the statistics and analysis of the following series of data and charts, we will find that there are three problems in education equity in eastern and western China. The first problem is that the uneven economic development in the eastern and western regions of China leads to uneven educational development. The second problem is the imbalance of educational resources in the eastern and western regions of China, which is a continuation of the previous problem. The third problem is the uneven distribution of teachers in eastern and western China. The three problems all involve the educational process equity in the educational equity, and the third one involves the educational outcome equity. These three problems are relative, dynamic and historical as mentioned in the definition of educational equity. These problems have been discussed for a long time and solved in many ways, but the only constant is that we hope to reduce the situation of educational inequality. 1. Uneven economic development in eastern and central China leads to uneven educational development. Most of the educational expenditure in a region depends on the fiscal revenue of the region, so the educational development level of the region is closely related to the economic development and per capita income of the region. Since the reform and opening up, China has basically adopted a regionoriented economic policy, focusing on the development of the eastern coastal zone. This strategy has indeed enabled China’s coastal areas to flourish, but it has caused a gap in economic, social and educational development in the eastern and western

3.2 What Problems Exist in the Education Equity in East …

67

regions of China. This phenomenon of economic development can be proved by national taxation and per capita disposable income in the east and west. National tax revenue and per capita disposable income can tell the economic development of a region. However, a region will allocate education funds according to the economic development and income of the region. Therefore, the economic development of a region directly affects the distribution of education funds and indirectly affects the level of education development. From the above contents, we can clearly see that the economic development of eastern China is much higher than that of central and western China. From this part, we can infer that the education expenditure of eastern China is higher than that of central and western China, which leads to the uneven educational development level in eastern and western China. East Midwest China caused by the uneven economic development of the education development level disparity problem, as long as the guarantee every school-age children can go to school and does not involve education starting point fair, under the condition of the question, however, apparently involving the fair aspect of education is a education process fairness, education funding, due to uneven economic development, in turn, affect the level of education development, education includes: education level of development, the teacher resources, the school provide opportunities for students and so on, these effects include subjective aspect and objective aspect of the education process fairness. 2. Educational resources are uneven in east and west China. This problem is a continuation of the previous one. Because of the different economic development situations in east and central China, the distribution of educational funds is directly affected, and the educational development level is indirectly affected, resulting in the imbalance of educational resources in east and central China. In the following chart and content analysis, the eastern part of China will be represented by Beijing, the western part by Inner Mongolia, and the central part by Heilongjiang. (this is an area of practice for clear, do not affect the results of the analysis) throughout the above content, we will find that although the number of students in eastern China is the least but education is one of the most abundant resources in eastern China, central China, however, the number of students in school is the most, but the education resources are not as good as eastern China, the number of students in the western area of China industry in eastern and central regions of the number of students in school, the education is the most scarce resources. In this way, we can find out the problem—the imbalance of educational resources in the eastern and western regions of China. This conclusion echo a discussion on “China Eastern Midwest uneven economic development caused the education development level disparity” its root cause is uneven economic development level, the economic development in eastern China than in central China area higher than that of the western region of China, therefore the issuance of education funds and education resources richness still is higher than that of central China in east China area is higher than the western region of China. However, the quality of education for everyone in eastern China is higher than that in central and western China, because there are fewer students in school and more educational resources. To sum up, the problem of unequal educational resources in east and central and western China is that it affects the educational

68

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

process equity in the educational equity in east and central and western China. In the objective aspect of the educational process equity, students in east and central and western China do not enjoy the same educational material resources. 3. Teacher resource allocation in eastern and western regions of China. In the following chart and content analysis, the eastern part of China will be represented by Beijing, the western part by Inner Mongolia, and the central part by Heilongjiang. Throughout the content above, we can learn that in eastern China, the number of students is lower than the number of students in the western area of China is lower than, the number of students in central China, however, in eastern China, from primary school, junior high school to higher education school teacher resources are the best, the central China in elementary school, junior high school teacher resources are the worst of times, but in the higher education school teacher resources located in the eastern China and the western region of China, on the contrary, the western region of China in the period of elementary school, junior high school teacher resources are between the eastern region and central areas of China, But the resources of teachers in higher education schools are the worst. From this, we can find the problem of teacher resource allocation in eastern and western China. The allocation of teacher resources in the eastern and western regions of China is the subjective aspect of the educational process fairness in the educational equity. Only when there are equally good teacher resources can students maintain the space of individual development and achieve the academic requirements of this stage. Therefore, this issue also involves the educational outcome fairness (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). At present, our country is in the period of reform from exam-oriented education to quality-oriented education. Therefore, the education and teaching concepts in the eastern region are more novel and often in the collision of diversification. The western region is more likely to continue the traditional, stable but not innovative, exam-oriented education model, which has been criticized for a long time. This differential treatment makes students in different regions receive different education and grow up in different educational environments. Although there are different educational concepts and learning modes in the compulsory education stage, they all need to compete on the same platform in university and later work. The injustice in the early stage affects the learning and life in the future, resulting in a further gap. In some remote rural areas and ethnic minority areas in the west, influenced by backward cultural concepts and restricted by economic conditions, there are still inequalities between boys and girls in school opportunities and educational concerns, which especially restrict the growth and development of girls and affect educational equity and teaching quality. In China, the policies of key schools, school choice, uniform enrollment, and school integration have caused educational injustice in different regions and affected the right of disadvantaged groups to receive education. In the past, the policy of key schools was aimed at rapidly cultivating talents needed by the country, but now the social environment has changed, and its existence has widened the gap of educational resources and quality between urban and rural areas, regions and schools. Access to key schools depends on parents’ connections and financial resources, which are

3.2 What Problems Exist in the Education Equity in East …

69

particularly unfair to children from ordinary or even poor families in rural areas. Or see the child’s ability to take an examination or competition and other specialties, which will cause to enter the key schools, parents and social pressure in a certain aspect of the children in advance of the training and key competition, not conducive to the comprehensive, balanced, healthy development of children. Whether competing for “success” or “failure”, early choice and the resulting varied educational environment can have an impact on a child’s future development. Generally speaking, it is not suitable for the development demand of basic education (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). The problem of key schools is prominent, the lack of educational resources and the unequal distribution lead to the widespread phenomenon of school choice among parents and students. School choice will further lead to the differentiation of schools in different regions, forming a vicious circle. Aimed at the basic education stage of this phenomenon. The country promotes delimit recruit student’s policy; each school enrolls the student inside his area limits. However, there are still problems in the uniform enrollment: the number of students that a school can accommodate and the number of school-age students in the corresponding area are not matched to a large extent, and the extra places provide the possibility for the infiltration of human relations. Under the premise of inter-school quality difference, uniform enrollment is compulsory, which leads to another kind of injustice. Students close to highquality schools (key schools) can enjoy high-quality education resources, while the nearby schools have no choice but to accept if they are not satisfactory. In addition, families with economic conditions can afford expensive school district housing, so that children can receive a good education, and more families are unable to afford. Especially in the western region, the quantity of high-quality school resources is lower than that in the eastern region, and the distribution is unbalanced. Most of them are concentrated in large cities, and there are only one or two high-quality schools in a large area. All of these situations raise the issue of educational equity in different regions. With the rapid development of society, policies often fail to cover all the needed points in a timely and effective manner, such as the enrollment of children of migrant workers. The large Numbers of people from western provinces who went to work in the east helped to build the region, but their accompanying children had trouble getting into school. Most of the children of migrant workers can only choose private schools, which are not as good as public schools, but also need to pay their own tuition fees. These families are not well off and have to pay tuition and fees, which makes the economy even worse and reduces the amount of other money available for their children’s education. In many difficulties, the backward areas, because the policy inclination and dial down to money but there are problems with the development of education management and improper use, the most direct is to use a lot of money for delicate campus construction, built luxury, style of the building of the campus, but lost the most fundamental of students and teachers, education quality and even less (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020).

70

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

3.3 The Problems and Proposed Countermeasures First, the importance of educational equity and the outstanding problems. At the national education conference, general secretary Xi jinping once said that “education is the great plan of the country and the party”, and the importance of education is self-evident. In the implementation of quality-oriented education, we should realize that education equity is the foundation of quality-oriented education. From an individual perspective, educational equity lays a solid foundation for everyone’s development. Education can not only improve the personal cultural quality, teach everyone a certain livelihood skill, but also make everyone form a relatively stable psychological quality, have the ability to get along with others and contacts; For the whole society, educational equity is the cornerstone of building a harmonious society. The 17th national congress of the communist party of China once proposed that “educational equity is an important basis for social equity”, and educational equity, as an important aspect of social equity, is of self-evident importance. China has paid much attention to and invested a lot in education equity, education has made great progress and development, and education equity has been further promoted. For example, the issue of school choice in ordinary senior high schools is prominent, the development of compulsory education in urban and rural areas is still not particularly balanced, the opportunity for enrollment in institutions of higher learning is uneven, and education in the east and west is not fair. Among them, the problem of education inequity in the east and west of China has been concerned and studied by educators. At present, the education level of many big cities in the east is basically comparable to that of developed countries, but the education level of some provinces and regions in the central and western regions is still relatively backward, and some regions have not made nine-year compulsory education universal even now. Therefore, it is necessary to promote coordinated development and educational equity among regions. Second, the cause analysis of education inequality in the east and west of China. At present, the problem of educational inequality in the east and west is still quite serious. From the macro and micro perspectives, the reasons for the existence of the problem are as follows. From the macro point of view, the economic development level of the central and western regions is quite different from that of the eastern regions, and the economic development of the central and western regions lags far behind that of the eastern regions. The per capita GDP of each province in the central and western regions is obviously lagging behind that of the eastern regions, and the educational resources are also lagging far behind that of the eastern regions. According to the survey on the comparative analysis of the educational development level of various provinces published by China education network in 2012, the educational development level of different regions in China varies greatly. From the teachers level, due to a serious shortage of education funds in the Midwest, the Midwest less spending on education, lead to fewer excellent teacher is willing to put in the Midwest education, a large part of normal class students don’t want to go to the Midwest, makes the Midwest lack of teacher resources, the overall quality of the teachers of natural low also. Therefore,

3.3 The Problems and Proposed Countermeasures

71

in the economically underdeveloped central and western regions, the investment in education is relatively small and the support for education is naturally weak. Therefore, the low level of economic development is the fundamental reason for the large difference in education level between the west and the east. As mentioned above, the state has adjusted the proportion of education funds in the eastern and western regions year by year. The general office of the state council has also issued the opinions on further adjusting and optimizing the structure to improve the use efficiency of education funds, which makes use of policies to coordinate regional differences in education funds. In the stage of compulsory education, there is an imbalance in the ratio of students to teachers in the eastern and western regions of China. The eastern region has relatively developed and sufficient educational resources due to its developed economic construction and geographical advantages of being open to the sea. And the western region as a result of the country’s policy subsidies and other strong support, has only the eastern region of the ratio of students. In the west, the ratio of students to teachers is the lowest because the communication is not as good as in the east and the economy is stronger than in the west. But overall, although compared with the developed eastern region, the central and western regions exist in the teachers or the lack of material conditions, but because of the particularity of compulsory education—that is, the stage is mainly to help students build conform to the values of socialist core values and world view, have correct understanding of things, to master a certain level of knowledge and conforms to the social value of the moral bottom line—students themselves will not be too obvious differences because of regional differences, material related problem also basically by the state and local governments, for coordination is most likely to produce the problems related to the policy implementation is in place, To this end, we only need to establish a strong regulatory system, so we will not focus on the situation of this stage as the object of analysis and discussion (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). Compared with the eastern region, the central and western regions of the gap between urban and rural areas is more obvious, and the one of the gap between the urban and rural areas is the education of the gap between rural and urban areas, the big gap between the urban and rural education is superlatively, plenty of education resources are almost monopoly city, some rural lack even basic schools, teachers and the classroom. This is particularly true in the Midwest. From a micro perspective, high school, which is an important part of students’ study and life, is still found to be unfair in all aspects of the general high school education system. The general high school education is the link between the compulsory education and the posthigh school education, and it is also the education stage that has basically completed the popularization up to now. However, in the current our country all levels of each kind of education, ordinary high school education is still the weak link, especially in the Midwest development of ordinary high school education in poverty-stricken areas face many problems are difficult to decode, high school education is different from compulsory phase, already have a certain depth, and basically also faces adult graduating from high school, so these problems not only affected the sustainable

72

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

development of the poverty-stricken areas and the poor, more affected the comprehensive popularization high school education goal and the crucial strategic goal smooth realization out of poverty. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the general high school education in the poor areas in the central and western regions of China has gone through the process of key development, stable adjustment, expanding scale and entering the stage of universal development, and has made remarkable achievements. Continued ascension embodied in the universal level, increasing spending on all education stage (this) have significant performance, operating conditions improved significantly, free education gradually, students in poor areas of institutions of higher learning opportunities continue to expand (this is related to government action, because of what we call “developed” “high quality” is demanded in poor areas need to be part of the quota of the excellent student, what’s interesting is that in some education developed areas, such as Beijing, instead, the government has taken the opposite move. Before there is no “lock” area of Beijing, through examination before choosing the school can choose other district high school, although it still can be, but now very few places to other areas, and there are a lot of places is divided according to the piece of nearby, that is to say, even if yours not much of a junior high school learning as long as you live well, you can also directly into 4, such as Beijing, the high, normal university affiliated experiments these super high school. Due to the different sections of the Beijing education resources and the level difference is quite obvious, perhaps even more extreme than that of the other provinces and regions, such as the famous “Haitian district education myth”, as a result, the students went to the high level of education area, huge loss of local high quality students, until a few years ago the government is aware of such a “loose” free entrance system seriously affect the balance of city development, so the lock area, inter-district entrance leads to more and more difficult. However, there are many deep-rooted practical difficulties in the supply of resources, the guarantee of funds, the balanced development and the development of connotation of the ordinary high school education in the poor areas in the central and western regions. In terms of resource supply, education scale supply is insufficient, school running conditions are weak, and high-quality education resources are in short supply. It is difficult to meet the growing demand of parents and students in poor areas for high-quality high school education, because a large number of famous teachers have flowed into developed areas, so the stronger the strong, the weaker the weak. In terms of fund input and guarantee, the fiscal fund input is insufficient, the fund input is unbalanced, the ordinary high school borrows money to run a school, the poor family ordinary high school education cost burden is heavier in the fund input, tell a practical example: a leader in office, how to examine his performance? The clearest and most intuitive: look at GDP, which is a lot of things on the surface. Conference in 1985 by the national education work conference, the central issued “on the decision of the education system”, first proposed the concept of quality education, however, still high school education system is more rigid, the vast majority of high school is still the scores as the only criterion for the evaluation of school quality, this education in underdeveloped western regions reflect more obvious, and

3.3 The Problems and Proposed Countermeasures

73

also in elementary school and junior high school. One of the manifestations is that schools do not pay much attention to the teaching and training of art, music and sports, so that the talents of different students cannot be effectively developed, which greatly affects the overall development of students. In terms of balanced development, the imbalance of education development between urban and rural areas and between schools is prominent. As mentioned in the first part of the “status quo”, high-standard regions and schools have developed excellent traditions and campus culture, while laggards are still struggling with education level assessment. In terms of connotation development, such problems as the large loss of high-quality students, the weak construction of teaching staff and the prevalence of dropouts have also been troubling the healthy and sustainable development of ordinary high school education in poor areas in the central and western regions. On the other hand, due to the lack of education resources in the Midwest, causing each high school “major work class”, “pew class” setting is more common, the author examines the 23 of lulling city high school, found that almost all high school have regular class and the major work class, which creates a hotbed of corruption in education, this appears a lot due to the corruption of education unfair education (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020). In the final analysis, the source of these difficulties mainly lies in the Midwest in poor areas of ecological environment, natural social foundation is weak, the economic development lags behind, low center of gravity of the restriction of the education management system and financial system, education legal system is not sound, the shackles of poverty culture and family education function is missing, and precision education poverty alleviation mechanism not perfect and so on. When it comes to the stage of higher education, namely the university stage, the competition for talents becomes more obvious, and the phenomenon of brain drain becomes more obvious. Moreover, scientific research, which was almost not considered in high school or before, is introduced. Universities in developed regions tend to have higher admission scores and better source quality. Meanwhile, relying on the leading economic level, they tend to have more advantages in the introduction of high-end talents. Moreover, there are not enough high-quality talents, which directly affects the level of scientific research and teaching quality of colleges and universities. Meanwhile, the developed regions have great advantages in employment, cooperation projects, top-level conferences and other aspects, leading to the more developed regions can attract high-quality talents and high-quality students. It is common to hear of senior professors from a university in the west and scholars from the Yangtze river going to a university in the east. The more sufficient the university funds and the stronger the research capacity, the easier it is to attract high-end talents, which is directly related to the allocation and policy support of the ministries and local governments. To sum up, there are many reasons for the unfair education in the east and the west, and it is still a long way to go to overcome the difficulties. The following is the focus of this paper, the author will put forward their own countermeasures against the problem of educational inequality. Third, put forward countermeasures against the problem of unfair education in the east and west of China. Based on the above views and combined with the modern governance theory, we propose the governance paths and strategies to

74

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

promote the development of ordinary high school education in poor areas in central and western China. Countries have developed policies to try to narrow the east–west divide. On December 8, 2006, the executive meeting of the state council deliberated and adopted in principle the eleventh five-year plan for western development. Goal is to achieve sound and rapid economic development in western China, make a steady increase in people’s living standards, infrastructure and ecological environment construction in the new breakthrough, the development of key areas and key industry reached a new level, education, health, the new results were obtained in equal basic public services, such as solid steps were taken to build a harmonious socialist society, at the same time, in order to achieve the appropriate tilt of the western investment. In February 2012, officials from the national development and reform commission interpreted the 12th five-year plan for the development of the western region, defining the basic battle strategy. 2019 central deep changed committee examined and passed at the 7th meeting of the new age to promote the development of the western region to form a new pattern of instruction opinion, pay more attention to promote the development of high quality, the implementation of the new development concept, deepen the structural reform, the supply side to promote the western region’s economic and social development with population, resources and environment in harmony, to promote economic development, gradually narrowing the difference of eastern and western economic purpose. Compared with the eastern coastal areas, the western region is rich in resources but relatively restricted by geographical conditions. In the west, we should choose a relatively favorable location to make some large and medium-sized cities develop into economic centers with considerable strength, and strengthen their economic agglomeration and diffusion capacity, so as to drive the development of neighboring areas and rural economy. Analyzing the market prospect, we should strengthen the production of industrial and agricultural products with the characteristics of the western region, optimize the structure and expand the scale, so as to form the industrial pillar. Make a long-term and orderly development plan step by step. We need to effectively increase the proportion of government spending on education. In 2006, Shanxi provincial department of education announced the implementation of eight key projects to promote the development of education. At the same time, the construction of moral education project, a group of teenagers’ comprehensive social practice and the construction of labor base were put into use, which greatly promoted the development of quality education in Shanxi Province. Vigorously develop education in ethnic minority areas. The national finance should increase the investment in the remote areas and minority basic education, gradually narrow the huge gap between the eastern and western regions in basic education, to ensure that the peers in remote areas and remote provinces can have the same opportunities to receive education. At the same time, the eastern developed regions should provide more matching support to the poor regions in the central and western regions with weak educational foundation and improve the teaching level of teachers in the central and western regions by means of volunteer teaching or distance education. Meanwhile, the state should adopt preferential policies to further create conditions for attracting and retaining excellent teachers in the western regions. To

3.3 The Problems and Proposed Countermeasures

75

minority examinee, want to make the education policy that accords with minority culture and. The author interviewed a Korean examinee, the Korean examinee in the college entrance examination can use Korean language answer paper, and a large proportion of the examinee chose Japanese as the foreign language of the examinee. This kind of college entrance examination policy is in line with the actual situation of ethnic minority examinees and has been solved. Course teaching. The development imbalance at the university level is much more complicated than in high school and before. Including the measures mentioned above such as key schools and classes, it is necessary for colleges and universities, because the top talents are closely related to the competitiveness and discourse power of the country. So here we are mainly talking about the teaching aspects of the student curriculum. Improve the enthusiasm of college teachers. The reason why teachers’ enthusiasm is not high is that China’s college education mainly adopts the teacher-student face-to-face education mode, and the corresponding education system norms are also formulated according to this mode. For example, teacher assessment requirements are based on face-to-face teaching. So in order to improve the teachers’ enthusiasm, should first improve the corresponding teacher evaluation system in colleges and universities, the lesson for construction in the corresponding inspection requirements, constraints on teachers play a role, to participate in the construction of teachers at the same time provide a certain amount of cash, monthly or selects the high quality for every semester courses, and the builder issued corresponding certificates of honor. For now, middle school students in colleges and universities in China is generally low participation, because influenced by relatively relaxed learning environment in colleges and universities, many of the students’ self-consciousness is not high, and it is also because longed for class freedom too free, lead to the corresponding regulation is not enough, the students will it as a task to complete, there is a wide range of copying homework, check the phenomenon such as fraud, after class in the teaching effect is not ideal. Colleges and universities can formulate corresponding viewing requirements through MOOC platform, and ask students irregular questions during the viewing period, so as to prevent students from maliciously hanging up the phone. At the same time, for after-class testing, online testing in the form of multiple-choice questions and judgment questions should be avoided as far as possible. It should be combined with the traditional education model and submit the corresponding homework in the form of offline handwritten paper files (that is, the homework should be written on paper or printed out, and then uploaded by means of taking photos). In addition, students can also be arranged to communicate or visit online in a fixed place or at a fixed time on a regular basis, so as to restrain students and improve the effect of MOCC. In addition, more innovative and effective measures are needed from government departments, especially the ministry of education. On April 9, 2019, the ministry of education issued a notice, and decided to launch the “double 10,000 plan” for the construction of first-class undergraduate majors, that is, from 2019 to 2021, the construction of about 10,000 national first-class undergraduate majors and about 10,000 provincial first-class undergraduate majors. The program itself is an incentive for the department of education to give colleges and universities

76

3 The Analysis of Educational Equity in Eastern and Western China

programs, financial and other support, and to build demonstration programs. In a word, to perfect and solve the problem of educational inequity in the east and west is the key to solve the problem of educational inequity in our country. However, we should realize that there is still a long way to go to solve the problem of educational inequality in the east and west of China, which needs the support of national policies and the efforts of every one of us. It is believed that with the gradual development of The Times and the continuous progress of the society, with the support and efforts of the Chinese government and the whole society, the educational equity in central and western China will achieve a deeper level of development. To sum up, this paper studies and discusses the current situation of the educational difference between east and west of China, obtains the general cause analysis of the existence of the problem, and proposes specific solutions to the problem. At present, China has taken some measures and achieved some success, but there are still many problems to be solved. To solve the problem of education inequality in the east and the west needs comprehensive and systematic support, and its development path is bound to be tortuous. I believe that in the process of continuous exploration, analysis and solution, the problem of educational inequality in the east and west will be solved (Meng 2009; Liang and Liu 2009; Xue and Li 2020).

References Liang, O. W., & Liu, S. H. (2009). The problem of idle laboratory which cannot be ignored. Experimental Teaching and Instruments, 26(1), 128–138. Meng, X. J. (2009), Research on minority girls’ education in western China from the perspective of culture and education. Educational Observation, 8(21), 61–74. Xue, E., & Li, J. (2020). Top-down education policy on the inclusion of ethnic minority population in China: A perspective of policy analysis. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(3), 227–239.

Chapter 4

An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity of Compulsory Education in China

This chapter concentrates on an analysis of the administrative policy on promoting equity of compulsory education in China. In particular, the perspective of admission opportunities and the perspective of educational process have been fully examined. Moreover, the conclusion and suggestion have been provided in explore how to promote the administrative policy on promoting educational equity in China.

4.1 The Perspective of Admission Opportunities Compulsory education is the education that all school-age children and juveniles must receive, and it is a public welfare undertaking that the state must guarantee. Compulsory education mainly includes six years of primary school and three years of junior high school, a total of nine years. In 2005, the ministry of education issued several opinions on further promoting the balanced development of compulsory education, which made compulsory education an important task. Subsequently, many regions held experience exchange meetings on promoting compulsory education to promote the development of compulsory education. Compulsory education is related to the growth of children. Central government departments have formulated many policy documents on compulsory education to ensure the healthy growth of hundreds of millions of children. Educational equity is a concept pursued in the process of education. Educational equity is mainly reflected in three aspects: entrance opportunity, educational process and educational result. The opportunity of admission is a very important indicator of educational equity, so this paper analyzes the administrative policy of promoting the equality of compulsory education in China from the perspective of the opportunity of admission. The administrative policy of fairness in compulsory education has different policies for urban and rural areas, and different policies have been formulated by the central department to guarantee the right of compulsory education for all children. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Educational Equity Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0231-3_4

77

78

4 An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity …

On the urban side, the education policy is mainly for exam-free nearby enrollment. In terms of rural areas, it is mainly the help for rural families with economic difficulties and the school arrangement for children of rural migrant workers in cities. Compulsory education for ordinary students and special education students also have relevant policies. For ordinary students, the policy mainly focuses on the perspective of nearby enrollment. For most students, especially those from cities, the policy basically adopts nearby enrollment. The policy vigorously promotes the fairness of enrollment opportunities and guarantees the equality of students’ enrollment. For special students, left-behind children are mainly to establish a protection system and more care for left-behind children. Disabled children are mainly to establish a special education system and establish education suitable for disabled children to ensure that disabled children have the same access to school (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018). For ordinary students, the compulsory education administrative policy guarantee an exemption to the nearest entrance, mainly for special education students started the vision, hearing, speech or physical disabilities, mental retardation, mental disorder, multiple disabilities, special education schools, primary schools also attached education class, read along with the class and, provide good entrance to help the disabled children. Special education schools set up specially designed curriculum, teaching materials to meet the educational needs of special children, to train useful talents for society. The constitution of our country, the compulsory education law, regulations on the education for the disabled are stated explicitly: “the state guarantees the right of disabled people to receive education”, “implement compulsory education for disabled children and juveniles, in under the protection of the law, and administrative policy, our country special children also had high school enrollment in school. According to ifeng.com, the enrollment rate of disabled children in compulsory education will reach more than 96 percent in 2020. According to the second phase of special education promotion plan (2018–2020) issued by the Shandong provincial department of education, by 2020, special education will be universal for 15 years, the enrollment rate of disabled children and adolescents in compulsory education will reach more than 96 percent, and the three-year preschool enrollment rate and rehabilitation education and training rate will reach more than 90 percent. Special education will give priority to regular schools and arrange for disabled children and adolescents of school age to receive compulsory education. By 2020, the proportion of disabled students attending classes will reach 60% of the total number of disabled students. We will improve the layout of special education resource classrooms, and each county (city, district) will choose at least one kindergarten, primary school, and middle school to build demonstration resource classrooms each year. With the class to study disabled children more than 5 (including 5) ordinary primary and secondary schools should all complete the construction of resource classrooms. We need to give full play to the exemplary role of special education schools in the implementation of compulsory education for disabled children and adolescents. We will accelerate the standardization of special education schools and carry out the project to improve the construction of special education schools. Special education schools at the municipal level should have the ability to enroll students with all

4.1 The Perspective of Admission Opportunities

79

types of disabilities, play an exemplary and leading role in the education of students with autism, cerebral palsy and multiple disabilities, and realize the concentration of students with visual impairment and hearing impairment in the city. We will support qualified child welfare institutions (institutions for assistance and protection of minors), rehabilitation institutions for disabled children and medical institutions in running well special education schools (classes). In response to the call of the central government, various regions issued plans for special education at the compulsory education stage, making the enrollment rate of school-age disabled children rise steadily. Problems in the implementation of policies. In recent years, with the implementation of “nearby enrollment”, the price of houses near popular schools has become higher and higher. The house of study area becomes legal “choose school” form, become hot topic accordingly. According to the 2017 Beijing statistical yearbook, the housing prices of schools and districts with high ranking in Beijing are far higher than the housing prices of ordinary goods and the average monthly income of employees. The price of houses closer to the top of the ranking is higher, especially some houses located in the intersection of key primary schools and key middle schools, which are regarded as “double school district houses”. The sky-high price is significant. Therefore, school district system is a hot issue, which attracts the attention of people and scholars. Here are the questions raised by scholars. The relationship between principals in the school district and other principals in the school district, the relationship between the development of the school district and the development of the school district, the relationship between the development of the school district and the development of the school district, the relationship between the development of the school district and the development of the teachers, and the operation mechanism of the school district are not perfect, the cooperation and flow in the school district is insufficient, and the sharing and incentive mechanism is lacking. The school district management is a mere formality, with obvious cultural conflicts between schools. The school staff’s sense of belonging to the school district, the development of the school is easy to appear homogeneity. Problems related to the education of children of migrant workers in cities. First, the children of migrant workers in cities lack parents’ care. Generally speaking, the parent–child relationship is that migrant workers in cities move to cities for the purpose of work, and they are too busy to attend to their children’s needs in many aspects. According to the questionnaire survey, children do not have an escort to go to school or school, and they need to spend time on homework to do housework or even share the work at home. Because parents do not have time to accompany their children, families with economic conditions will offer low-priced tutoring classes, which will lead to the estrangement between children and their parents. Second, some migrant workers in cities do not pay attention to the formation of good habits of their children. Especially in the living habits, hygiene habits, work habits. Some migrant workers usually live in crowded places, unable to avoid children, and do not know how to avoid children will show children smoking, swearing, drinking, gambling and other bad habits. Children naturally feel normal and develop the same habits themselves. In terms of hygiene, some children of migrant workers in cities

80

4 An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity …

have a weak sense of hygiene, and they wear dirty clothes for a long time and do not know how to clean. In terms of homework, some migrant workers in cities do not care about the degree and quality of their children’s homework, which directly affects their children’s study. Third, the lack of communication between family and school. On the one hand, parents are too busy to communicate with the school about their children’s school performance (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018). Enrollment opportunities for special education students. According to the results of the questionnaire conducted in Beijing, 75.8% of disabled students went to school by the way of nearby enrollment, while 24.5% were not nearby enrollment. 13.3% of parents of disabled students expressed that their application for enrollment was not successful, and 1 out of every 7–8 disabled students encountered difficulties or challenges in the process of enrollment. The types of disabled people are physically disabled, visually disabled, hearing disabled, speech disabled, multiple disabled, mentally disabled and mentally disabled. Of these, only 6.1% of parents of students with speech disabilities reported difficulties, but 23.4% of students with mental disabilities reported difficulties, and more than 18% of students with multiple and intellectual disabilities reported difficulties. The reason for not smooth entrance is listed as: “the school does not accept, or hope the student achieves certain condition first ability to accept” “the school agrees to accept, but handles the entrance procedure complex, the time is long” “encounters the problem not clear who should seek help” “does not understand the policy, misses the registration time”. The number one reason all types of school don’t go well is that you don’t know who to turn to for help. This reflects the lack of special education services for disabled students in schools in Beijing. For parents of mentally, mentally and verbally disabled students, the second reason for difficulty is that “the school does not accept students or needs to meet certain conditions”. For parents of students with visual and multiple disabilities, the second reason for not going well in school is that they “do not understand the policy and thus miss the registration time”; for parents of students with physical and hearing disabilities, the second reason for not going well in school is that “the admission procedures are complicated and the time is long”. First, we need to give full play to the advantages of the Internet and develop the website of higher education to share the resources of education. We should strengthen the communication and cooperation between teachers in different schools to promote the turnover of teachers and reduce the Matthew effect of district housing fever. Second, school districts cannot be divided into one size fits all, because there is no same standard for such division. Instead, the division should be made according to the geographical satellite TV and population density of the area, and the transportation measures should be taken into account. Third, the promotion of specialty education, gifted education in their own fields with special talents can choose their favorite schools. Fourth, we need to distinguish the provision of compulsory education services by the government from the nearby enrollment of students and allow students to choose schools in a rational and orderly manner. Fifth, we shall improve the school district management mechanism. In France, for example, the school system

4.1 The Perspective of Admission Opportunities

81

has been developing for a long time, and today it has a very positive effect. The decentralization of regions in France can guarantee that each region is relatively independent and independently guarantees the management and quality of education. Sixth, to reduce the demand for housing in school districts, the government functions reasonably allocate educational resources, provide more resources and hardware resources to weak schools, train teachers, and narrow the differences between schools. Seventh, at present, there is a lack of policies on educational real estate. Each district should adopt measures such as the upper price of school district housing and the education property tax on the premium part of school district housing (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018). Children of migrant workers in cities. First, the improvement of the migrant workers themselves. Migrant workers in cities need to communicate with their children patiently, understand their psychological needs and listen to their psychological calls. Secondly, migrant workers in cities need to reflect on their behavior, consider how their behavior affects the growth of their children, and if they make demands on their children, they also have the same standards for themselves. Thirdly, migrant workers in cities need to be more aware that their bad habits can directly affect their children, and they need to pay more attention to the formation of children’s good habits. Migrant workers in cities need to take the initiative to contact schools to communicate about their children’s academic problems. Secondly, the government can adopt various channels to promote family education for migrant workers in cities. The government can take the form of Internet, TV, newspaper and so on to educate parents on how to educate their children better and raise awareness. The government can also take legal measures to protect workers’ rights and interests, improve relevant labor laws, guarantee migrant workers’ rest time, spend time with their children, and guarantee a certain level of funds to allow migrant workers to invest in their children’s healthy growth. Schools can also take a variety of ways to improve good communication with migrant workers in cities. For example, experts’ lectures can be held as far as possible to introduce scientific family education to migrant workers. For families with special circumstances, special treatment can be taken. For example, because many parents work overtime and fail to pick up their children on time, a self-study room can be opened so that children can use the time to do homework while waiting for their parents to reinforce the knowledge learned. Special education issues. According to the Beijing municipal education commission and so on eight departments jointly issued by the Beijing special education promotion plan (2017–2020) is explicitly specified in view of the nearby the principle of the priority of the disabled, and students with disabilities is an exemption entrance, but by the results of study found that a quarter of students with disabilities is not the most bad neighborhood school and margin entrance for the disabled, suggested the government further enrollment situation of supervision and inspection of the disabled, guarantee policy implement smoothly. All types of disabled students’ parents feedback “encounter problems don’t know who to find help” is the biggest problem, so the parents is the understanding of relevant policies for the disabled is not enough, insufficient or access to professional services and support, and suggested that the government improved the relevant professional service channels, let parents

82

4 An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity …

understand the admission standards, ways and channels, consulting and know professional support platform. It is suggested that the policies formulated by the government are more targeted and differentiated for different types of disabled people. According to the survey, students with mental disabilities and multiple disabilities are the least optimistic about entering the school, perhaps because they are the most difficult to educate. The results of the study showed that for the intelligence, mental, words the second entrance not smooth is the cause of the disabled receive school does not accept flame tongue need to reach a certain condition, I think should have social responsibility, because school in order to satisfy the government set the number of disabled people can be priority mildly disabled students, to the spirit of education, intelligence, speech disabled students some rejection. It is suggested that there are different types of places for disabled people, such as places for students with mental disabilities, places for students with intellectual disabilities (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018).

4.2 The Perspective of Educational Process The second aspect of educational equity is “educational process equity”, which means that in the process of education, every student can equally obtain the educational resources suitable for their needs, so as to achieve the maximum play of individual potential and achieve the growth of personality. Educational process equity is the key factor that affects educational equity and also the decisive factor that affects educational outcome equity. In the process of education, there are five groups of education departments, schools, teachers, students and their parents. There are many departments and personnel involved, and there are many types and quantities of relevant administrative policies. In this part, we select some typical administrative policies within the scope of China to promote the fairness of educational process, analyze the effects and problems achieved in the implementation process, and put forward our own Suggestions on these problems. Compulsory education gives all school-age children and adolescents the right and duty to receive basic education. Because of the restrictions on the level of political, economic and cultural development in various regions, it is inevitable that there are many gaps in the education process, such as urban–rural gap, regional gap, ethnic gap, gender gap, and so on, which leads to the phenomenon of inequality. The gap is mainly manifested in teaching resources and students’ own situation. In order to make the educational process fairer, the state council, the ministry of education and other relevant departments have introduced many different administrative policies. Teaching resources refer to all kinds of manpower and material conditions that can support educational and teaching activities, mainly including information, materials, equipment, personnel, places and so on. Teaching resources vary with the economic development of different regions and the differences between urban and rural areas. In educational practice, the unequal distribution of educational resources is a common phenomenon. Studies have shown that although the situation has shown a

4.2 The Perspective of Educational Process

83

trend of improvement, the imbalance of resource allocation of compulsory education in urban and rural areas is still prominent in China, and there are still “specific” urban–rural differences in resource allocation of teachers, equipment, books and school buildings. In terms of educational content, there is a tendency of urban superiority in school education in our country. The teaching materials of Chinese, ideology and morality, society and other subjects all show a distinct value orientation of urban life. There are many contents unfamiliar to rural children in the text. Even if is the familiar content, the realization also often is the countryside student unfamiliar. Surveys have found that most schools that can provide students with adequate learning opportunities are located in cities, while most schools with poor performance in providing learning opportunities are located in townships. At the same time, even if rural children follow their migration to urban schools, they are not able to enjoy the same educational rights as children from the destination due to their “identity”, and are treated unfairly in school, class incorporation, peer acceptance, competition awards and other aspects. Within the school, some schools set up key classes to gather excellent teachers and high-quality students for teaching, resulting in the loss of the rights and opportunities for ordinary students to enjoy the high-quality educational resources in the school. In the process of class teaching, students’ access to educational resources is often not equal. For example, there is a phenomenon of “middle sag” in class teaching, that is, teachers’ pay more attention to excellent students and underachievers, while middle-level students are easily ignored. In addition, teachers are more likely to give more recognition, appreciation and encouragement to excellent students, while they are more likely to show disgust, reprimand, derogatory and other emotions and behaviors to underachievers. Accordingly, in the pursuit of fairness in the educational process, it is necessary to distribute educational resources to every student equally. On this basis, we combine the contents of policy clauses listed in part with the relevant data obtained from the ministry of education to analyze the phenomenon of fair distribution of some representative educational resources and put forward some suggestions. School conditions. In the opinions of the ministry of education on further promoting the balanced development of compulsory education issued in 2005, it was pointed out that active measures should be taken to gradually narrow the gap in school running conditions. We need to define the current stage of balanced development of teacher allocation: the current rural education situation is not optimistic, a large number of rural population outflow. Therefore, the current rural teaching mainly develops towards small-class teaching. At present, the allocation of primary school teachers in our country has reached the stage of average student ratio equilibrium, but this is mainly related to the passive small scale of rural schools and classes in the process of rural school-age population flowing to cities and towns. The improvement of teacherstudent ratio has not brought about the improvement of the ratio of teachers to classes, let alone the improvement of the quality of education. Therefore, the balanced allocation of teachers in primary schools should be developed from the teacher-student ratio to the higher level. We should reasonably construct the teacher allocation mechanism with balanced educational workload. Division class ratio actually reflects the

84

4 An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity …

teaching workload: a division class ratio of 1/3 means that a teacher has to complete the teaching tasks of three classes. The smaller the division class ratio, the worse the teaching quality of the teacher may be. The core content of the teacher allocation policy of teachers’ equal teaching workload is to classify teachers’ teaching workload reasonably. The teaching workload can be divided into class-oriented and student-oriented teaching workload. We can consider the teaching workload generated by the number of classes and the number of students in a school at the same time and allocate corresponding teachers for the school so as to balance the workload of teachers in the schools in the region. We should establish supporting policies with balanced teacher allocation to increase the attractiveness of rural teachers. According to the above, rural schools, especially small-scale schools, need more teachers, and currently more teachers are moving to cities. Education attraction urbanization is also the reason for the low and unbalanced quality of compulsory education in rural areas. For rural areas, more teachers than classes mean less teachers, more classes, more teachers’ task, so it is necessary to share the teaching workload to teachers, improve the quality of teaching. Therefore, corresponding supporting policies are needed to increase the attractiveness of rural teachers. For example, according to the remote level of rural teacher subsidies, can be the cost of transportation, living expenses and so on. In addition, we also should have attractive incentive measure, give taller honor and treatment to wait a moment. The allocation of educational resources promotes the fairness of educational process from the perspective of allocation method, and the underlying assumption is that equal educational resources have the same effect on the development of all students. In fact, this hypothesis is not necessarily true, the same educational resources for different students are not homogeneous. A kind of educational resource has the development value to some students but may not have the same development value to others and may even go to the opposite direction. As Amartya Sen points out, different people can vary greatly in their ability to translate the basics into what they want to do, depending on their differences in nature, their different habits, and their environment. The educational process equity should not only consider the allocation method of educational resources, but also consider the character of educational resources, evaluate the educational value of a kind of educational resources to specific students, and investigate in what sense it translates into the realistic development of students. Therefore, to optimize the character of education and make the development value of education equally enjoyed by different students is the inevitable choice of education from the form of quantity distribution to the essence of quality (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018). The process of education mainly refers to the process of implementing various educational measures to achieve educational goals with the joint participation of educators while administrative policies are the codes of conduct formulated by government agencies to manage social and public affairs. We analyze the above administrative policies to promote educational process equity and find that most of them affect or manage the allocation of educational resources in educational process equity. Through the analysis of the policy effect, we find that these policies of “adjusting the allocation of educational resources so that every student can enjoy

4.2 The Perspective of Educational Process

85

educational resources equally” are effective but not enough after implementation. We should also select different indicators to measure the same problem when examining the effect of policy implementation. We should not be influenced by single and one-sided data indicators and simply draw conclusions on the effect of policy implementation. In addition we should according to the real-time condition of education process fairness to adjust our policy, therefore, in order to achieve the education process fairness, we should observe the real-time process of education to adjust the policy, the macro policy, is used to adjust the allocation of resources at the same time also want to consider the particularity of the students, which makes education from quantity allocation fairness to the real fair education quality, make every student is fair to enjoy the most suitable education.

4.3 The Perspective of Educational Results Educational outcome equity is the ultimate goal of educational equity. The educational results refer to the results and influences obtained by students after a period of learning experience. In the category of educational outcome connotation, there are two concepts, namely educational output and educational impact. The essence of educational outcome equity is that only considering the variables of the education system itself has an equal impact on academic performance. The equity of educational outcome is influenced by many factors, such as educational opportunity and educational process. Since the reform and opening up, China’s ministry of education has also attached great importance to the fairness of educational results, and issued a lot of relevant administrative policies, hoping to play a role in the fairness of educational results through the implementation of administrative policies. In the process of policy implementation, it has indeed strengthened the fairness of educational results in our country, but at the same time, there are some problems. From the perspective of educational results, the continuous development of educational undertakings, and the continuous efforts of educational equity, the compulsory education stage not only attaches importance to the quality of basic subjects, but also emphasizes the cultivation of patriotism. Schools at all levels should educate students about the historical and spiritual connotations of the national flag, national emblem and national anthem.” “Eight is the” first lesson “education activities. We will focus on “growing up together with the motherland” and deepen education in patriotism and revolutionary traditions. Hold a multimedia exhibition for young students.” In November 2019, the CPC central committee and the state council issued the implementation outline for patriotism education in the new era. The third point in the implementation outline emphasizes that “patriotism education in the new era should be aimed at all the people and focus on the youth”. It is required to give full play to the role of the main channel of classroom teaching, run the school’s ideological and political theory courses well, and organize the launch of patriotic boutique publications. Patriotism education is the foundation of compulsory education, and the

86

4 An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity …

emphasis on patriotism education is the performance of the development of compulsory education, and also the pursuit and practice of educational fairness. Compulsory education is guaranteed by the state and is compulsory, public welfare and universal (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018). Previous article mentioned in the new era of patriotism education implementation outline in classroom teaching aspects “innovation in the form of patriotism education, enrich and optimize the curriculum resources, support and encourage various forms to develop micro, micro education resources such as video and online courses,” in the publications aspects “combination point of interest and to accept habit, develop and actively promote patriotism reflect Chinese culture essence, elegant of network literature, animation, audio books, online games, mobile games, short video etc.” Are in line with the new era, the development of new technology under the background. Similarly, educational equity is a concept that keeps pace with The Times and is fair in line with the characteristics of the new era. The popularization of scientific and technological development in the stage of compulsory education is also a reflection of the quality and balance of compulsory education. Especially for the development of compulsory education of special education, the development of science and technology is conducive to the improvement of the educational results of special education. In 1960, the UNESCO general conference elaborated on the issue of educational equity in detail. “equity is the eternal pursuit of human beings, and the development of society proves that education is an indispensable way for human society to move towards peace, freedom, social equity and justice. During the 13th five-year plan period, “it will be an important task and goal of the new round of education reform and development to continue to vigorously promote educational equity and let everyone have the opportunity to change their own destiny through education.” With the development of China’s education, educational equity has been highlighted in various fields and at different levels, which plays a key role in the development of China’s education. The 17th national congress of the communist party of China put forward the idea that “education is the cornerstone of national rejuvenation and the equity of education is the important foundation of social equity”, which provides policy guidance for the research on the issue of educational equity. Party’s 18 proposed “to do a good job in the people’s satisfactory education, deepen the comprehensive reform of education field, vigorously promote education fair, rational allocation of education resources, the key to the rural, remote, poor and minority areas tilt, support special education, actively promoting migrant children equal access to education, let every child can be useful.” “To ensure that every child can enjoy a fair and quality education” is a solemn commitment made in the report to the 19th national congress of the communist party of China (CPC). The concept of educational outcome includes two aspects, namely educational output and educational impact. Educational output represents a direct result of the educational process and the educational resources received in the education system, such as academic performance, degree acquisition, and growth in ability or literacy. Educational impact refers to an indirect effect

4.3 The Perspective of Educational Results

87

of education, from the output of current education and previous educational experience. For example, higher income levels, higher living standards, and other favorable conditions of personal capital brought about by education (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018).

4.4 The Problems and Solutions 1. Equity in educational outcomes of comprehensive development is restricted. Even if the ministry of education issued the policies in place to ensure that the comprehensive development of education fair result, but there are individual regions due to reasons of the curing and enforcement is not enough only pay attention to the subject, graduation rates, and beneficial to graduation rates for ideology and moral character, study of the primary school English, information technology is not strong enough, don’t urge students to learn at ordinary times, at the time of inspection tend to be lax, records of the results of the result in these subjects education cannot get real. And for the development of the education result, the education opportunities and education process is also very important, in rural areas lack the corresponding teachers and equipment, and related policy on the concept of comprehensive development of knowledge is not enough, can all result in a fair and comprehensive development of education results at the same time, the whole society unilateral pursue graduation rates outlook, the values of materialism and fast-paced way of life, etc., make the schools, teachers and students awareness of physical fitness test is one-sided, physical testing of students can’t be the right position, publicity and education of physical fitness testing, regular training is difficult to guarantee, so. And some schools don’t pay attention to the cervix, supervision and inspection and the school is not required to organize training, operation is not standard, slack, etc., can affect the normal development of physical fitness test, at the same time also will mislead students to a certain extent for the understanding of the physical tests, physical tests into the student’s psychological burden, which finally impact on the physical health of teenagers. We need to strengthen the implementation of students’ physique test policy. The life of policy lies in its implementation. If the policy cannot be implemented, the rest will be castles in the air. Students’ physical fitness test is related to the physical health of hundreds of millions of students. It is the responsibility and obligation of the government to promote the physical health of adolescents through effective policies. The administrative departments of education at all levels and the sports bureaus should cooperate with each other and take strong measures to improve the students’ physical quality. The number of students whose health is monitored once every two years is small, and the test results are not representative. Some parents are encouraged to participate in the students’ physique test, which can not only make parents understand the physique test, but also supervise the physique test (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018). The fairness of education results of individual groups cannot be guaranteed. The integration of the education focuses on the equality of education quality, which

88

4 An Analysis of the Administrative Policy on Promoting Equity …

means that children of migrant workers and urban students are relatively equal in educational opportunities and educational effects. Some studies have shown that the opportunities for further study are still relatively limited, there is a certain gap between the educational effect and that of local students in cities, and there is still room for improvement compared with the education in migrant areas. There is still a certain gap between the academic performance of children of migrant workers and the expectation of their parents. As for the education of left-behind children, the policies of the ministry of education all indicate that they not only need to be educated, but also need to be able to go to school well. In 2010 the national medium and longterm education reform and development plan outline put forward “to promote fair as a national basic education policy”, “to improve the quality as the core task of education reform and development”. China’s current basic implementation popularize nine-year compulsory education is for the pursuit of “quality education fair”. Therefore, it is urgent to promote the education of left-behind children from the perspective of educational results and educational opportunities in the process of realizing the long-term planning goal of education in China. The principle of compensation is more demanding than the principle of equality. In the allocation of resources, it is not enough to treat the disadvantaged groups as the same as other groups. It is fair to allocate more resources to the disadvantaged groups so as to truly reflect the intention of “compensation”. In addition, national and regional basic standards for educational conditions should be established, including school construction standards, standards for equipment and books, standards for teachers, and standards for per capita expenditure per student, etc., to lay a foundation for the effective implementation of the compensation policy. Some researchers used PISA2015 data of four provinces and cities in China to analyze the differences between urban and rural education results of four provinces and cities in China. We explored the relationship between the allocation of school resources and the equality of urban and rural education results. The results show that there is an obvious gap between urban and rural students in math, reading and science literacy in four provinces and cities in China, and the balance of school material resources, human resources and management resources can promote the equality of urban and rural education results (Chen 2017; Huang 2018; Xin and Huang 2009; Zhu and Yang 2008; Zhu and Li 2018).

References Chen G. H. (2017). Education integration of children of migrant workers’ accompanying migrant workers--starting point, process and result. China Youth Research, 17(06), 101–106. Huang, L. (2018). Can the balanced allocation of school resources promote the equality of urban and rural education results?–Evidence from four provinces and cities in China. Educational Scientific Research, 18(10), 30–39. Xin T, & Huang N. (2009). The ultimate goal of educational equity: educational outcome equity–a redefinition of educational outcome equity. Education Research, 30(08), 24–27.

References

89

Zhu, H.Q., & Yang, H.Y. (2008). The principle of educational equity and its policy implications. Education Research, 8(01), 10–16. Zhu, X., & Li, J. (2018). Conceptualizing the ontology of higher education with Chinese characteristics. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(12), 1144–1156.

Chapter 5

An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity in China

This chapter concentrates on an analysis of the legal policies to promote the educational equity in China. Since ancient times, educational equity has been a topic and goal of people’s discussion and pursuit in China. It is the foundation of social equity and the realization of educational equity is of great significance to the healthy development of society. Some specific legal policies play an important role in promoting the realization of educational equity. Therefore, the analysis of China’s legal policies promoting educational equity plays an important role in promoting the realization of educational equity. In theory, the educational equity in China can be divided into the equity of enrollment opportunity, the equity of educational process and the process of educational outcome. The text will sort out China’s legal policies to promote educational equity from these three aspects (mainly aiming at the stage of compulsory education), analyze the implementation effects and problems of these legal policies, and finally put forward countermeasures and Suggestions for these problems.

5.1 The Classification of China’s Laws and Policies to Promote Educational Equity China’s legal policy of promoting equity in education. Legal policy refers to the action basis and standard of law and legal system formulated and followed by the state, political parties and other social organizations in a certain historical period. In theory, educational equity can be divided into the equity of enrollment opportunity, the equity of educational process and the process of educational outcome. China’s legal and policy system for promoting equity in education. Generally speaking, China’s legal and policy system for promoting educational equity is the constitution, laws and administrative regulations from top to bottom. Among them, the constitution and some legal documents play a major role in promoting the equity of compulsory education. The specific contents are as follows: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Educational Equity Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0231-3_5

91

92

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

1. Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (the current constitution is the 1982 constitution) (1) Emphasizing the important role of developing the cause of socialist education. Article 19 of the constitution stipulates: “the state develops the cause of socialist education and raises the scientific and cultural level of the whole nation.” “The state develops all kinds of educational facilities to eliminate illiteracy, conducts political, cultural, scientific, technical and professional education for workers, farmers, state functionaries and other laborers, and encourages self-study.” “The state encourages collective economic organizations, state enterprises and institutions and other social forces to establish various educational undertakings in accordance with the law.” Article 23 of the constitution stipulates: “the state trains various professionals to serve socialism, expands the ranks of intellectuals, and creates conditions to give full play to their role in socialist modernization.” (2) Building socialist spiritual civilization and train new socialist people with all-round development of morality, intelligence and physique. Article 40 of the constitution stipulates: “the state cultivates the all-round development of young people, juveniles and children in moral character, intelligence and physique.” Article 24 of the constitution stipulates: “the state strengthens the construction of socialist spiritual civilization by popularizing education in ideals, morality, culture, discipline and the legal system, and by formulating and implementing various codes of conduct and conventions among the masses in different areas of urban and rural areas. “The state advocates the public morality of loving the motherland, the people, labor, science and socialism, and educates the people in patriotism, collectivism, internationalism and communism, as well as in dialectical materialism and historical materialism, and opposes capitalism, feudalism and other decadent ideas.” (3) Clearly stipulating the tasks of popularizing primary compulsory education and developing vocational education. Article 19 of the constitution stipulates: “the state shall establish schools of all kinds, popularize compulsory primary education, develop secondary education, vocational education and higher education, and develop pre-school education.” (4) Chinese citizens have the right and obligation to receive education. Article 33 of the constitution states: “all citizens of the People’s Republic of China are equal before the law. The rights and duties of citizens are inseparable. Any citizen shall enjoy the rights prescribed by the constitution and the law, and at the same time must perform the duties prescribed by the constitution and the law.” Article 46 of the constitution states: “citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right and obligation to receive education.” (3) classification and arrangement of legal provisions. 2. Based on the admission opportunity, educational process and educational results (1) Provisions for fair access. A. Constitution: Article 46 citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right and obligation to receive education.

5.1 The Classification of China’s Laws and Policies to Promote …

93

B. Compulsory education law of the People’s Republic of China. Article 4 all school-age children and adolescents who have the nationality of the People’s Republic of China shall, without distinction as to sex, nationality, race, family property status or religious belief, enjoy the right to compulsory education on an equal footing in accordance with the law and perform the obligation to receive compulsory education. Article 11. All children who have reached the age of six shall be sent to school by their parents or other legal guardians to receive and complete compulsory education; Children in areas where conditions are not available may be postponed to the age of seven. Article 12 school-age children and juveniles are exempted from entrance examinations. The local people’s governments at various levels shall ensure that school-age children and adolescents are enrolled in schools in the places where their registered permanent residence is located. Article 13 the administrative departments of education under the people’s governments at the county level and the people’s governments of towns and townships shall organize and urge school-age children and juveniles to enroll in school, help solve the difficulties of school-age children and juveniles in receiving compulsory education, and take measures to prevent school-age children and juveniles from dropping out of school. Article 14 it is prohibited for any employing unit to recruit school-age children or juveniles who should receive compulsory education. Article 21 compulsory education shall be provided to juvenile delinquents who have not completed compulsory education or to minors who have been taken compulsory education measures, and the necessary funds shall be guaranteed by the people’s government. C. Teachers law of the People’s Republic of China: none. D. Education law of the People’s Republic of China. Article 9 citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall have the right and obligation to receive education. Citizens are entitled to equal educational opportunities in accordance with the law, regardless of ethnic group, race, sex, occupation, property status or religious belief. Article 19 the state institutes a system of nine-year compulsory education. The people’s governments at all levels shall adopt various measures to ensure that schoolage children and juveniles go to school. Parents or other guardians of school-age children and adolescents, as well as relevant social organizations and individuals, shall have the obligation to enable school-age children and adolescents to receive and complete compulsory education for a prescribed number of years. Article 37 Educatees shall enjoy equal rights according to law in such aspects as enrollment, admission to higher education and employment. Schools and relevant administrative departments shall, in accordance with the relevant regulations of the state, ensure that women enjoy equal rights with men in such aspects as enrollment, admission to higher education, employment, conferment of academic degrees, and dispatch of students to study abroad.

94

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

Article 40 the state, society, families, schools and other institutions of education shall create conditions for minors who commit illegal or criminal ACTS to receive education. E. Law of the People’s Republic of China on the protection of disabled persons: Article 21 the state guarantees disabled persons the right to equal access to education. The government, society and schools shall take effective measures to solve the practical difficulties of disabled children and juveniles in schooling and help them to complete compulsory education. Article 25 ordinary institutions of education shall provide education to disabled persons who are capable of receiving ordinary education and shall provide convenience and assistance for their study. Ordinary primary schools and junior secondary schools must admit disabled children and juveniles who are able to adapt themselves to their study and life. Ordinary senior secondary schools, secondary vocational schools and institutions of higher learning must admit disabled students who meet the admission requirements prescribed by the state and may not refuse to enroll them because of their disabilities. In case of such refusal, the parties concerned, or their relatives or guardians may request the relevant departments to handle the matter, and the relevant departments shall order the schools concerned to enroll the students. (2) Provisions on equity in the educational process. A. The constitution: none. B. Compulsory education law of the People’s Republic of China. Article 5 the people’s governments at various levels and their relevant departments shall perform all the duties prescribed by this law and guarantee the right of schoolage children and juveniles to receive compulsory education. Article 6 the State Council and local people’s governments at or above the county level shall be the rational allocation of education resources, promote the compulsory education balanced development, improve the conditions of weak school, and take measures to guarantee rural areas, the implementation of compulsory education in ethnic minority areas, protect family economic difficulties and disabled school-age children and adolescents receive compulsory education. Article 22 the people’s governments at or above the county level and their administrative departments of education shall promote the balanced development of schools, narrow the gap in conditions for running schools, and may not divide schools into key schools and non-key schools. Schools shall not set up key and non-key classes. Article 43 the basic standard of public expenditure per student shall be formulated by the financial department under the state council in conjunction with the administrative department of education and shall be adjusted in the light of the economic and social development. The formulation and adjustment of the basic standard for per capita public expenditure of students shall meet the basic needs of education and teaching. The standard of public expenditure per student in a special education school (class) shall be higher than the standard of public expenditure per student in an ordinary school.

5.1 The Classification of China’s Laws and Policies to Promote …

95

Article 44 the input of funds for compulsory education shall be jointly borne by the state council and the local people’s governments at various levels according to their functions and duties, and the people’s governments of the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government shall be responsible for the overall implementation of the system. The expenses for compulsory education in rural areas shall be Shared by the people’s governments at various levels according to the provisions of the state council. The people’s governments at all levels provide free textbooks and subsidize the living expenses of boarders to school-age children and adolescents from poor families. C. Teachers law of the People’s Republic of China. Article 4 the people’s governments at various levels shall take measures to strengthen ideological and political education and professional training of teachers, improve their working and living conditions, protect their legitimate rights and interests and improve their social status. The whole society should respect teachers. Article 25 the average salary level of teachers shall not be lower than or higher than that of state functionaries and shall be gradually raised. The state council shall formulate specific measures to establish a regular promotion and increase salary system. Article 28 the local people’s governments at various levels and the relevant departments under the state council shall give priority and preferential treatment to the construction, lease and sale of urban teachers’ housing. The people’s governments at the county and township levels shall provide convenience for rural primary and secondary school teachers to provide housing. D. Education law of the People’s Republic of China. Article 10 the state shall, in accordance with the characteristics and needs of the minority nationalities, assist the areas inhabited by the minority nationalities in developing educational undertakings. The state shall assist outlying and poverty-stricken areas in developing educational undertakings. The state supports and develops educational undertakings for the disabled. Article 12 the common language of the state shall be the basic language of education and teaching in schools and other institutions of education, and schools and other institutions of education shall use the common language of the state for education and teaching. Schools and other institutions of education in ethnic autonomous areas where the majority of students are ethnic minorities shall, in light of the actual situation, conduct bilingual education in the spoken and written languages commonly used by the state and the spoken and written languages commonly used by their own or local ethnic groups. The state shall take measures to provide conditions and support for bilingual education in schools and other institutions of education with the majority of minority students. Article 38 the state and society shall provide various forms of financial aid to children, juveniles and young people who meet the requirements for admission to school and whose families have financial difficulties (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020).

96

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

Article 39 the state, society, schools and other institutions of education shall, in accordance with the physical and mental characteristics and needs of disabled persons, provide them with assistance and convenience. Article 57 the state council and the local people’s governments at or above the county level shall set up a special fund for education to give priority to assisting outlying and poverty-stricken areas and areas inhabited by minority nationalities to implement compulsory education. E. Law of the People’s Republic of China on the protection of disabled persons. Article 21 the state guarantees disabled persons the right to equal access to education. The people’s governments at all levels shall provide free textbooks to disabled students receiving compulsory education and students from poor families with disabled persons, and provide subsidies for living expenses such as boarding; Disabled students receiving education other than compulsory education and students from poor disabled families shall be subsidized in accordance with the relevant regulations of the state. Article 23 education for disabled persons shall be conducted according to their physical and mental characteristics and needs in accordance with the following requirements: (1) While carrying out ideological and cultural education, strengthen physical and mental compensation and vocational education; (2) According to the type of disability and the ability to receive, adopt general education or special education; The special education curriculum, teaching materials, teaching methods, enrollment and school age, can be moderately flexible. Article 25 ordinary institutions of education shall provide education to disabled persons who are capable of receiving ordinary education and shall provide convenience and assistance for their study. Article 29 the government departments concerned shall organize and support the research and application of braille and sign language, the compilation and publication of teaching materials for special education, and the research, production and supply of teaching and learning utensils and other auxiliary articles for special education. (3) Provisions on equity in educational outcomes. A. Constitution: Article 19 the state shall establish schools of all kinds, make primary education universal, develop secondary, vocational and higher education and develop pre-school education. Article 40 the state trains young people, adolescents and children to develop in an all-round way, morally, intellectually and physically. B. Compulsory education law: Article 3 compulsory education must implement the educational policy of the state, carry out quality-oriented education, improve the quality of education, enable school-age children and adolescents to develop in an all-round way morally, intellectually and physically, and lay a foundation for the training of socialist builders and successors with ideals, morality, culture and discipline.

5.1 The Classification of China’s Laws and Policies to Promote …

97

Article 29 in education and teaching, teachers shall treat students equally, pay attention to the individual differences of students, teach students according to their aptitude, and promote the full development of students. Article 34 education and teaching work shall conform to the law of education and the characteristics of students’ physical and mental development, be oriented to all students, teach and educate, integrate moral, intellectual, physical, and aesthetic education into educational and teaching activities, lay emphasis on cultivating students’ ability to think independently, innovate and practice, and promote their all-round development (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). C. Teachers law of the People’s Republic of China. Article 8 teachers shall perform the following duties: to educate students in the basic principles stipulated in the constitution, to educate them in patriotism and national unity, to educate them in the legal system, to educate them in ideology, morality, culture, science and technology, to organize and lead them in carrying out beneficial social activities; Care for and care for all students, respect for students’ personality, promote students in moral, intellectual, physical and other aspects of allround development; To stop behaviors that are harmful to students or other behaviors that infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of students, criticize and resist phenomena that are harmful to the healthy growth of students. Article 27 the local people’s governments at various levels shall give subsidies to teachers and graduates with technical secondary school or above who engage in education and teaching in areas inhabited by minority nationalities and outlying and poverty-stricken areas. D. Education law of the People’s Republic of China. Article 22 the state practices a system of academic certificates. Schools and other institutions of education established with the approval or recognition of the state shall, in accordance with the relevant regulations of the state, issue certificates of academic qualifications or other certificates of studies. Article 23 the state practices a system of academic degrees. Degree-conferring units shall, in accordance with law, grant corresponding degrees to persons who have attained a certain academic or professional level, and issue them with degree certificates. E. Law of the People’s Republic of China on the protection of disabled persons. Article 27 government departments concerned, units to which disabled persons belong and relevant social organizations shall carry out the elimination of illiteracy, vocational training, entrepreneurship training and other adult education for disabled persons, and encourage disabled persons to become successful through self-study. Article 28 the state shall, in a planned way, establish normal colleges and universities for special education at various levels and in various specialties, and set up special education classes attached to ordinary normal colleges and universities to train and train teachers of special education. Ordinary normal colleges and universities offer special education courses or teach relevant contents to enable ordinary teachers to master necessary knowledge of special education.

98

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

5.2 The Effects of China’s Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity According to the data in the first part of this paper, in the main legal documents related to education in the country, there are about 13 legal provisions on equal access to schools. These provisions are mainly concentrated in the compulsory education law of the People’s Republic of China, the education law of the People’s Republic of China and the law of the People’s Republic of China on the protection of disabled persons. At the overall level, the main emphasis of the law is to ensure that all school-age children, juvenile fair access to school; Among them, according to the specific circumstances of different school-age children and adolescents, more detailed provisions were made. 1. The enrollment rate of compulsory education as a whole. According to the data released by the ministry of education, PRC, the net enrollment rate of primary school-age children reached 99.88% in 2015, and the gross enrollment rate of junior middle school was 104.0%. In 2016, the net enrollment rate of primary schoolage children reached 99.9%, and the gross enrollment rate of junior middle school reached 104%, exceeding or equivalent to the average level of high-income countries. In 2017, the net enrollment rate of primary school-age children reached 99.91%, the gross enrollment rate of junior high school students reached 103.5%, and the penetration rate of nine-year compulsory education reached the average level of high-income countries in the world. In 2018, the net enrollment rate of primary school-age children was 99.95%, 0.04 percentage points higher than the previous year, and the gross enrollment rate of junior middle school reached 100.9% (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). According to the data, 2016 is an important node in the process of the development and popularization of compulsory education in China. In this year, the enrollment rate of compulsory education in China reached the average level of high-income countries in the world for the first time. Compared with 1978, the net enrollment rate in primary schools increased by 5.99 percentage points, and the gross enrollment rate in secondary schools increased by 37.6 percentage points. Since the reform and opening up, China has made great efforts to popularize compulsory education. The relevant laws and regulations enacted by the state are the key to the rapid popularization of nine-year compulsory education. 2. From the specific situation, the enrollment rate of compulsory education. The law of the People’s Republic of China on the protection of disabled persons, the education law of the People’s Republic of China and the compulsory education law of the People’s Republic of China all contain provisions for the compulsory education of disabled school-age children and adolescents. The state emphasizes that measures must be taken to ensure that disabled school-age children and adolescents receive compulsory education. For this reason, China has made great efforts to develop special education, and the enrollment rate of disabled school-age children and adolescents in compulsory education has been increased. By the end of 2016, more than 90% of children with visual, hearing and intellectual disabilities

5.2 The Effects of China’s Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity

99

had been enrolled in compulsory education. By the end of 2017, more than 90% of China’s children with visual, hearing and intellectual disabilities had been enrolled in compulsory education, and 579,000 disabled students were enrolled in ordinary schools and special education schools, and 2,107 special education schools, 19 times and seven times the figures in 1978, respectively. It can be seen from these data that the enrollment rate of disabled school-age children and adolescents in compulsory education has reached a high level, and great achievements have been made in the cause of special education since the reform and opening up. Provisions concerning the compulsory education of children and juveniles from families with financial difficulties are distributed in the laws of various ministries, among which the education law of the People’s Republic of China directly stipulates that “the state and society shall provide various forms of financial assistance to children, juveniles and juveniles who meet the enrollment requirements and whose families have financial difficulties. Through the form of law to ensure the state to poor families of school-age children, teenagers to receive compulsory education. Since 2012, a total of 1,090,661 million yuan has been subsidized to Chinese students (excluding the “two exemptions” for compulsory education and nutritional and dietary subsidies), and a total of 619 million students (children) have been subsidized. The annual subsidy amount increased from 112.608 billion yuan in 2012 to 204.295 billion yuan in 2018, an increase of 81.42%. Of this, annual government investment increased from 82.474 billion yuan in 2012 to 129.08 billion yuan in 2018, an increase of 56.42%. The accumulative financial input reached 728.131 billion-yuan, accounting for 66.76% of the total funds subsidized. From 84.1384 million in 2012 to 98.0148 million in 2018, an increase of 16.49%. In 2017, for example, there were 16.0461 million students receiving living subsidies for compulsory education, totaling 17.11 billion yuan, an increase of 1.40 billion yuan or 8.48% over the previous year. In addition to subsidizing students who are in the stage of compulsory education and whose families have financial difficulties, the state has also implemented the policy of “two exemptions” for students in the stage of compulsory education in accordance with the law. Government budgets at all levels allocated 17.594 billion yuan for free state textbooks for compulsory education, of which 14.933 billion yuan from the central government budget and 2.661 billion yuan from local governments, benefiting 142 million primary and secondary school students in compulsory education. Local governments at all levels allocated 2.72 billion yuan for local free textbooks, benefiting 83.042 million primary and secondary school students in compulsory education. Countries in accordance with the law of compulsory education of school-age children and adolescents, especially the family economic difficulties funding, poor children and adolescents of the schoolage children and adolescents in the poor areas of rights are guaranteed by education, ensure that they won’t because of economic problems can’t entrance, this also is the law to protect the entrance equal opportunity. The achievement in protecting equal access to schools is enormous. In 2003, the number of children in povertystricken counties dropped from 16.4% to 13.5% in 2004. Among the reasons for the dropout of school among the children in the poverty-stricken counties, the proportion of economic difficulties decreased from 44.1% to 42.3%. More poor school-age

100

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

students are getting into school, and in terms of equal access, the difficulties caused by differences in family economic conditions are gradually being eliminated (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). The effect of teachers’ sense of distributive justice in the process of education. China has implemented merit pay system in compulsory education schools since 2009, aiming to stimulate the enthusiasm and initiative of teachers. In the past 10 years of policy implementation, the incentive effect is not satisfactory. Among them, the incentive performance salary distribution within the school cannot reflect the actual performance of teachers, which leads to the low sense of fairness of teachers, which is an important reason that restricts the incentive effect. How to reflect actual performance and guarantee teachers’ sense of fairness in the distribution of incentive performance pay is a difficult problem for school administrators. The essence of education result fair, does not need to each of the students from different background fully on academic performance, but education can’t control that part of the variables were ruled out after, only considering their own education system variable is equal to the impact of grades, this part of the equality is the true sense of the fairness of education results. Educational outcome equity, as a quantitative indicator, can not only evaluate the educational outcome itself, but also evaluate and measure the educational starting point and the educational process, and test the effect of the implementation of the educational starting point and the educational process as an outcome indicator. Since 1978, the number of Chinese citizens with higher education degrees has increased exponentially, and the illiteracy rate has reached a record low, according to data from China’s ministry of education. So, from the overall view, China’s legal policy for education result fair effect is good in stability, however, the existing evaluation system of “positive” conclusion is ruled out education can’t control that part of the variables, how to eliminate education can’t control that part of the variables, also need time and inspection of truth. Problems in China’s legal policies to promote educational equity. Although China has a lot of laws and policies to promote educational equity, China is a vast country, and the formulation of laws and regulations is not a continuous process, but a long-term accumulation, which is bound to lead to its legal spirit is not completely consistent, and sometimes even before and after conflict. Behind this not only is the problem caused by the contradiction of the legislator’s idea, but also reflects the gap between the masses and the law. In addition, due to geographical and historical reasons, the unbalanced regional development is still China’s national conditions. As a superstructure, education relies on the material basis. The differences in the material basis of different regions undoubtedly lead to the difficulty in realizing national educational equity. National legal policies to promote educational equity are often close to the guiding ideology rather than a definite standard. Taking article 22 of the compulsory education law of the People’s Republic of China as an example, it stipulates that “the people’s governments at or above the county level and their administrative departments of education shall promote the balanced development of schools, narrow the gap in the conditions of running schools, and shall not divide schools into key schools and non-key schools. Schools are not allowed to set up key and non-key classes.”

5.2 The Effects of China’s Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity

101

Primary and secondary schools often recruit students by school district. This law is in line with the spirit of promoting educational equity. It hopes that students in different school districts can enjoy equal or nearly equal education in a way that promotes balanced development of all schools. However, the law did not regulate school choice explicitly at first. As far as I know, the trend of school choice has been intensifying in large and medium-sized cities for a long time since 1993. It has even been called the civilization of compulsory education. This phenomenon leads to the outflow of students from the regions with lower education level to the regions with higher education level. As a result, schools in the regions with lower education level have lagged behind other schools in terms of enrollment, and there are in fact key schools, which adds difficulties to the balanced development of education. Article 22 of the compulsory education law of the People’s Republic of China went into effect as early as September 1, 2006. However, it was not until the third plenary session of the 18th CPC central committee, or even until January 26, 2014, that the ministry of education issued the implementation opinions on further improving the work of nearby enrollment without examination for primary school students to enter junior high school, which emphasized the weakening of school choice and deepening of nearby enrollment. This is undoubtedly the phenomenon of separation between law and policy. It takes a lot of time for the guidelines to be put into practice, making the problem unpalatable (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). In addition, due to the development of China’s market economy, the rise and growth of private education has also led to the separation of laws and policies. And initial stage of compulsory education of the private school admissions, tend to have larger autonomy, the law of the People’s Republic of China private education promotion law “does not make detailed regulations to recruit students, which means that for a long time, compulsory education and private education promotion law exists between split between a piece of blank–private education of how to recruit students. At present, the treatment of most areas is the private compulsory education school enrollment into the examination and approval of the unified management, and the public school enrollment; Private ordinary high schools recruit students in step with public schools according to the plan, scope, standard and method of enrollment approved by the examination and approval organs. (but the earliest data I can find is no earlier than 2017, which means that there must be a long period of time in between when there are private schools that cross school districts or even recruit improperly. The separation between policies and laws is not only natural, but also the root cause of the problem. In my opinion, it is the unclear legal status and the lack of practice of the law itself. The behavior and decision of local education departments are often only mentioned at the beginning “in accordance with the spirit of the law”, and the actual measures are often decided by the local authorities themselves, without a detailed standard. In addition, for a long time, our government agencies are complicated and even disordered, which makes it difficult for policies and laws to be passed everywhere. Weak legal standards and regional unfairness. Taking article 21 of the law of the People’s Republic of China on the protection of the disabled as an example, it points out that disabled students should be provided with subsidies, but there is no

102

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

clear amount standard. This leads to different implementation situations in different regions. For example, in the 13th five-year plan for the development of undertakings for the disabled in Gansu province, “for disabled students in the stage of compulsory education, 500 yuan per student per year will be given as subsidies for special school supplies and transportation expenses. And Hangzhou uptown the general office of the municipal government about strengthening the development of undertakings for disabled persons of urban and rural areas as a whole comprehensive and upgrade the quality of life of urban and rural people with disabilities implementation opinion “stipulated in” for students with disabilities or family per capita annual income in the low standard within 120% home for the disabled children, accept preschool education in nursery school, school of finance lays every school year for every 2000 yuan of subsidies and other disabled children in school of finance lays every school year for every 1000 yuan subsidies, subsidies for period of not more than 3 years; For students with disabilities or family per capita annual income in the low standard within 120% home for the disabled children, in school period accept elementary school, junior high school education, high school paragraphs, each have each academic year, respectively, to give 600 yuan, 1000 yuan and 2000 yuan in the school, the other born disabled children per family every school year to 300 yuan, 500 yuan and 1000 yuan respectively to school subsidies; For disabled students or children of disabled families whose per capita annual income is within 120% of the subsistence allowance standard, “due to the large differences in national economic level, the reasons for the differences can be understood (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). But for a law to be better enforced, it should have at least one minimum standard. If the full power of each region to their own regulations, this is in essence the rule of the people and illegal rule, is not conducive to promoting educational equality. Gansu province can set a limit of 500 yuan per year, so if a place with a more backward development level cannot even offer a subsidy of 500 yuan, it should have a minimum standard of living that at least meets the requirements of disabled students, rather than leaving it to the local government to decide. The estrangement between law and policy and people’s real life. It is undoubtedly necessary, even urgent, to promote educational equity on the social level. But the educational equity that the masses crave may not be “real equity”, but closer to the concept of “equal opportunity". Although the compulsory education law clearly states that there are no key schools in the compulsory education stage, the concept of key schools and famous schools still hangs on the lips of parents in real life. I conducted a anonymous survey in a number of QQ groups, and the vast majority (84.7%) believe that equal opportunity is more in line with their needs. In other words, although the school district system has been strengthened to try to make no distinction between focus and non-focus, the gap between schools not only exists, but even can be said to be a gap, which leads to an unfair phenomenon, which may lead to the difference of school districts across a street, leading to students entering different schools. The hot of school district house is the embodiment of this one policy undoubtedly. From the household register this starts, the child has stood on the different starting line. The gap in compulsory education should not be so wide,

5.2 The Effects of China’s Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity

103

but it is. Instead of protecting everyone’s right to a fair education, the school district system has become a constraint on the quality of the school’s students attend. The opportunity to receive a better education is not determined by the students themselves, but by their family background and social class, which is actually unfair (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). In a word, some policies and laws are divorced from the actual national conditions and do not conform to the current situation that educational resources are still insufficient. As mentioned before, the idealized school district system can make education easier and more convenient, but the actual difference in education level makes it a shackle. In some ways, it’s not even as fair as offering entrance exams. There are many local policies also have such problems, such as the local “burden reduction order” policy, although the makers are in order to reduce the burden of primary and secondary school students, the intentions are good, but due to the lack of communication with parents, or even with students, the social education situation is not enough understanding. In addition, the differences in the actual implementation of the local implementation force not only did not reduce the burden, but also pushed the students to the social tutoring institutions outside the school, which did not reduce the students’ burden, but also added the parents’ burden. That means to promote education fair policy legislation should never depend on a racket head, must rely on a detailed survey research, cannot “band-aid”, only to solve the problem of surface remedy to the case, students burden was due to the deterioration of competition, is the typical example education unfair, examination of the content and course of the existing knowledge do not match, has implied information outside the classroom. It can be said that only part of the students has the right to know, leading to the vast majority of students can only rely on the sea tactics, to feel the elephant. The education sector should have done more to address such inequalities than to take a one-size-fits-all approach. The problems arising from the implementation of laws and policies. In the compulsory education law of 1986, there was no explicit stipulation that “key classes and non-key classes should not be divided". On the one hand, the limitations of economic development at that time inevitably required the concentration of highquality education resources to guarantee the efficiency in advance. On the other hand, it is related to the lack of consideration of various aspects of educational equity by the legislators in the case of the initial legislation. And with the continuous development of education cause in our country, the economic basis of affordable enhances unceasingly, the 2006 revision of the article 22 of the compulsory education law to make clear: “and the education administrative department of the people’s government at or above the county level shall promote the balanced development of the school, reducing the gap between school educational condition, the school shall not be divided into key schools and non-key schools. Schools are not allowed to set up key and non-key classes.” Moreover, no amendment has been made to this article in 2015 and 2018. But has the spirit embodied in this law been thoroughly implemented and enforced? I think there is still room for improvement in the degree of implementation, which is embodied in the phenomenon of “school choice fever”: the imbalance between public and private education; “School choice with money”

104

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

threatens fair opportunity; As well as in the process of the government’s supervision difficulties, the absence of functions from time to time. The imbalance of private junior high schools’ breeds disguised key schools. On November 30, 2018, the ministry of education on the several typical cases related to private education, pointed out that “some areas in the compulsory education development in the public private development imbalances, weakening the government responsibilities, a few private schools such outstanding problems as violations of running a school, seriously damage the interests of the masses of the people and good ecological education”. For example, xi ‘an city, Shaanxi province, “allows some private junior high schools to conduct comprehensive quality assessment at the beginning of junior high school and conduct joint ‘point examination’ with off-campus training institutions to compete for students”. The chaos of “choosing schools (classes) with money” and “favor classes” disturb the order of enrollment. Due to the imbalance of educational conditions and people’s unequal social and economic status, “choosing schools with money”, “choosing schools with social capital” and “choosing schools with rights” sometimes occur, which seriously affects the fairness of enrollment opportunities. The enforcement of laws related to the fairness of the educational process—take the treatment of teachers as an example. Article 31 of the compulsory education law emphasizes that the people’s government should guarantee that the average salary level of teachers should not be lower than the average salary level of local civil servants and indicates that the treatment of teachers in rural areas and special education should get more attention. In 2009, merit pay was implemented, which linked teachers’ salary income to performance, and raised teachers’ salary level to some extent (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). Data from the China statistical yearbook 2019 shows that, compared vertically, the average salary in the education sector has been rising year by year. By horizontal comparison, in 2018, the national average salary of the education industry was 92,383 yuan/year, which was lower than that of the financial industry, culture, sports and entertainment industry, power industry and heat industry, etc., ranking the 6th among 19 industries, which was in the middle of the range. Compared with other regions, the average annual salary of teachers in all provinces is higher than the overall average salary, but close to the average salary level. According to local data in 2019, the provinces with the highest and lowest annual average wages in the education sector are Beijing (161,029 yuan per year) and Henan (71,053 yuan per year), respectively. However, for a big city like Beijing with high consumption level and housing pressure, the salary level of 160,000 yuan/year can hardly make teachers. Effectiveness of justice. Sometimes, judicial decisions alone are not enough to improve children’s access to schools in remote areas, and the effectiveness of justice in cases related to school attendance is limited. The object of the lawsuit searched the full text of the compulsory education law in the database of “Peking University magic weapon”. The most common case and judgment documents were those related to article 5. Among the 78 cases and judgment documents, most of the cases are related to the admission opportunity. Generally speaking, the plaintiff is the local people’s government, and the defendant is the guardian of the children who are out

5.2 The Effects of China’s Legal Policies to Promote Educational Equity

105

of school. Such judicial judgment provides legal basis for the control of dropping out of school for impoverished children. But it is difficult for the government to pay enough attention to each individual. Rigor of legislation. In the legislation, our country current “education law” “compulsory education law” the justiciability still has the enhancement space. Justiciability refers to “the possibility that educational laws and regulations may be applied by any person through a dispute resolution procedure in a legally prescribed institution (such as an arbitration institution or a court).” A lot of educational disputes can’t be solved perfectly through the reasonable procedure of justice, and most of them are solved by administrative management rather than litigation. Education law is often ignored in judicial practice and fails to play its role. In addition, it is difficult to define the subject of responsibility, including the legal relationship between school and students, school and teacher, which needs to be detailed. Therefore, education law often does not directly and effectively affect the subjects of power—teachers and students (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020).

5.3 Countermeasures and Suggestions Governments at all levels should optimize the structure of fiscal expenditure, make overall plans for various incomes, give priority to ensuring the full input of educational funds, and regard them as the key areas of fiscal expenditure. Should strictly in accordance with the relevant education laws and regulations, in accordance with the requirements of statutory growth reflected in the implementation of the budget and the budget at the beginning of excess income distribution, to ensure the regular education funding growth significantly higher revenue growth, and gradually increase the average cost of education students, ensure that the average public expenditure per student and gradual increase teachers’ salaries. Clarify the basic contents of the nearby enrollment policy and enhance the operability of the policy. Unclear provisions of the nearby enrollment policy will cause local governments to encounter obstacles when implementing the nearby enrollment policy. China can learn from the western countries on the nearby enrollment policy of the relevant provisions, legal norms of the formulation and implementation, will regulate and regulate school education activities, to ensure that modern education can continue to develop steadily plays a very important role. The mutual understanding and exchange of information between policy makers and relevant institutions and personnel is conducive to mutual cooperation and joint realization of policy objectives. Nearby enrollment policy implementation involves dividing districts and other departments are more familiar with the policy of factors such as the household registration system, the education department should be and the urban planning bureau, public security and so on to learn more about the department of urban pattern and the household registration information match, comprehensive and detailed understanding of the implementation of the specific conditions of admission, near to gain admission to the nearest the comprehensive understanding of policy

106

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

objectives and its related problems. Secondly, the communication and coordination among all departments should be strengthened within the education department, so as to eliminate estrangement and enhance mutual understanding among the executors involved in the actual implementation of policies, so as to improve the efficiency of policy implementation. In 2014, the ministry of education, in accordance with the compulsory education law, formulated and issued the ministry of education’s opinions on further improving the implementation of the work of nearby enrollment without examination for primary school students entering junior high schools and the notice of the general office of the ministry of education on further improving the work of nearby enrollment without examination for compulsory education in major cities. This two documents for parents to set up a “among” the five channels, including the “single school district of helicopter method”, “more school district of helicopters and random central allocation”, “household outer area elementary school students to get to the household registration of junior middle school program evaluation and review technique”, “part of this special immortal recruit students no longer add ratio method” and “trailing children attend method”. In the stage of compulsory education, all citizens have the right to receive education. To a large extent, the setting of key classes makes educational resources skewed, which is not conducive to the realization of educational equity. The following suggestions are made on the problem of heavy shift. In the compulsory education law has a regulation, if the school set up the major work class and the major work class, will be the person in charge directly responsible and other directly responsible personnel given sanctions in accordance with the law, but in practice, on the set up of the major work class is responsible for the personnel management is not clear, the major work class phenomenon occurring in a real life, on the one hand, people have no treatment. On the other hand, in addition to the relevant departments ordered rectification, there are other reasonable and legal measures. Special policy provisions should be issued on the issue of key classes, and the relevant responsible personnel should be put forward a clear way to deal with, so that on the one hand, it can warn the school, on the other hand, it can also help the relevant education departments to deal with schools and responsible personnel involved in the problem of key classes (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). As an important six years of compulsory education, junior middle school will be divided into key classes, which will cause the school to attach too much importance to achievement and neglect the development of moral education and physical education. Try to change the distinction by grades, but by grades, according to grades and the situation of physical education, moral education to distinguish a-e grades, in the class division requires the equal distribution of all grades of students, can ensure the maximum degree of class level difference is not big. On the one hand, this method can blur the difference between sub-grades and slow down the phenomenon of “one thousand”, on the other hand, it is beneficial to the overall development of students. Strengthening economic and cultural development; The differentiation of key classes is basically the reflection of insufficient educational resources. Because there are insufficient educational resources, schools choose to divide key classes and

5.3 Countermeasures and Suggestions

107

non-key classes in order to convert a small amount of excellent resources into students with higher graduation rate and better performance. The state vigorously develops the economic and cultural construction, on the one hand, enhances the economic strength, may create the richer, the superior education resources for the student, the sufficient education resources can guarantee the superior education resources the average distribution; On the other hand, the progress of the country and society is conducive to the change of people’s ideas. When parents and front-line educators pay less attention to the key, non-key, graduation rate and so on, and pay more attention to the overall development of students and sound personality growth, the key classes will naturally become abrupt and inappropriate, and the problem of key classes will be easier to solve. In season enters a higher school, if parents recognized some elementary school or junior high school characteristics and ideas, and can meet the requirements of neighborhood school, you can register online and upload account such as living, fill in 3–5 volunteers (to fill in the restriction of the residence, the voluntary school suggested that registration has the qualification of special children special education school), and the details of the children is in a “black box”, cannot be the school learn, choice, the university cannot to written test, interview and so on a variety of ways to select students. In the uniform time stipulated by the local education authority, the computer intelligent allocation is conducted to ensure that every student in the school district has an equal opportunity to study in a certain school, and the optimal solution conducive to educational equity is generated by the intelligent algorithm. After the assignment, the information shall be open and transparent, and the formula shall be made on the official website and the public account (the public enrollment list, the id number and other sensitive information shall be concealed). If there is any omission in the way of assigning machines, a complaint may be filed through the procedures prescribed by administrative regulations. In this respect, we need to improve the relevant laws and regulations, clear admission requirements, to achieve procedural justice. This deprives the school of the right of selective enrollment and class placement and achieves complete randomness under the circumstance of fully considering various factors (nearby and special children). Local governments need to regulate the whole “Internet + sunshine school choice” way, while the people supervise the government’s behavior. The root cause of the heavy burden of primary and middle school students is the separation of examination content and textbook knowledge. Although many exam contents seem to find their roots in textbooks, they are actually processed so many times that it is difficult for students to solve problems on their own when they see them for the first time. But when it comes to exams, the better the school, the easier it is for students to solve problems, not only because of their own talent, but also because of the guidance of teachers. Famous teachers in famous universities are able to know the general trend of examination contents. The reason is simply the imbalance of educational resources. Every educational alliance (cooperation between schools) is almost all the schools of the same level, and the partners of high-level schools are also high-level schools. In a sense, it forms a monopoly of examination information.

108

5 An Analysis of the Legal Policies to Promote Educational …

In many cases, students in lower-level schools can only rely on teaching materials to carry out exercises, or extracurricular tutoring, in an attempt to break the information monopoly. This is why students from elite schools are less stressed than those from secondary schools (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020). Textbook knowledge, the current textbook knowledge is too thin, not enough to support the test, that is to increase the textbook knowledge, carry out more expansion, add expanded content, for example, the Chinese pronunciation and font discrimination, a lot of not from the textbook, although it is called: examination of life experience, but in essence is not fair. Similar modules can be added to the textbook to enhance students’ understanding, instead of relying on the teacher to lead students to wander in the vast number of Chinese characters. Since there is a certain degree of information monopoly among schools, the education department should have the power and obligation to break the monopoly, take the lead by the education sector, promote the cooperation between schools of different levels, and promote the balanced development of education, instead of leaving the top schools alone. When making some bonus performance wage distribution, should respect the rule and character of education teaching job, as far as possible comprehensively reflect the workload, work quality, explicit work and job qualifications such as the factors of different indicators to fully reflect the teacher’s job performance and contribution, to reflect the school teachers of different types of job involvement, regardless of whether the input instant, the observed output. The incentive performance distribution should be inclined to the indicators that reflect the workload and work quality, focus on the quantity and quality of teachers’ actual work input, and properly reflect the external work recognition. Meanwhile, the degree of work qualification should be carefully determined according to the specific situation of the school. The positive effect of work qualification is situational and varies with the degree of workload and the age and gender of teachers. Therefore, the reflection of work qualification should be especially cautious in the allocation of reward performance pay. Especially for schools with a large proportion of teachers under the age of 40 or a large proportion of male teachers, it is not recommended to give greater weight to qualification factors. The influence of different performance factors on teachers’ sense of distributive justice is related to their understanding of job performance. School administrators should pay attention to and understand the school teachers’ understanding of “performance”, at the same time, in the school management, strengthen the leading school development goals, to clarify the current and future a period the teacher: what is the most appropriate way of contribution to the school, reduce between teachers and between teachers and the school on the understanding of the performance content and weight differences, make the organization development goal and personal fair evaluation standard to agree to a certain extent reduce the performance define differences of injustice (Pei et al. 2018; Yang 2019; Li et al. 2020).

References

109

References Li, J., Yongzhi, Z., Eryong, X., & Zhou, N. (2020). Faculty ethics in China: From a historical perspective. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(2), 126–136. Pei, C. G., Song, N., Liu, X. (2018). Empirical analysis and enlightenment of students’ participation in extracurricular tutoring in compulsory education. China Journal of Education, 18(03), 43–48. Yang, D. D. (2019). The source of heavy academic burden of primary and secondary school students and countermeasures: From the voice of high school principals to save children. China Journal of Education, 19(08), 80–90.

Chapter 6

An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational Equity in China

This chapter involves an analysis of the financial policies to promote the educational equity in China. Specifically, the implementation results of fiscal policy, the implementation effect of fiscal policy of education process, the implementation effect of fiscal policy in the education result aspect, the problem of the implementation process of fiscal policy of educational results, and the countermeasures and suggestions for implementation problems have been provided in this chapter.

6.1 Implementation Results of Fiscal Policy To realize educational equity, the first step is to realize the equity in the admission process. The fairness of the admission process is the fairness of the starting point. For different family backgrounds, it needs the help and support from the state and the government to let all children choose schools relatively equally. Since the reform and opening up, the state and the government have implemented many financial policies to support the families in relative difficulties, which have more or less promoted the fairness of the enrollment process in education equity. The following is the effect of these financial policies on equity in the admissions process. 1. Focusing on the achievements of the national compulsory education project for poverty-stricken areas. The decision of the state council of the CPC central committee on accelerating scientific and technological progress, promulgated on May 6, 1995, put forward the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education for the first time. Jiang pointed out at the meeting that “to rejuvenate the country through science and education means to fully implement the idea that science and technology are the primary productive forces, to put science and technology and education at an important position in economic and social development, to enhance the country’s scientific and technological strength and the ability to realize the transformation of productive forces, and to improve the scientific and cultural © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Educational Equity Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0231-3_6

111

112

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

quality of the whole nation.” Under the strategy of developing the country by relying on science and education, in order to support the development of compulsory education in poverty-stricken areas and make sure that the “two basics” target, from 1995 to 2000, the ministry of education (the former state education commission), ministry of finance jointly organize the implementation of the first phase of the “national poor region compulsory education program”, “given this project” investment in the central and local 12.5 billion yuan, scope of implementation on 22 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government and construction corps 852 counties. By the end of 2000, the project had completed all its tasks, achieved its planning goals, accelerated the “two-base” process in the central and western regions, and ensured the realization of the national “two-base” goal. Although the first phase of the national project for compulsory education in poor areas has achieved great results, the goal of universal education in poor areas has not yet been fully achieved. By the end of 2000, there were 522 counties (banners and regimental farms) that had not yet been covered by the state council. Among them, 315 national-level poverty-stricken counties accounted for more than 85% of the poverty in the western region. It covers about 124 million people, of whom 49 million, or 40%, are ethnic minorities. To this end, the CPC central committee and the state council decided to invest another 5 billion yuan (90% of which was used in the western region) in the tenth five-year plan period to implement the second phase of the “free education project” to help poor areas achieve the goal of universal compulsory education. A total of 7.25 billion yuan (including 2.25 billion yuan from local supporting funds) has been invested in the second phase of the “free education project". According to the plan, a total of 9,827 primary and secondary schools have been built, renovated and expanded in 522 project counties (banners and youth league farms). About 467,000 teachers were trained, of whom 83,000 were trained with qualifications up to standard. Through the implementation of the second phase of “free education project”, the conditions of basic education in poor areas in China have been greatly improved, and the level of teachers and teaching quality have been further improved. By the end of 2003, with the great attention of governments at all levels and the joint efforts of education, financial departments and project units at all levels, the project had progressed smoothly and achieved phased results. According to the statistics of September 2003, the project funds were well implemented, and the actual funds were nearly 4.6 billion yuan, 97.9% of the planned total. And “project” each project implementation also obtained remarkable result. By September 2003, 1,623 primary schools and 1,043 junior middle schools had been built. 3, 627 primary schools and 1, 998 junior middle schools were renovated and expanded. Newly built 1.05 million square meters of primary school buildings and 1.38 million square meters of secondary school buildings; 1.66 million square meters of primary school buildings and 2.2 million square meters of secondary school buildings were upgraded and expanded. Training 125,000 principals and teachers in primary and secondary schools; Free textbooks were provided to 5.8 million poor primary and secondary school students; We purchased 670,000 single sets of desks for primary and junior high schools, 5.36 million books for primary and junior high schools, 40.88 million

6.1 Implementation Results of Fiscal Policy

113

yuan worth of teaching equipment for primary and junior high schools, and 117 million yuan worth of information technology education equipment for primary and junior high schools. The above projects have basically completed the planning tasks. Children in the mountains, if even the most basic classrooms, schools do not have, of course, not to enjoy a good school conditions, compared with the children in the city to improve the advanced infrastructure, it is not fair for them. “Project” in the remote mountainous areas to build primary schools, junior high schools, not only provide them with fair access to school, to the children also say that it is the best way to change their fate. The completion of the primary school and junior high school of the project promotes the development of equal enrollment. The long and dangerous road is no longer an obstacle to the children’s schooling, and various supporting facilities and financial subsidies are for the children to enjoy the advanced education level equally in the process of education. 2. Paying attention to special education and promoting equality in the process of universal enrollment. When we focus on equality in education, we can’t just focus on healthy children. In fact, there are more disabled people in our society who need help and support from all walks of life. Education is the starting point to promote the equal participation of the disabled. The protection of the rights of the disabled, especially the right to education, has been highly valued by the CPC central committee and the state council, and has attracted increasing attention from all walks of life. As early as in 1994, the individuals with disabilities education act, enacted, the people’s governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government shall, according to the special situation of the education for the disabled, according to the relevant administrative competent departments under the State Council’s guidance standard, the construction standards for the disabled schools within their respective administrative areas, funding, teaching instruments and equipment is equipped with standard, etc., to guarantee the right of disabled people to receive education, the development of education undertakings for the disabled has played an important role. However, with the development of economy and society and the deepening of education reform, the modernization of education has been gradually promoted, and education for the disabled is still relatively weak compared with other education. Since then, the revised regulations on education for the disabled came into force in 2017, clearly emphasizing the protection of equal educational opportunities, the active promotion of integrated education, and the strengthening of support for education for the disabled, which reflects the respect for the equal right of the disabled to receive education. To ensure the disabled school-age children or adolescents right to education, May 23, in Henan province education department, provincial disabled persons’ federation jointly issued a notice, in 2019, the province disabled school-age children or adolescents compulsory education recruit students enrollment, will be in accordance with the “one person one case, classification,” the principle of priority followed in the regular school, determine the disabled school-age children or adolescents receive compulsory education mode and the specific school. The accurate verification of registration disabled school-age children or adolescents compulsory education enrollment admission information, on the basis of

114

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

local education administrative departments at the county level should determine the specific entrance registration time, procedures, and material requirements, guide the disabled school-age children or adolescents parents or other statutory guardians in the Internet recruitment of students registration platform or to the special education schools, the nearest ordinary schools register for the entrance. For the school-age disabled children and adolescents who really need to delay or suspend their schooling due to physical reasons, their parents or other legal guardians shall make an application and report it to the administrative department of education at the county level for the record. Administrative departments of education at the county level shall establish a roster of school-age disabled children and adolescents who need to be enrolled in compulsory education for placement this school year and ensure that all school-age disabled children and adolescents who have been registered in the roster are enrolled. According to the “one person one case, classification and resettlement” principle, in consideration of the parents of the disabled school-age children or adolescents education will, the county education experts committee of school placement suggestion and regional special education resources (including ordinary schools and special education school), on the basis of priority followed in the regular school, determine the disabled school-age children or adolescents receive compulsory education mode and the specific school (send). The school notifies its parents or other legal guardians to come to school on time for confirmation. For disabled children and teenagers have entrance, if because of body reason does not adapt to the school environment and teaching, education administrative departments at the county level to guide school or special education resource center at the county level to provide certain support and guarantee, the necessary research to determine other resettlement way, make sure it’s not drop out of school, not to drop out of school, the school should be in the national primary and middle school students admitted to the university information management system with its learning state. In Guangxi Nanning, for example, the municipal people’s government attaches great importance to education undertakings for disabled persons, the city finance education, clubs, department in charge of civil affairs and disabled persons’ federation, in-depth implementation of the regulations on the education for the disabled, Nanning the second phase of the special education promotion plan, actively implement the autonomous region special education subsidy funds, strengthen special education foundation ability construction, and operating conditions, construction of special education school resource center and ordinary casual resource teachers, etc. The city’s special education expenditure increased year by year, from 18.1 million yuan in 2012 to 37.61 million yuan in 2018, an increase of 107.79% and an average annual increase of 12.96%. In 2018, the construction project of Nanning sunshine special education school in Guangxi will be completed and put into use, with a total investment of 270 million yuan and a total land area of about 100.24 mu. 54 classes of special education schools (including 27 classes for the deaf and 27 classes for the blind) will be built, with a total construction area of 47,714 m2 . The purchase fund for teaching facilities of sunshine special education school is 11.8 million yuan. After being put into use, Nanning special education school is established as a two-story

6.1 Implementation Results of Fiscal Policy

115

public institution fully funded by the municipal education bureau. The total budget in 2018 is 13.1225 million yuan, and the total budget in 2019 is 12.2846 million yuan, which is used for the operation of special education schools, the promotion of teachers’ benefits, the improvement of educational and teaching facilities and the construction of campus culture. We will actively seek financial support from the central government and autonomous regions, and provide subsidies for special education, sports awards for the disabled, and development programs for the disabled. To help every disabled child not become poor, special education boomed in 2018, with more and more disabled children and able-bodied children sitting in the same classroom. Education for the disabled has become more widely available, the concept of integrated education has been gradually established, the enrollment rate of children with three types of disabilities in compulsory education has exceeded 90%, and the accessibility of education tests for disabled students has been further improved.

6.2 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Process Process equity is one of the three aspects of educational equity. The fairness of educational process refers to the way that education treats everyone on the basis of equality in subjective and objective aspects. Outcome equity is equal in quality of education. The financial policy on educational equity involves the issue of educational resource allocation equity, which is used to coordinate the resource allocation among different ethnic groups, regions and schools, and plays an important role in promoting educational equity. The following is a summary of the achievements of China’s financial policy on educational process equity in recent years from three aspects. 1. Strengthening accountability at different levels and promoting equal access to basic public services in education. With the implementation of the education strategy and the reform of the education system and mechanism, the financial responsibility system framework in the field of education has gradually taken shape. 1. Shaanxi increased financial input to promote equalization of compulsory education. In. 2019, Shaanxi provincial finance department raised funds from multiple channels, start the work of improving weak links and capacity, expand the implementation scope of the living subsidy policy for rural teachers, and effectively improve the equalization level of compulsory education in Shaanxi province. Around at this stage the masses feel strongly about such outstanding problems as “large amount” of Shaanxi province launched the weak of compulsory education are to improve and the ability to promote work, plan this year to raise funds for not less than 6 billion yuan at the provincial level, key support for enlarging the scale of urban education resource supply and swallow the village small schools conditions, promote the informatization construction, the overall improvement of

116

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

compulsory education school conditions, improving the quality of education. In order to further improve the quality of rural education, Shaanxi province raised 343 million yuan in 2019 to provide living subsidies for rural teachers, benefiting 85,300 rural teachers, an increase of 27,600 over the previous year. While implementing the policy of awards and subsidies for contiguous poverty-stricken counties, Shaanxi province has included rural teachers in key counties of national poverty alleviation and development in the scope of distribution and realized the full coverage of living subsidies for rural teachers in poverty-stricken counties (districts). 2. Anhui province shall improve the fiscal relationship below the provincial level with clear rights and responsibilities, financial coordination and regional balance. In 2019, Anhui provincial financial department issued the Anhui province education field implementation plan of reform of financial governance and expenditure responsibility, adhere to give priority to education career position, actively push forward education field and expenditure responsibility division reform, fiscal powers to accelerate establishing responsibilities clear, resources coordination, regional balanced province the following financial relationship, to build a well-off society in an allround way, the construction of modern five development provide strong education support in Anhui. “The establishment of a system in which fiscal powers and expenditure responsibilities are compatible is a major issue in the construction of the national governance system. It involves the division of fiscal powers and expenditure responsibilities, revenue division and transfer payment system between the central and sub-provincial governments. It involves a wide range of areas and has a far-reaching impact.” Departments responsible person said that in Anhui province, Anhui province “implementation plan” in keeping the field of education, on the basis of current fiscal policy basically stable, further perfect the responsibilities clear, resources coordination, regional balanced province the following financial relationship, for me to speed up the building of modern financial system, promote the education fair priority development, promote the development of the modern five beautiful Anhui construction, has important practical significance. According to the decision of the central government on the confirmation and division of financial administrative power, Anhui province shall fulfill its responsibility to exercise financial administrative power in the field of education in accordance with relevant regulations, and fully mobilize the enthusiasm and initiative of various regions to develop educational undertakings in the region according to local conditions. We should correctly handle the relationship between the government and the market, reasonably determine the scope and mode of public services provided by the government in the field of education, and reasonably divide the financial powers and expenditure responsibilities of public services related to education at all levels and in various fields. For some basic public services, we will share fiscal powers and spending responsibilities, and further refine them according to the scope of benefits and the degree of impact, so as to ensure clear and standardized boundaries. “To insist on highlighting the key points and defend the bottom line of security is a clear basic principle of our province’s implementation plan.” Provincial finance department said. “Implementation plan”, stressed that according to stick to the bottom

6.2 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Process

117

line, focused, perfecting the system, and guide the expected requirements, such as compulsory education, student financial assistance basic public services as the key point, carrying out the governance and moderate to strengthen the central government budget responsibility, the spirit of strengthening government entities at all levels grading is responsible for the mechanism, the implementation of the national basic standards, accelerate the education domain equal basic public services. 2. Reasonably clarify rights and responsibilities, with emphasis on teacher training and school facilities construction. 1. Financial departments at all levels in Guizhou give full play to their functions and give priority to education as a key area of fiscal expenditure. From 2017 to September 2019, Guizhou province has invested 280,577 billion yuan in financial education, accounting for 20.02% of the general public budget, which is the largest expenditure in the province and provides a strong financial guarantee for the smooth launch and implementation of a series of major educational projects and policies. We need to improve the mechanism for funding education and ensure its development. Guizhou province has provided strong financial support for the balanced and quality development of compulsory education by establishing the guarantee mechanism of compulsory education funds that unifies urban and rural areas and focuses on rural areas. From 2017 to September 2019, Guizhou provincial finance made a total of 32.313 billion yuan in central and provincial-level subsidies for urban and rural compulsory education, which were used to promote the standardization of rural compulsory education schools, upgrade rural schools and teaching sites, and support the balanced and high-quality development of urban and rural compulsory education. We need to strengthen the construction of a contingent of teachers and constantly improve their professional quality and ability. From 2017 to September 2019, the central special fund of “special post plan” of provincial finance was 2.138 billion yuan, which was used for the recruitment of special post teachers in the province. Currently, there are more than 114,000 special post teachers in the province, accounting for 30% of the total 375,000 rural primary and secondary school teachers in the province. We coordinated 589 million yuan from the central government’s special fund under the state education program to train 540,000 rural teachers and improve their professional quality and ability. 2. Fujian’s finance “two excellent and one high” promotes the source of highquality development of education. The financial system of Fujian province resolutely implements the strategic deployment of the provincial party committee and the provincial government and gives priority to education as the national strategic investment, so as to ensure the priority of investment, optimize the structure of expenditure and use funds efficiently. According to relevant statistics, from 2013 to 2018, the proportion of Fujian’s fiscal expenditure on education in the public finance remained between 17 and 19%. The “priority guarantee investment” is highlighted in the hard growth of education expenditure. “Optimizing the structure of expenditures” is highlighted in the focus on support and guarantee. In the field of compulsory education, we have ensured equal

118

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

access to basic public education services by raising the standard of public expenditures per student, waiving fees for textbooks for compulsory education in urban and rural areas, and ensuring the safety of school buildings and the construction of weak schools. “Efficient use of funds” is highlighted in the combination of fund management. On the one hand, we try to improve the system of appropriating educational funds, reform the way special educational funds are allocated, and expand the right of local governments and schools to coordinate their expenditures. We will encourage and guide social forces to set up education programs and set up a policy of matching public donations with public revenue. On the other hand, we push forward the reform of the division of fiscal powers and spending responsibilities between provincial and local governments in the field of education, improve the system of transfer payments for education, and encourage governments at all levels to fulfill their responsibilities for investment in and management of education. At the same time, in accordance with the requirements of “spending money will be effective, ineffective will be accountable”, comprehensive implementation of budget performance management, education expenditure as a key evaluation content to carry out performance assessment. 3. Zhejiang province guarantees to improve the nutrition of rural students. Due to the differences in regional economic development levels, there is indeed a gap in education between urban and rural areas, but this is not only reflected in the level of education. Because it is closely related to the growth of students, the gap in “nutrition level” is also worth noting. Since September 2018, the education bureau of Kaihua county in Zhejiang province has asked nutritionists to customize recipes for students. Nutritional meal equity is the largest educational equity, the local education bureau last year unified the recipe, is to ensure that urban and rural primary and secondary schools eat the same. Each student also has a fixed table and name. Rich dietary structure, balanced nutritional conditions, can effectively improve the physical condition of children. Because of this, Kaihua county for rural primary school students to customize the nutritional diet, to improve their physical condition significance should not be underestimated. In fact, the education bureau of Kaihua county has made efforts to make “nutritious meals fair” behind the customized recipes for students. Since the autumn semester of 2011, China has launched a nutrition improvement program for rural compulsory education students to improve the health of rural students, especially those from poor areas and poor families. In essence, the plan also aims to solve the “nutritional poverty” in poor areas and realize the educational equity of children in remote mountainous areas by improving nutrition. 4. Fulfilling the responsibility for spending to ensure sustained and steady growth of government input. 1. Guangxi government allocated 3.15 billion yuan to improve the weak links of compulsory education. To implement the strategy of giving priority to the development of education, the autonomous region has recently raised 3.15 billion yuan from the financial resources to comprehensively improve the school conditions and weak links of compulsory education and promote the balanced development of compulsory education.

6.2 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Process

119

The 3.15 billion yuan in subsidies for improving weak links and capacity in compulsory education will mainly support the construction of education projects in counties where poverty is lifted out of poverty in 2019 and 2020 and the construction and improvement of new schools included in the implementation plan for the campaign to guarantee compulsory education in autonomous regions. Of this, 2.644 billion yuan was allocated to support the construction of schools for compulsory education and to help fight poverty through education. We allocated 396 million yuan to support the construction of 56 new schools and promoted the elimination of large classes in cities and towns. We will allocate 110 million yuan to support the construction of schools in weak areas. Autonomous departments will continue to intensify investment in our basic education, the end of 2020 to complete compulsory education guarantee battle school construction tasks, basically eliminated large amount of existing more than 56 people, scientific and reasonable to set up rural boarding schools and rural small schools, filling two short board, realizing a complete coverage of rural compulsory education school network. 2. The proportion of national financial expenditure on education in GDP is relatively stable. Since 2012, the proportion of national fiscal expenditure on education in GDP has been above 4%, which is expected to be relatively stable in the short term. In the 16 years from 2002 to 2018, the CAGR of national financial education was 15.9%. Since 2012, the proportion of national financial education expenditure in GDP has exceeded 4%. In 2018, the national financial education expenditure reached 3,699 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 8.1%. On March 5, 2019 in the thirteenth session of the National People’s Congress second conference mentioned in the government work report “although money is very nervous this year, the state financial education funds accounted for over 4% of the gross domestic product (GDP) ratio to keep on”, the state financial education funds in the short term is expected as a share of GDP will be relatively stable.

6.3 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Result Aspect After the founding of new China, under the strong support of the central, education investment in China increased year by year, especially in the new era, and carry out education in our province priority development strategy, always adhere to the small fiscal do big the livelihood of the people, the education investment as a support the basis of the country’s long-term development, strategic investment, as the focus of the public financial security, support the priority to the development of compulsory education. For example, the average annual expenditure on education in Qinghai province increased by 7.4%, which exceeded the national standard of 4% in the proportion of GDP for many years. In the early years of the People’s Republic of China, the enrollment rate of school-age children in Qinghai province

120

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

was only 14.7%, among which only 2.4% were in pastoral areas and more than 95% of adults were illiterate. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the party committees and governments at all levels took the popularization of compulsory education as a basic project related to the prosperity and prosperity of the country and the rejuvenation of the nation. With the realization of the goal of “two bases” in 2011 and the implementation of the work of controlling dropout to ensure the education in 2017, the retention rate of nine-year compulsory education in Qinghai province has reached 96.85%, and the national planning target of 95% in 2020 has been achieved in advance. By the end of 2018, the province had a total of 708,900 students in compulsory education, with graduation rates of 102.42 and 98.29% for primary and middle schools, and gross enrollment rates of 106.45 and 111.79% for primary and middle schools, respectively. China’s compulsory education in accordance with the central committee of the unified deployment, accelerate the reform of key areas and key links. We deepen the comprehensive reform of education, deepen the reform of classroom teaching, strengthen the building of teaching and research capabilities, and attach importance to the development of educational informatization, thus laying a solid foundation for the modernization of education. Basic education resources public service platform to provide primary and secondary schools in the whole period all subject digital education resources, rapid development, remote education network teaching and research, universally improve teachers’ information technology application ability, information technology “classroom use, widely used, often with” an atmosphere of basic formation, enlarge high quality education resources, to improve education quality, promoting urban and rural compulsory education balanced development has played a positive role in supporting lead. In 2019, the central committee of the communist party of China (CPC) and the state council issued the opinions on deepening education and teaching reform and comprehensively improving the quality of compulsory education (hereinafter referred to as the opinions), which is precisely aimed at answering the “education examination questions” in the new era. This opinion is a deepening education and teaching reform in new era, and comprehensively improve the quality of compulsory education of the important documents, both the cultivation of art comprehensive development of socialist builders and successors “top-level design, also has in view of the quality education implementation does not reach the designated position, to improve quality of classroom teaching, education evaluation system needs to be perfect hot issues such as timely rectification, fully embodies the for compulsory education attaches great importance to the CPC Central Committee and the State Council and the loving care of hundreds of millions of children. (2) The quality of education under the influence of the rapid development of information technology. With the continuous development of social modernization, promoting the development of educational informatization has become more and more people’s concern. In recent years, China’s relevant departments to promote education informationization construction work, successively introduced many important relevant policy documents, such as in June 2016, the Ministry of Education issued by the education informationization “much starker choices-and

6.3 The Implementation Effect of Fiscal Policy—Education Result Aspect

121

graver consequences-in planning”: “increases by the central government spending on education informationization in the Midwest, guide the place to strengthen rural and remote areas of education informatization funds support.” In April 2018, the ministry of education released the action plan of education informatization 2.0, which marked the progress of China’s education informatization from the era of 1.0 which focused on the development of the base to the era of 2.0 which focused on “fairness”, “quality” and “people-oriented". The introduction and implementation of this series of relevant policies have continuously improved the development level of China’s education informatization: as of June 2016, the proportion of primary and secondary schools in China connected to the Internet has reached 87.5%, of which 64.3% are connected to over 10 M bandwidth and 56.6% are equipped with multimedia teaching equipment. By May 2018, the Internet access rate of primary and secondary schools in China had increased to 94%, an increase of 6.5 percentage points over 2016.

6.4 Implementation of Fiscal Policies Since 1995, the two phases of the “national project for compulsory education in poor areas” have made great achievements in popularizing compulsory education in poor areas. In rural areas and mountainous areas, many places have established teaching infrastructure, school buildings and sports venues have been expanded, living facilities have been improved, and the level of information technology has been improved. However, there is still a significant difference in education level between rural areas and county towns, with rural areas in Henan and Yunnan provinces continuously reporting the loss of students in the compulsory education stage. The following is the implementation of the above fiscal policy, there are still some problems. 1. There is still a large gap in the distribution of educational resources between rural areas, counties and provinces. In the second half of 2019, the national education supervision team supervised and inspected the balanced development of compulsory education in Liaoning, Hainan, Shaanxi, Heilongjiang, Yunnan and Hebei provinces. Among them, Liaoning province has insufficient investment in education. The expenditure on education in the general public budget of Liaoning province in 2018 is 59.158 billion yuan, 740 million yuan less than the 59.897 billion yuan in 2017. In 2018, the per capita expenditure for primary and junior middle school students in the province was 9,701 yuan and 13,870 yuan respectively, 517 yuan and 694 yuan less than that of the previous year, respectively, a reduction of 5.1% and 4.8%, which did not meet the prescribed requirements, and the low pay of primary and secondary school teachers in some counties. The inspection team carried out a spot check on the primary and secondary schools in six counties and found that the average student of 39 primary schools and 42 junior high schools had insufficient area for teaching auxiliary rooms, 113 primary schools and 52 junior high schools had insufficient area for sports venues, and 33 primary schools and 13 junior high schools had insufficient value for teaching equipment. Computer, instruments and equipment are old, the book copy rate is high, the update is not timely. Some rural school living facilities

122

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

are not perfect, and there are still many schools using dry toilets, and the construction standards are low, the conditions are simple, some squatting is not enough, the width is not enough, did not do harmless treatment. At present, the proportion of primary schools in rural areas of Liaoning province equipped with qualified equipment in sports, music, fine arts and natural science is low, 10 percentage points lower than that in cities, and the gap between urban and rural areas is large. In Hebei province, 68 schools in the four counties covered less than 471,000 m2 . Fifty-seven schools were short of floor space, or a total of 111,000 m2 . A total of 281,000 m2 were missing in 48 school sports venues. The inter-school difference in the area of sports venues per student is quite common in the whole province. There are 60 counties and 22 counties whose difference coefficient of primary school and junior high school exceeds 0.8, respectively. The difference coefficient of individual counties inspected this time exceeds 1.3. Some schools have inadequate living facilities. There were 9 schools in 4 counties with insufficient toilets and 8 schools with no harmless treatment for dry toilets. Some school classroom lighting facilities do not meet the lighting standards of the classroom, there is no drinking water facilities for students, there is no construction of student canteen and bathroom. Structural shortages of teachers are still widespread. The province’s primary and secondary schools lack 10,300 teachers in music, sports, fine arts and information technology. In Yunnan province, 98 schools in 10 counties surveyed by the inspection team have a total area deficit of 468,000 m2 . There is a shortage of sports space in 123 schools, totaling 351,000 m2 . Twenty-nine schools are short of space, or 55,000 m2 . The number of functional rooms in some schools is insufficient, the toilets are far from the dormitory buildings, there are still dry toilets with poor sanitary conditions, and the drinking water facilities in schools are not complete. In Heilongjiang province, the growth rate of education expenditure and regular revenue in the general public budget was 4.38 percentage points lower than that in 2018. Education spending per pupil in primary and secondary schools in the general public budget fell by 1.59% and 1.14%, respectively. The expenditure of public funds in the general public budget for primary and junior high school students decreased by 0.03% and 4.96% respectively. According to the review, public expenditure in the general public budget of primary and junior high schools of Dongning city in 2018 decreased from the previous year. Among the 32 counties reported, there were also a few counties whose students’ general public budget of education and public expenditure decreased from the previous year. In Shaanxi province, the policies of uniform enrollment and nearby enrollment of compulsory education schools in some inspected counties are not fully implemented, and school-age students choose to enroll in cross-school districts. There is an obvious gap between some rural schools and urban schools in terms of education level and teaching quality, which leads to the concentration of students in urban key schools. The mass of private compulsory education in some local areas is large, and there exists the problem of “the people are strong, and the public is weak” and the problem of “school choice fever” in private schools. In 2018, of the province’s 109 county-level units (excluding provincial and municipal schools), only 37 counties had the average salary level of teachers in compulsory education at least lower or

6.4 Implementation of Fiscal Policies

123

higher than that of local civil servants. Some counties did not consider primary and secondary school teachers when giving civil servants incentive subsidies. Among the six provinces investigated by the supervision and guidance team, five have large class sizes and large school sizes, five have shortcomings in school running conditions, and some schools still have shortcomings in standardization and basic school running conditions. In all provinces, there are unreasonable structure of teachers in primary and secondary schools, shortcomings in the construction of teachers, and safety risks in some schools. There is a general shortage of educational funds, and even a retrogression of educational funds. Thus, in some areas, the investment of education funds is still insufficient, and there is still a big gap between rural areas and counties, and between counties and counties before, and infrastructure construction needs to be strengthened. This status quo hampers students’ ability to choose schools equally. 2. The phenomenon of loss of students in rural areas is still widespread. The campaign identified 214 school-age children who had dropped out of school because of work, school fatigue and early marriage. One report described in detail the problem of the loss of rural students exposed in the fight against poverty here, which is also widespread in other counties. China is now facing rapid urbanization. A large number of school-age children in rural areas follow their parents to go out for work and move to cities. As a result, a large number of primary and secondary schools in rural areas are facing the problem of low school efficiency. In rural areas, the number of students in school is constantly declining, and rural primary and secondary schools cannot adjust their organizational structure in a short period of time. In some places, there is a phenomenon of more teachers and fewer students, while in other places, there is a large number of teachers’ loss, with the number of large classes and the number of large schools. Some teaching resources and their supporting facilities cannot be fully used in a long period of time, and with the passage of time continuous depreciation or even scrap, resulting in a great waste. With the development of urbanization, the low efficiency of rural education will be very prominent. This phenomenon significantly affects educational equity. In 2001, China carried out the management system reform of “county-oriented” rural education. Since then, China has basically realized the task of popularizing nine-year compulsory education. However, with the advancement of urbanization, the number of school-age children in rural areas continues to decrease, leading to a severe shortage of primary and secondary school students in some rural areas. In view of this, China began to adjust the layout of rural schools nationwide in 2002, merging and abolishing a large number of primary and secondary schools, giving full play to the role of educational resources, greatly improving the efficiency of rural education. However, with the cancellation of some schools, the problem of young children going to school too far, especially in some remote mountainous areas, is very prominent. Because school is too far away, parents worry that the dropout rate of primary and middle school students is high, which affects the realization of educational equity in the access to school. However, the loss of excellent teachers and the lack of necessary investment in education make it difficult for rural students to enjoy high-quality education, which affects the

124

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

realization of educational equity in the process of education. By analyzing the data of the statistical bulletin on the development of educational undertakings in Henan province from 2004 to 2013, it can be found that the number of graduates in early 2013 was 2216, 000 less than that of primary school students in 2004. In a complete period of compulsory education, 216,600 students were lost, accounting for 13.64% of the primary school enrollment. Among them, the loss of junior middle school students is the largest, accounting for more than 80% of the loss of students in the whole compulsory education stage, followed by the primary school to junior middle school stage, and then the primary school stage. 3. Difficulties and opportunities in school choice are not equal. As far as teachers are concerned, rural schools have insufficient teachers and unreasonable disciplinary structure. Some subjects even have no full-time teachers, which makes it difficult to guarantee normal teaching and cannot form high-quality education in towns and villages. According to the principal, the main reasons for the inadequate quality of local township schools are still the lack of funds for education and the lack of teachers. Statistics from the education bureau of Sangzhi county in 2009 show that the county has 58,217 students in compulsory education, including 46,926 in primary school and 11,291 in junior high school. The county has 248 primary schools, including 3 in the urban area, 38 in the township center and 217 in the village. County junior high school a total of 33, including 3 urban areas, 30 townships. The number of primary school students in urban areas is 9,843, accounting for 21% of the total number of primary school students in the county. There are 3291 students in the 3 middle schools in the city, accounting for 29.2% of the students in the county. Among the students studying compulsory education in urban areas, 50% are registered permanent residence in real urban areas, 5% are children of migrant workers, 5% are children of foreign businessmen, and the other 40% are parents who rent a house or go to their parents to study. Among the migrant students in urban areas, at least 50% of them are transferred to urban schools because their parents are not satisfied with the local education and their family economic conditions are relatively good. In this way, urban schools are full year after year, while rural schools are seriously short of students, resulting in the unbalanced situation of the balanced development of compulsory education. The difficulty of attending a good school is a common problem for most ordinary students. In order to realize the students nearby to go to school, the current system generally implemented is the school district system, primary school, junior high school enrollment according to the place of residence nearby enrollment. In order to let their children into the high-quality schools, many parents transfer their household registration and apply for the housing permit in advance, which makes the population of the high-quality schools more and more concentrated, the more and more heated the school district housing, the smaller and smaller the area, making the quality school class student capacity exceeds the standard, thus the existence of large classes. Some schools have no choice but to run a branch school or forced to increase the number of classes to meet social needs, and this kind of unplanned expansion of the practice and often overload the school dormitory and other educational resources.

6.4 Implementation of Fiscal Policies

125

Another problem that still exists is the unequal opportunities for the children of farmers and migrant workers to attend school and for the children of migrant workers and other migrant workers. Children of migrant workers do not have the same school choice as children of local people. On the one hand, local protection of quality education resources is given priority to the use of local people. Primary schools and junior high schools have set up registration conditions such as household registration and housing, and high schools have set up registration conditions such as household registration and school registration. On the other hand, education authorities (often at the provincial level), in order to protect the source of students in backward areas such as rural and pastoral areas, do not allow schools from other places to recruit students from these areas. The existence of these phenomena obviously reduces the opportunity for students to choose their own schools. Second, the fiscal policy implementation process—education process. Due to the differences between regions, urban and rural areas and schools, it is difficult to ensure absolute equity in the implementation of fiscal policies. China’s vast territory, the economic level of each region is far from the same, if the fiscal policy to achieve some of the remote areas of education level to catch up with Beijing, Shanghai and other regions, is obviously unreasonable. And the real gap does exist, which forms a difficult problem to solve in the education process. This part analyzes the problem from the following aspects. (1) The direct capital input is still unequal in different regions. Although require different levels of economic region have the same equal financial investment is not reasonable, but the gap in today is still very wide, such as economy more developed regions such as Beijing’s fiscal push rural accounted for larger Xinjiang regions such as big a lot, by the following Beijing, Lupan city, Guangxi data contrast, can be found for this problem: 1. Current situation of fair financial investment in education in Beijing. In the general public budget, Beijing leads the way in primary schools, middle schools, high schools and colleges. The general public budget expenditure for primary school students was 10,199.12 yuan, an increase of 6.71% over the previous year’s 9557.89 yuan. Of this, 9,768.57 yuan was spent in rural areas, up 5.65% from 9,246.00 yuan a year earlier. The average education expenditure of Beijing students in the general public budget is 30,016.78 yuan, ranking the first in China, and the growth rate is 16.37% compared with that of 2016. In terms of the average public budget for junior high school students, Beijing still leads the way, with 57,636.12 yuan, nearly 60,000 yuan, and an increase of 26.63% or nearly 30% over 2016. 2. Current situation of fair financial investment in education. Unlike other cities, Turpan has a large proportion of urban and rural education - only 20% in the city and 80% in the countryside. In addition, the city’s minority students accounted for 85.89%. In this regard, the Turpan municipal party committee and government believe that to improve the overall quality of the city’s education, we must improve the quality of rural education; To improve the quality of minority education in the city, we must improve the quality of rural education. Turpan city has planned 17 small-scale schools like Tonggou teaching center, and continuously invested more than 60 million yuan, which greatly improved the

126

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

conditions of small-scale schools and created conditions for children in agricultural and pastoral areas to receive high-quality education at their doorstep. Since 2017, more than 400 million yuan has been invested by the government at the county and county levels in Turpan. More than 4,900 teachers, mainly graduates from universities and colleges in the mainland, have been recruited. At the same time, more than 200 cadres from county schools were selected and transferred to the management positions of secretary and principal of rural schools, laying a solid foundation for improving the management level of rural schools. 3. Status quo of financial investment in education in guangxi zhuang autonomous region. The Guangxi zhuang autonomous region has thoroughly studied and implemented the important discussion of general secretary Xi jinping on poverty alleviation work, and made solid progress in completing the task of “developing education to lift a number of people out of poverty” in poverty-stricken areas by increasing investment in education, strengthening the control of dropouts, ensuring access to education, developing vocational education, and implementing paired assistance and other measures. Since 2018, the region has allocated 3.88 billion yuan to 20 povertystricken counties for projects such as the development of preschool education, renovation of schools with weak compulsory education, living allowance for boarders in difficulty, and nutrition improvement plan. The Guangzhou government has given priority to allocating special funds for education, such as funds for the renovation of poor schools in rural areas with compulsory education. Since 2018, it has planned to invest 1.946 billion yuan to build 28 new schools in poverty-stricken areas, covering an area of 648,600 m2 . A total of 409 million yuan was allocated to subsidize 290,000 students from poor families in 20 poverty-stricken counties. (2) Inequality caused by different regions’ different financial inputs and priorities. Different areas in the aspect of promoting education fair education supported by the emphasis of the financial input, the type is different, such as in more developed regions such as Beijing education financial investment such as may be more inclined to improve the level of pre-school education, high education, elite education, etc., makes it form a relative backward area for the education of comprehensive leading status, in Jiangxi, Guizhou and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region education is relatively backward, or in the vast rural areas in our country, the education of the financial investment may be more inclined to basic education facilities construction, teachers training, etc., that is to say, The current development of education in different regions makes it difficult to define an absolute sense of “fairness” between different regions. Such questions may lead us to think about how to invest in different areas of development so that education is fair from a national perspective. Like, even to the economic level is relatively underdeveloped region invested more fiscal spending, but in the economic level is relatively developed area to put money into a higher level or more richer, improve students’ comprehensive quality education, and the less developed area put money into to promote employment, more fundamental education aspect, thus formed the unfair. 1. Develop high-quality educational resources in Beijing and other regions. In 2017, Beijing increased its guidance on subject teaching in rural schools and

6.4 Implementation of Fiscal Policies

127

supported the recruitment of foreign teachers. In the second half of that year, Menounos district education committee began to introduce foreign teachers for mountain schools, and each school is equipped with “guide to teach” funds. In August 2017, the guidelines on the employment and management of foreign teachers in primary and secondary schools in Menounos district (trial) was published, which made clear provisions on the employment conditions, management responsibilities, remuneration and management requirements of foreign teachers. In November of that year, the “menstruous district elementary and secondary schools’ foreign teachers’ employment and management guidance supplementary provisions” was published, according to the size of the school can be equipped with the number of foreign teachers, and foreign teachers funds management more detailed provisions. “On the basis of considering regional differences, embody the principle of more work and more gain". The salary and welfare of foreign teachers shall be paid according to the actual class hours. In 2018, menstruous district education commission made public bidding for “menstruous district foreign teachers’ participation in English teaching program". Five social institutions with good social credibility, abundant resources of foreign teachers and employment experience were selected as suppliers to provide services for the schools. Menounos education committee introduced that in 2018, 31 schools were equipped with 46 foreign teachers, with a budget of more than 16 million yuan. In 2019, 52 foreign teachers will be assigned to 35 schools, with an expenditure of more than 18 million yuan. In addition, menstruous district foreign teachers not only to teach children, but also English teachers “foreign teachers.” In many schools, foreign teachers are required to participate in local teacher training, participate in club activities, etc., and give advice to English teachers in China. Taking tan zhe si central primary school as an example, foreign teachers have the task of “listening to lectures” every semester. On January 2, 2020, the Olympic winter camp for primary and secondary school students in Beijing was held in the national stadium, the bird’s nest. The event was co-sponsored by Beijing municipal commission of education, Beijing municipal bureau of sports, news and publicity department of the Beijing organizing committee for the winter Olympic Games, and Beijing Olympic city development promotion center. Relevant person in charge introduces, the student that participates in this winter camp activity comes from Beijing 107 Olympic education demonstrative school. The students enjoyed the fun of ice and snow games, experienced the winter sports and felt the charm of ice and snow sports by participating in such interesting games as snowball fight, snow and snow match, super snow circle and snow football, as well as ice and snow sports such as free skiing, simulated biathlon, skating and simulated curling. At the same time, the organizers also organized all the students to visit the Beijing Olympic museum and other Olympic cultural heritage, to experience the culture of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, review the Olympic history, and review the Olympic journey in Beijing. According to statistics, the number of primary and secondary school students in Beijing actually reached 840,000, double the figure of 2018. In 2019, the Beijing municipal education commission joint efforts, through the organization of snow and

128

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

ice into the campus, ice and snow carnival, simulation games, the Olympic winter camp, the Olympic experience, rich and colorful activities, such as winter projects such as winter games and Beijing primary and secondary school students, high level of competition covers more than 50 students, including the high level competition has been put into more directly involved in the students. Beijing’s financial expenditure on education can be seen from this example, which supports a comprehensive education. 2. Living subsidy for poor students in Jiangxi province. Living allowance is divided into living allowance for boarders and living allowance for non-boarders. The living allowance mainly covers four categories of students from poor families with registered permanent residence, disabled students from non-registered permanent residence with financial difficulties, students from rural families with subsistence allowance, and students from rural families with special financial difficulties, as well as students from poor families in urban areas. Living allowance will be reviewed and issued according to the principle of “annual assessment, semester payment, new students, re-assessment". The school will set up a review panel composed of school leaders, financial support staff, teachers’ representatives, students’ representatives and parents’ representatives to be responsible for organizing and implementing the review of the school’s living allowance. According to the information, in 2018, Jiangxi issued a total of 4.126 billion yuan in student subsidies, benefiting 1.512,400 children from poor families, playing an important role in safeguarding the right of students from poor families to receive education. The expansion of subsidies for compulsory education means that 9.1% of the total number of students in primary schools (10.2% in primary schools and 7% in junior middle schools) who are not living in poverty will also receive such assistance. Jiangxi’s financial support for students is limited to helping poor students out of poverty, which is in sharp contrast to the example of former Beijing. From the above data analysis, in the use of fiscal policy to promote fairness in the process of the education process, there are many worthy of our thinking problem, such as mentioned above, the problem of “how fair is fair”, or in the face of such as development, economic level around the different reality, how do is the ability to promote the fair. In addition, the contact to now around the university entrance exam questions, on the part of the discussions on the question of fair value has a great deal of discussion, such as the proportion of college entrance examination admission, admission scores around aside, the topic of the ease of a direct impact on, in the process of education, it has encountered very big unfair, the entrance pressure directly determines the size of the students can develop in an all-round way, could you accept the real quality education, because in front of the entrance pressure smaller, students can take more time and energy on the interest in the development of culture, hobbies, and in the face of huge entrance pressure, and even survival pressure, The priority of fiscal policy is to solve the more direct contradiction.

6.5 The Problem of the Implementation Process of Fiscal Policy—Educational Results

129

6.5 The Problem of the Implementation Process of Fiscal Policy—Educational Results Education starting point not fair and unfair in the process of education directly led to the unfair education results, due to the difference of education facilities and teachers, although the same is to accept the compulsory education, but the relative poverty, the students’ education in underdeveloped regions, the results may be more backward, such as students in underdeveloped regions may be less exposed to the computer, the computer knowledge in the field of relatively unfamiliar, or they don’t have teaching, or is because there is no outstanding teacher guide, knowledge of their shortcomings and errors, because of the relatively underdeveloped information, to understand the latest information cannot be timely, All this has led to inequality in educational outcomes. The first is the inequality of educational outcomes caused by the wide variation in development conditions. (1) Inequality caused by different development conditions (such as educational infrastructure) in different regions. Different economic development area due to reasons, such as education infrastructure construction level is large, caused the unfair education results, this is education fiscal policy is difficult to solve the problems in the process of implementation, such as in the following cases, promote the education fair fiscal policy is only in the construction of basic facilities, rather than on real significance to promote education fair: 1. Educational financial policy of Gansu province. In recent years, Gansu has exempted tuition and textbook fees for 869,000 pre-school children, tuition and miscellaneous fees for 123,000 registered senior high school students from poor families, and tuition and textbook fees for 48,000 registered senior high school students from poor families. From 2007 to the end of June this year, a total of 15.1599 million students in Gansu received financial aid, amounting to 30.457 billion yuan. The number of students receiving financial aid increased from 150,000 in 2007 to 1.65 million in the first half of 2019. However, in the following fiscal policy cases in Beijing, fiscal policy is more inclined to promote a higher level of quality education. In October 2014, Beijing issued the opinions on the cultivation and practice of socialist core values in primary and secondary schools among the first batch in the country, which put forward the mandatory requirement that primary and secondary schools must have more than 10% of class hours in large social classes, and increased the proportion of students’ practical ability in the physics and chemistry exams of high school. In the same year, Beijing formally implemented the “10-hundred-thousand project” in the city’s primary and secondary schools, requiring every primary and secondary school student to attend at least one flag-raising ceremony in tian ‘anmen square and enter the national museum, the capital museum and the Anti-Japanese War memorial hall. To participate in at least 10 collective public welfare activities; Watch 100 excellent films and television works, read 100 excellent books, learn and understand the typical deeds and excellent characters of 100 Chinese and foreign heroes and advanced characters; We have trained and hired 1,000 extracurricular

130

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

tutors in more than 1,000 social resource units such as libraries and museums, and invited 1,000 traditional cultural experts and inheritors of intangible cultural heritage to our campuses and classrooms. But in some other areas, if not in such a highly developed education area as Beijing, may not have such rich resources and classroom life, although is to impart the same knowledge, such as physics, chemistry and other experiments, if there is no equipment and these conditions, the educational results will be greatly compromised. 2. Educational informatization. The rapid development of educational informatization may not bring about high-quality educational results. We found that the school informationization’s influence on the comprehensive academic achievement test scores and the trunk overall rising first (positive effect) after falling (negative effect) of inverted “U” type trend, school information in the middle and lower levels (0–50 partition), the comprehensive academic achievements, in language and math scores as the school informatization level in slow decline after the first slowly rising trend; When school informatization develops to a medium level (50–70 districts), the improvement of school informatization has a positive effect on academic comprehensive achievement, language and mathematics performance. However, when school informatization is further developed (between 70 and 100 districts), the impact of school informatization on academic comprehensive achievement and Chinese, namely, mathematics, is negative and has a sharp decline. It shows that educational informatization is not effective for all students. In economy, with rapid development of information today, blindly pursuing modernization, science and technology bring to the students is not consistent with their level of education as a result, the rural areas, poverty-stricken areas, such as relatively backward students information, or relative informatization development level is high enough students, to spend money on the development of informationbased education, obviously is not fair for them. The pursuit of fair educational results requires that students be taught in accordance with their aptitude, and that resources and funds are used in a more suitable place for students, so as to be more conducive to their future and development. Unfairness caused by unbalanced distribution of educational resources in the same area. In the same city, county, different schools due to the difference in resource allocation, different schools can appear between the significant differences in teacher resources. In a 2019 survey of six provinces by the national education supervision group, a common problem was that some schoolteachers were underpaid, below the average for local civil servants. There are quite a number of local teachers over the age of 50 in rural areas, some of whom are “the people to the public”, some of whom are “the community to the community” during the “cultural revolution”. Although they are comfortable in local teaching, their knowledge structure is aging, and they are difficult to adapt to modern education. Teachers in the county are old and lack of fresh blood. Some young teachers in rural areas are always trying to find ways to transfer to urban or suburban schools, resulting in overstaffing of urban schoolteachers and insufficient teaching staff in rural schools. As a result, the direct result of the difference in education results is the difference in the scores of the high school entrance examination: the difference in the average scores of the students in

6.5 The Problem of the Implementation Process of Fiscal Policy—Educational Results

131

the two high schools in the same area with the same nine-year compulsory education can be tens of points. And after the compulsory education stage is the high school education. According to the regulation, the recruit students of average high school should allocate the recruit students index of high-grade lieutenant school to all local junior high school appropriately, take the result of high school entrance examination as the basis, choose the best to admit. High quality high school’s educational philosophy is, however, in university and transmission talents training, this is the school, students, parents and school district government wishes, so high quality lieutenant colonel hope admission examination result good students, and the poor quality of the teaching of some junior high school students of natural mid-term exam achievement is not very good, the school students is not popular with high quality. As a result, high-quality lieutenant colonel or to change the admission of many good students. And those who do not reach the high quality of the test results of the high school admission line of the parents of students, will be the junior high school, primary school for admission, try every means, even adopt donations to sponsor the school, let the children into the high quality high school. For example, in Wuxi city, Jiangsu province, students who failed to meet the standards were once paid a borrowing fee to enroll in school without transferring their academic status. The differences in resource allocation in high schools further widen the differences in educational outcomes.

6.6 Countermeasures and Suggestions for Implementation Problems First, the financial policy implementation process of the problem countermeasure— the entrance opportunity aspect. Education fairness has three levels, first, the first is the admission opportunity fair, then the education process and the result of education, and on fiscal policy, the government is also making a lot of public policy so as to achieve fair, but in public policy formulation on more or less there will be a problem and missing, because society has been continuously changes. Therefore, this paragraph will put forward some countermeasures and Suggestions for the current fiscal policy, which has reached “close” fairness. The following is a fair access to the opportunity to provide a few countermeasures. There is a gap in resource allocation between urban and rural areas and among provinces. There are also differences in the educational funds invested by the central government, which may affect the right of local students to go to school and study. Therefore, the proper use of education funds and whether they can be used where they are needed requires the cooperation of the central government, local people’s governments and schools. Because schools have different funds demand from region to region, although the central government in giving budgets, can according to each region and given different education budgets, but in the use of education funds for local governments and schools, so it is very important to cooperate with each other,

132

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

only the local government and school and the real time demand, the most important thing is to enhance the efficient use of funds. The following two fiscal policies are taken as examples to illustrate the importance of central and local coordination: 1. Suggestions of the central government on improving the efficiency of the use of educational funds. In the second half of 2018, issued by The General Office of the State Council on further adjusting and optimizing structure to improve the efficient use of education funds, in order to comprehensively enhance the management of the education funds, have reached a education modernization and the people’s satisfactory education, therefore puts forward Suggestions to further adjust the optimize structure, improve the efficient use of education funds. The guidelines include the following requirements: give priority to education, reform and improve the management system and mechanism for the use of education funds, address the problem of unbalanced and inadequate education development, and improve the efficiency of the allocation and use of resources, all in order to promote fair and quality education. The following four basic principles are put forward: first, give priority to guarantee and increase input; second, do one’s best and do what one can; third, give overall consideration and focus; fourth, deepen reform and improve efficiency. And to improve the mechanism of education funding, optimize the structure of education funding, scientific management of education funding and strengthen the organization and implementation as the main axis to put forward relevant opinions. Among them, there are the following aspects that are closely related to the fairness of admission opportunity: establishing the reasonable determination of tuition fee and subsidy level in the dynamic adjustment mechanism of the corresponding fee standard; We will focus on ensuring the balanced development of compulsory education, raising the retention rate of compulsory education, intensifying efforts to alleviate poverty through education, and ensuring that the funds are allocated to schools and teaching sites, so that the normal operation of schools has been achieved, and the problems of controlling dropouts, guaranteeing schooling, and families’ inability to travel education have been solved. The existing funds should be given priority to guarantee, and the incremental funds should be more and more to support the development of education in poverty-stricken areas and the education of poor children, as well as a sound student financial aid system (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Li et al. 2019; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016; Zhang 2007). Dynamic adjustment mechanism of the above mentioned requirements of the local people’s government shall, in accordance with the provisions of administrative authority and the local administrator principle, and to consider the region’s economic development, education cost and the masses to bear ability, etc., the central government giving access to the local people’s government, is the hope can cooperate with the policy of the central government of the people’s government, and according to the provinces around the reality of establishing the corresponding dynamic adjustment mechanism, and the dynamic adjustment mechanism can be adjusted according to the situation of change and mechanism of static specifications than the average more humanized and more scientific; Funds to be implemented in schools, the construction

6.6 Countermeasures and Suggestions for Implementation Problems

133

of schools, the level of running schools, in addition to the supervision of the local people’s government, but also needs the cooperation of schools. Central fiscal policy, improve the budget, improve the funding system, if you can’t effective use of the local people’s government or the school funds, to be used in need and where necessary, it may appear gap between urban and rural areas, and poor school results, these problems will move light hammer greatly affect the region’s students admission opportunity fair or not, and the effect of the implementation will be affected by the degree of mutual cooperation between the central government and local government, because of the central has put education priority development of strategic position, if the local people’s government didn’t like the central importance of the education, cause the education funds investment is insufficient, such as not raised or fiscal policy, This will lead to more serious problems such as the gap in the allocation of resources and the under construction of schools, which will lead to unequal access to schools between provinces and cities. 2. The financial and educational funds of Sichuan are inclined to the povertystricken areas. Government of Sichuan province in early 2019, issued the further adjusting and optimizing structure of Sichuan province to improve the efficient use of education funding plan “, the goal of this plan, to 2020, in each region of Sichuan province in schools at all levels must be worked out in China’s basic standards and embrace fiscal appropriations basic standards, and establish the dynamic adjustment mechanism, devotes to the education funds, such as the depth of poor areas and creates file tent card family economic difficulties students tilt, gradually increase the proportion of input to the society at the same time, the support of social forces to run education, proposed the key to ensure the balanced development of compulsory education. All aspects of this plan is put forward response promulgated by the State Council “about further adjusting and optimizing structure to improve the efficient use of education funds”, the solution reflected the mutual cooperation of the central and local governments, and the government will plan focused on the depth of poor areas in Sichuan, compulsory education is regarded as an important part of, can operate by the investment of education funds, make to the balanced development between urban and rural, and students can improve the funding system of security, poor children can accept education, make the entrance opportunity fair implementation. This solution has some goals of time are put forward, which is to gradually solve the problem, this is in addition to the Sichuan government’s emphasis on education degree, more show Sichuan government for half a year ago the central government put forward the opinion of the attention and is being implemented, the next step, is Sichuan all schools are actively cooperate with the plan, if there is mutual cooperation, that increase the benefit of education funds and solve the problem of entrance opportunity fair related becomes possible. School for high-quality schools become parents students choosing one of the main principles, although now implement the enrollment, students according to live nearby, but parents still have a way to send children to various kinds of high-quality schools, therefore, all sorts of problems, such as: loss of students, what kind of people can exercise choice, etc., this is a problem of education fairness, in addition

134

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

to this, more admission opportunity fair question. Therefore, in order to achieve high quality schools in the hearts of parents, schools in each region should complement each other and develop their characteristics, so that schools are not eliminated, but also to reduce the loss of students, school choice and other problems. 1. Take schools with Taiwanese characteristics as an example. Taiwan facing the country, under pressure to cut class or cut down and merge school, so in 2007, in “the national features and activation of primary and secondary school students to promote school plans” the word “characteristic school” is put forward, in the special school to school near the characteristics, the humanities, the natural scenery and the feature, combined with in the real estate culture, studio, etc., of cross-combination cooperation, curriculum design, the characteristics of the above (Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016; Zhang 2007). Second, the financial policy implementation process of the problem countermeasure—education process aspect. The implementation of fiscal policy must take into account the factors such as economy, material, culture, development status and people’s living standard in real life. Therefore, the differences between regions, urban and rural areas and between schools are inevitable and must exist. It is impossible to pursue absolute fairness. But relative fairness is attainable. In order to achieve relative fairness, the following countermeasures can be taken. Government coordination and support are the most effective and direct countermeasures. The funds and manpower and material resources it can mobilize. It’s hard for individuals and organizations to compete. The improvement and bias of fiscal policies have a far-reaching impact on the reduction of the gap in education level between regions, urban and rural areas and between schools, such as increasing education investment or changing the emphasis of education investment. In recent years, the investment of a series of funds benefiting the people in education has effectively improved the running conditions of rural compulsory education schools in Xinjiang and narrowed the gap between urban and rural areas and between regions in the development of compulsory education. At present, the region has 69 counties (cities, districts) through the national compulsory education development basic balance county assessment. Xi ‘an is strong city in higher education and basic education in China, but with the accelerating urbanization, education quality resources distribution, the new degree is insufficient, unreasonable layout, uneven quality of running a school and the emerging problems such as the management systems and mechanisms, people crowd to strong demand for high quality basic education, public good demand for education and the contradiction between supply and demand is very outstanding. Public satisfaction with the education bureau hit its lowest level since the show began. On October 10, xi ‘an held a citywide education conference to officially release the implementation opinions on accelerating education reform and development in the new era and building a strong city in education and the three-year action plan for improving basic education in xi ‘an (2019–2021). Within three years, we built, renovated or expanded 430 primary and secondary schools and kindergartens, and added 389,500 academic degrees to meet the rigid demand for new academic degrees. We will set up a special reward fund of 200

6.6 Countermeasures and Suggestions for Implementation Problems

135

million to 400 million yuan for improving school quality, and reward 200 schools that have achieved remarkable results in improving their school performance every year. The municipal level shall set up a special award and subsidy fund of no less than 5 billion yuan for school construction in three years, and give differentiated awards and subsidies to districts, counties and development zones. For compulsory education schools with obvious improvement in school quality and high social evaluation, a one-time reward of 1 million to 2 million yuan is given every year, which is used for teaching and research activities and incentives. From the above, no matter what the problem is, the government’s action is always the most influential and effective. Through the coordination and support of the government, the targeted “fixed point blasting” can solve the problem of unfair education to the greatest extent and achieve a certain degree of relative fairness. Although the government has unparalleled degree of organization and strong position, but because of the government management scope too broad, too, given the public’s needs and the needs of work, have to have to solve first, then solve is good, hence the different areas in the aspect of promoting education fair education types supported by the emphasis of the financial input, is different. Private education can properly fill the gap of government work. By 2018, there were 183,500 private schools at all levels and of various types in China, enrolling 17.797,500 students and 53.7821 million students. Private education attracts social funds into the field of education, complements the shortage of public education resources, and meets the diverse and personalized educational needs of the people. Specifically, private education has increased the supply of preschool education and become an important force in China’s preschool education. Private education meets the demand of migrant children for basic education and promotes social equity and educational equity. Private education has raised the level of popularization of higher education and promoted social mobility in China. By 2018, there were 183,500 private schools at all levels and of various types in China, enrolling 17.797,500 students and 53.7821 million students. Private education attracts social funds into the field of education, complements the shortage of public education resources, and meets the diverse and personalized educational needs of the people. Private education meets the demand of migrant children for basic education and promotes social equity and educational equity. Based on the reality of the autonomous region, on the basis of both support and norms, to support. According to the Inner Mongolia autonomous region people’s government on encouraging social forces to run education to promote the healthy development of non-governmental education implementation opinion “, in Inner Mongolia to carry out the real “perfect schools, individuals and government reasonable share of private school faculty’s social security system”, make voluntary school teachers can also enjoy the sunshine of public finance, from teaching to reassure them. At the same time, the best to support the strong, and encourage public education. Use policies to guide private schools and kindergartens to set up non-profit schools and universal kindergartens. As the number of private educations is too much, the quality of education is uneven, it is hard to avoid the phenomenon of mixed eyes. And different from public education, most private education is difficult to recruit excellent teachers and excellent students

136

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

with excellent teaching level, which further aggravates the situation that the private education industry is uneven. To develop private education, we must standardize the requirements for running schools and raise the threshold for admission. Otherwise not only cannot become the solution to education equity and will become a poison (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Li et al. 2019; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016; Zhang 2007). Third, the financial policy implementation process problem countermeasure—the education result aspect. Unfair education result is by education opportunity not fair and unfair decision at the same time, the education process and education opportunity not fair and unfair in the process of education and the economic development of China’s current situation, is rooted in the primary stage of socialism in our country’s basic national conditions, is the social principal contradictions of our country: the people the growing demand for a better life and imbalance is not fully the contradiction between the development of the performance. Predictably, this unfairness will persist. But the unfairness is not insurmountable. The Internet is a tool for breaking down the distance between people, and it is also a tool for education. Although education informatization is not yet formed the mainstream, in spite of the network teaching to improve students may not we think big, but the network can greatly reduce the teaching cost, through the virtual experiment system, can give students lack of equipment in poor regions more vividly experiment process, such as the chemical college recently quit the platform for the virtual simulation experiment center, simply login can be quick and easy to understand, including radiation chemistry experiment, operation of various kinds of experiments. A variety of online teaching apps make Tianna Hai north teacher and students unprecedented close. Large-scale network teaching is not only possible to achieve, but also supported by the state and even realistic cases. We will promote the expansion of fiber optic broadband networks and 4G network coverage, and encourage telecommunications companies to offer preferential rates for poverty alleviation, so as to speed up the provision of high-speed and low-cost Internet services to the registered and registered poor. In February 2019, the CPC central committee and the state council issued China’s education modernization 2035. This is our country. The first medium- and long-term strategic plan with education modernization as the theme is the programmatic document of promoting education modernization and building education into a powerful country in the new era. The document focuses on the deployment of ten strategic tasks for the modernization of education, the eighth of which is to “accelerate the transformation of education in the information age". The document proposes to “build an intelligent campus and build an integrated intelligent teaching, management and service platform. Using modern technology to accelerate the reform of talent training mode, realize the organic combination of large-scale education and personalized training. We will create new types of educational services, establish a mechanism for building and sharing digital educational resources, and improve the mechanism for distributing benefits, the system for protecting intellectual property rights, and the system for supervising new types of educational services. We will

6.6 Countermeasures and Suggestions for Implementation Problems

137

push forward the reform of educational governance, accelerate the formation of a modern educational management and monitoring system, and make management more precise and decision-making more scientific.” In 2015, France launched the strategic plan of “digital campus” education, proposing to invest 10% within three years. We aim to achieve a panoramic digital transformation of primary and secondary schools, including improving the penetration rate of personal mobile digital devices, solving the problem of Internet access in rural schools, establishing a national digital platform, and providing rich and diverse multidisciplinary network education resources for primary and secondary school teachers and students; Russia launched the “digital education environment” project in 2018, aiming to establish a safe digital education environment, ensure that all schools have access to high-speed Internet by 2024, and establish infrastructure and digital platforms for teachers and students. In 2019, the German federal government officially launched the digital agreement for schools. In the next five years, the federal government will invest 500 million euros in the construction of school information platform every year, and the policies and measures of various states to promote the construction of school education information are coming out in succession. Finland’s basic education innovation project, represented by the “FINNABLE 2020” project, is committed to building a digital platform, forming a sound online learning community, breaking the traditional space and time constraints, and realizing learning anytime and anywhere. A comprehensive survey was conducted on information literacy, and a program was designed to improve the leadership of elementary and secondary school principals’ education informatization in “three districts and three states". The mixed learning model aims at the weak links in the information literacy of primary and secondary school principals, carries out targeted learning activities, and further strengthens the learning results through training process analysis, group reporting of expert comments, submission of learning experience, completion of satisfaction questionnaire and support of learning community. Dozens of experts from the theory and practice of educational informatization from all over the country gave lectures on such topics as information-based leadership and school planning, cyberspace and teaching support services, information literacy of teachers and students in the Internet environment, “digital campus” solutions and applications, new technologies and future education. In particular, the school development in the era of full connection and intelligence, the application of big data in teaching, AR technology to make your classroom more exciting, 5G + education and other exciting cutting-edge courses will lead participating principals to have close experience and understand the real application of new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence in education and teaching. All kinds of educational charitable funds have been active in the front line of education poverty alleviation, in the past many years, they have made remarkable achievements, through the donation of money, books, teaching supplies, and human and material resources, made great contributions to the development of China’s education. The reason why excellent talents do not want to be teachers, rural teachers desperately to the town crowded, the fundamental reason is the pay problem. As

138

6 An Analysis of the Financial Policies to Promote Educational …

early as in 1994, “teacher law” stipulated that the average salary level of teachers should be “not lower” or “higher” than the average salary level of local civil servants. However, the reality is that the average salary level of teachers is often lower than the average salary level of civil servants for a long time, and the average salary level and welfare benefits of rural teachers are lower than those of urban teachers. As a result, excellent teachers in rural areas are constantly poached by private schools or key schools with high salaries, and low-quality teachers are filled in all rural schools, resulting in a serious decline in the quality of education and greatly widening the gap in educational results. Therefore, in order to solve the problem that teachers in central schools in towns and villages yearn for schools in cities, and teachers in primary schools in villages yearn for central schools, it is necessary to improve the treatment of teachers (Ding and Zheng 2015; Li et al. 2020; Li 2020; Li et al. 2019; Li and Li 2019; Xue and Li 2020; Zhang 2012; Wu 2012; Tian et al. 2011; Pan 2017; Zhao and Zhao 2016; Zhang 2007).

References Ding, D., & Zheng, F. T. (2015). Removing points and merging schools: Integrating educational resources or reducing educational investment?–Provincial panel data analysis based on 1996– 2009. Economics (Quarterly), 14(02), 603–622. Li, J., & Li, J. (2019). Educational policy development in China in the 21st century: A multi-flows approach. Beijing International Review of Education, 1(1), 196–220. Li, J., Shi, Z., & Xue, E. (2019). The problems, needs and strategies of rural teacher development at deep poverty areas in China: Rural schooling stakeholder perspectives. International Journal of Educational Research, 99, 101496. Li, J. (2020). Compulsory educational policies in Rural China since 1978: A macro perspective. Beijing International Review of Education, 2(1), 159–164. Li, J., Yongzhi, Z., Eryong, X., & Zhou, N. (2020). Faculty ethics in China: From a historical perspective. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(2), 126–136. Pan, G. H. (2017). “Removing points and merging schools”, family background and enrollment opportunities. Society, 37(03), 131–162. Tian, Z. L., Yuan, L. S., & Zhang, X. (2011). Research on the difference between urban and rural compulsory education equity between regions. Education and Economy, 11(02), 43–48. Wu, Z. H. (2012). Discussion on the core issues of the integrated development of urban and rural compulsory education in China. Research on Education Development, 32(17), 8–13. Xue, E., & Li, J. (2020). What is the ultimate education task in China? Exploring “strengthen moral education for cultivating people” (“Li De Shu Ren”). Educational Philosophy and Theory. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1754539,1-12. Zhang, H. (2007). The current situation, causes and countermeasures of the unfair distribution of inter-school resources in compulsory education in China. Research on Education Development, 7(9), 15–45. Zhang, W. (2012). Integration of urban and rural education: An era demand for educational equity. Education Research, 33(08), 13–18. Zhao, P. G., Zhao, Z. X. (2016). Thinking of “relocating and merging” rural primary schools in mountainous areas–a case study of Mashi School District in Tongjiang County, Sichuan Province. Education Development Research, 36(04), 11–18.