Private Education Policy in China: Concepts, Problems and Strategies (Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices) 9811632715, 9789811632716

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

Eryong Xue Jian Li

Private Education Policy in China Concepts, Problems and Strategies

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 cuttingedge 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

Private Education Policy in China Concepts, Problems and Strategies

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.

This book is funded by the research on The Key Education Thoughts of General Secretary Xi Jinping (Project No.: 18JZD006) (The key Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research of the Ministry of Education). ISSN 2730-6356 ISSN 2730-6364 (electronic) Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices ISBN 978-981-16-3271-6 ISBN 978-981-16-3272-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3272-3 © 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

Since China’s reform and opening up, as the main form of social forces to run education by the local educational institutions is growing stronger, formed from preschool education to higher education, from academic education to non-academic education, situation of the development of various types of levels, full of vitality, effectively increase the supply of education services, to promote the modernization of education, promote economic and social development made a positive contribution, has become an important part of socialist education career. At the same time, private education also faces many problems and difficulties that restrict its development. Thus, this book concentrates exploring the landscape of private education in contemporary China, including pre-schools, compulsory education, high schools, and higher education. The developmental opportunities, problems, and strategies in regard to shaping the promotion of China’s private education are examined in this book. Chapter 1 offers an overview of the present situation of private education in China contextually. Preschool education is getting more and more attention in China, people’s demand for preschool education has been transferred to the “good garden,” it is because of the demand for preschool education and the diversification of demand, private kindergartens continue to develop, and private education-related policies and regulations are also increasingly perfect. In China, privately-run preschool education is an important part of preschool education. Privately-run preschool education not only meets the needs of preschool education, but also provides a variety of choices for the diversified needs of preschool education, and also makes an important contribution to the popularization of preschool education. This chapter analyzes the current situation and situation of private preschool education in China through the understanding of the basic situation of private preschool education in some provinces of our country and the statistics of data, combined with relevant private education policy documents in China. Since the reform and opening up, private education has seen rapid development. This chapter also analyzes the part of the private high school in the private education and discusses its overall situation, layout, and existing problems. It is found that both the quantity and quality of private high schools have been improved to a certain extent. The distribution feature is that “there are more v

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schools in economically developed areas and fewer schools in economically underdeveloped areas”. In addition, the problems in the development process of private high schools mainly include single income channels, inadequate financial support, unstable teachers and lack of social identity for private high schools, etc., which require us to proceed from the reality and constantly improve the management and protection of private high schools. Chapter 2 concentrates on exploring the private preschool education in China. Preschool education is an important part of education and is an important part of basic education; it is also an important beginning, lifelong education in China’s education system construction. The construction of preschool education has always been an integral part of the quality, and level of compulsory education plays a vital role and also promotes people’s ideological and moral qualities and scientific and cultural qualities. Preschool education, as the name implies, is the educates entrance before accepting education stage, at this stage, educated young children, this period is the foundation of children’s physical and mental development and ability to improve phase, is also a period of rapid physical and mental development of children, therefore, the correct teaching guidance for young children to children’s preschool education, has a great effect on children’s physical and mental development. “Preschool education is of great significance to children’s physical and mental health, habit formation and intellectual development,” said the Outline of the National Program for Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform and Development (2010–2020), issued by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council. Follow the rules of children’s physical and mental development, adhere to scientific education methods, to ensure children’s happy and healthy growth. Some scholars also pointed out that “national financial support for early childhood education has become a worldwide development trend.” This obviously proves the importance and necessity of preschool education, and also highlights the important position of preschool education in the educational cause. Chapter 3 focuses on examining the private compulsory education in China from multiple perspectives. As a large part of the private education, the private compulsory education is very important, and because it is a part of the compulsory education, the status of the private compulsory education appears more important, and the analysis and research of the private education policy also appear particularly important. In this paper, the content of private education policy analysis, due to the limited level, can only be on the basis of policy documents for a relatively shallow analysis. At the same time, due to run by the local compulsory education is the intersection of private education and compulsory education, the state of private education and compulsory education have more detailed specification, specifically for private compulsory education policies is not much, so this article mainly from the private education policy and compulsory education policy analysis of these two aspects related to run by the compulsory education policy. It is analyzed from four aspects: the historical review of private education policy; the nature and status of private compulsory education; private compulsory education requires high-quality and balanced development; the fund and income of private compulsory education. Over the past decades, in order to strengthen the encouragement, guidance, and management of private compulsory

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education, new policies and regulations have constantly emerged, and therefore, private compulsory education has achieved considerable development. Starting from the policy of privately-run compulsory education in China, this paper discusses the process of gradual perfection of the policies and regulations of privately-run compulsory education in China, the political basis of these policies, a series of experiences acquired in the process of its development, some problems arising, and the future development direction of privately-run compulsory education. Chapter 4 concentrates on exploring the development of private high education in China. With the development of China’s economy and society, private education has also developed rapidly. Private high school education, as a part of private education, is also the focus of China’s education. Article mainly relies on the law of the People’s Republic of China private education promotion law, “national medium and long-term education reform and development plan outline (2020–2020),” “about to encourage social forces to run education to promote the healthy development of non-governmental education several opinions such as policy documents about the content of the education run by the local high school, and analyze how to promote the development of education run by the local high school in China and the relevant policy guidance. Due to the public’s attention to high school education in our country, the teaching quality of private high schools also needs to be guaranteed. At present, private high schools in China are often in the development of two polarizations of public high schools. One pole is that private high schools provide higher quality and higher level of education due to more freedom or more sufficient funds. Of course, this also means that the educated have to pay higher tuition and other economic costs. The other pole is the relatively poor enrollment of students in private high schools, which can be seen as a supplement to public high schools to some extent and can also promote the popularization of high school education in a certain way. However, from another perspective, the teaching quality and level of such private high schools are often worrying. No matter which level of the two poles, they are obviously not on the same level with the public high schools, and “leading” or “supporting” is not conducive to the development of high school education in the long run. Chapter 5 involves examining the development of private higher education policy in China. In the late 1970s, the first batch of private colleges set up, but their common characteristic is as follows: one is the education level is not high, main is to restore the university entrance exam system after the university entrance exam qualifications to provide tutoring and actual demand for the society set up some skills classes, is not true sense of the universities, so they called “college” or “self-study university,” such as remediation mechanism and training institutions; second, with the basic no inheritance in the history of private universities, private universities in a short period of time in the early days after foundation of people’s existence, but this time, the private colleges and universities are mostly western imperialist penetration church schools, so the central committee of the communist party of China issued in 1952 after the instructions about Catholicism, Protestantism departments were eliminated in the adjustment, change the names or merged with other public colleges and universities,

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so the private higher education has disappeared for a period of time; third, there is neither adequate legal protection nor reliable sources of funding. Beijing, China

Eryong Xue Jian Li

Contents

1 The Overview of the Private Education Development in China . . . . . . 1.1 Policy Documents Related to Private Preschool Education . . . . . . . 1.2 Statistics of the Basic Situation, Current Situation and Situation Analysis in Some Provinces and Cities of Private Preschool Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Statistics and Analysis of the Basic Data of Privately-Run Preschool in Some Provinces and Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Suggestions on the Development of Private Compulsory Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 The Present Situation and Analysis of the Private High School . . . 1.6 Social Foundation for Privately-Run Compulsory Education . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Private Pre-school Education Policy in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The Political Foundations of Private Preschool Education: The State’s Help and Support for Non-profit Private Kindergartens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Political Foundation of Private Preschool Education Two: The Party’s Grass-Roots Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Economic Basis of Private Preschool Education Policy in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The Social Basis of Private Preschool Education Policy . . . . . . . . . 2.5 The Guiding Role of Laws and Regulations and the National Government on the Subject of Private Preschool Education . . . . . . 2.5.1 Restoration and Development of Private Education and Supplement of Public Education (1978–1992) . . . . . . . 2.5.2 Development Stage of Private Teaching (1993–2010) . . . . 2.5.3 Improvement of the Policy System of Private-Run Preschool Education (2010–Present) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.4 Guide of Different Local Policies in Different Provinces to Private Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2.5.5 Problems Still Existing in the Policy of Private Preschool Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Prospects and Suggestions of Private Preschool Education Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 The Private Compulsory Education in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The History Review of Private Education Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Nature and Status of Private Compulsory Education . . . . . . . . 3.4 Privately-Run Compulsory Education Requires High-Quality and Balanced Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 The Politics of China’s Private Compulsory Education Policy . . . . 3.6 Current Situation of Private Compulsory Education in China . . . . . 3.7 Classification and Mode of Private Compulsory Education . . . . . . 3.8 Problems Existing in Privately-Run Compulsory Education at This Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9 Summary of Policies on Privately-Run Compulsory Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10 Future Development Direction of China’s Private Compulsory Education Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.11 The Mode and Achievement of Private Compulsory Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.12 Problems and Suggestions of Private Compulsory Education . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 The Private High School Education in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 How to Promote the Development of Private High School Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Policy Guidance for Private High School Education . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Legal Status of Private Ordinary High Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Government Regulation of Private Ordinary High Schools . . . . . . . 4.6 Differentiated Policy System of Private High Schools . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Political Basis of the Contents of Private Ordinary High Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 The Social Basis of Education Policy of Private Senior High School in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9 The Social Basis of Private High School Education Policy . . . . . . . 4.10 Summary and Suggestions on the Problems of Private High School Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.11 The Political Basis of Private High School Education Policy . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 The Private Higher Education Policy in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 5.2 The Existing Problems of Private Colleges and Universities and the Policies Aimed at the Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 5.3 Background and Development of Private Higher Education Policy in China Since the Reform and Opening up 40 years Ago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5.4 Models, Achievements and Experiences of the Economic Basis of China’s Private Higher Education Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 5.5 Contribution of China’s Private Higher Education to National Economic Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 5.6 Experiences on the Economic Basis of Private Higher Education Policies in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 5.7 The Relationship Between Education Policy and Economy of Private Colleges and Universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5.8 The Social Background of “Private Education Promotion Law” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 5.9 Problems Existing in China’s Private Higher Education Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

About the Authors

Eryong Xue is the professor in China Institute of Education Policy, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University. Changjiang scholars (young scholars) 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 at Tsinghua University. He is also a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Public Administration at 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 independent or co-authored consulting reports were adopted by decision-making departments or approved by leaders. He has presided over more than 10 national or provincial projects such as national social science fund, natural science fund, ministry of education humanities and social science fund, Beijing philosophy and social science project, and participated in 9 national or provincial key projects such as ministry of education philosophy and social science project, and 1 international cooperation project. The project of national natural science foundation of China was awarded excellent. He has been honored as the advanced worker of summer social practice for students at capital college and technical secondary school, the outstanding talent of Beijing division, the young talent of Beijing social science federation, the outstanding talent of Beijing universities and colleges, and the outstanding talent of Beijing. His main social part-time jobs are: member of the 14th Committee of the Communist Youth League of Beijing, Deputy Director of the Working Committee of college students and young teachers, Special Expert of China Education Association, China Education Development Strategy Society, National Academic Level Office, Director of Beijing Postdoctoral Fellowship (the 20th session). Jian Li is the Assistant Professor in 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 xiii

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Bloomington. Her research interests focus on education policy studies, globalization, and internationalization of higher education. Dr. Li currently also serves as think tanker at China Institute of Education and Social Development, Beijing Normal University. In the past years, she has published more than 60 papers in Chinese and English in Higher Education, International Journal of Education Research, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Educational Research, Comparative Education Research, China Education Journal, and other SSCI and CSSCI indexed journals. He has published 13 English monographs, participated in the editing of 2 English works, and published more than 20 articles in China Education Daily, People’s Political Consultative Conference News and People’s Daily Overseas Edition. She has presided over or participated in 6 national, provincial, and ministerial projects. She is an Editorial Board Member and Reviewer of several international English journals.

Chapter 1

The Overview of the Private Education Development in China

This chapter offers an overview of the present situation of private education in China contextually. Preschool education is getting more and more attention in China, people’s demand for preschool education has been transferred to the “good garden”, it is because of the demand for preschool education and the diversification of demand, private kindergartens continue to develop, private education related policies and regulations are also increasingly perfect. In China, privately-run preschool education is an important part of preschool education. Privately-run preschool education not only meets the needs of preschool education, but also provides a variety of choices for the diversified needs of preschool education, and also makes an important contribution to the popularization of preschool education. This chapter analyzes the current situation and situation of private preschool education in China through the understanding of the basic situation of private preschool education in some provinces of our country and the statistics of data, combined with relevant private education policy documents in China. Since the reform and opening up, private education has been rapid development. This chapter also analyzes the part of the private high school in the private education, and discusses its overall situation, layout and existing problems. It is found that both the quantity and quality of private high schools have been improved to a certain extent. The distribution feature is that “there are more schools in economically developed areas and fewer schools in economically underdeveloped areas”. In addition, the problems in the development process of private high schools mainly include single income channels, inadequate financial support, unstable teachers and lack of social identity for private high schools, etc., which require us to proceed from the reality and constantly improve the management and protection of private high schools.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Private Education Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3272-3_1

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1 The Overview of the Private Education Development …

1.1 Policy Documents Related to Private Preschool Education Private education plays an important role in education, especially in preschool education. With the increase of the number of private kindergartens and the state’s attention to the role of private preschool education, private preschool education is booming in China. At the same time, the state has also noticed the disadvantages of privately-run education under the education market mechanism, so it has issued a lot of policies and regulations related to privately-run education to standardize and guide, support and protect the stable development of privately-run education. Since 1985, China has promulgated a number of policies and regulations on private education, which not only regulate and guide the private education, but also support and protect it. In the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010–2020) issued in 2010, it was proposed to “establish a government-led, social participation, public and private kindergartens system. Vigorously develop public kindergartens and actively support private kindergartens”; In the same year, the State Council issued “Several Opinions on the Current Development of Preschool Education”, which put forward that “we should actively support the development of private kindergartens, especially those universal private kindergartens which are open to the public and charge low fees”. In the report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017, it was clearly proposed to “support and regulate non-government forces in running schools”. In the 2019 Government Work Report, it was proposed that “we will expand the supply of preschool education through multiple channels. The government will support kindergartens, whether public or private, as long as they meet safety standards, charge reasonable fees, and ensure that parents have confidence.” The 2020 Government Work Report calls for supporting and standardizing private education. Develop inclusive pre-sexology education and help private kindergartens to rescue. The introduction of these policies is undoubtedly conducive to the healthy and sustainable development of privately-run preschool education in China and will help solve the dilemma of “difficulty” and “high cost” of preschool education in China at present (Deng, 2013; He, 2020; Lu, 2020; Xue et al., 2019; Yuan, 2017; Zhang, 2017). In a word, in recent years, the state and the Party have paid increasing attention to preschool education, constantly established and improved laws and regulations related to private education and issued a number of policy documents to support and regulate the development of private preschool education. The general development requirement is to promote the development of preschool education and actively promote the development of private preschool education. The government also guides the development direction of private kindergartens in the direction of universal kindergartens, in order to solve the current problems of “difficulty in entering kindergartens” and “expensive in entering kindergartens”, and to meet people’s urgent desire for “good kindergartens”.

1.2 Statistics of the Basic Situation, Current Situation and Situation …

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1.2 Statistics of the Basic Situation, Current Situation and Situation Analysis in Some Provinces and Cities of Private Preschool Education Private preschool education plays an important role in different provinces of our country, but there is an obvious gap between different regions and provinces on the standard degree and development level of private preschool education. However, in recent years, the role of private preschool education has been paid more and more attention by the state and the Party, and various regions have responded actively under the call of the Party Central Committee. When querying the number and regional distribution of private preschool education in various provinces, it is found that there is a big gap in the education statistics of each province. Some provinces have more detailed pre-school education survey statistics, and it is more convenient to inquire. However, in some provinces, although there are a lot of policies and related reports on private preschool education that actively respond to the national call, the specific data statistics are not perfect enough. The number of private kindergartens in China is constantly increasing, which indicates that the preschool education in China has been attached great importance during the five years, and the demand for private preschool education continues to increase. And in the past five years, private preschool kindergartens have occupied more than 60% of the total number of kindergartens in the country. But at the same time, it can also be found that the proportion of private kindergartens has gradually decreased in the past five years, which is closely related to the relevant policies and regulations promulgated by the state. It is due to the state’s access to, rectification and prohibition of some private kindergartens, which is the state’s guidance and standardization of private preschool education. Secondly, the number of private kindergartens showed a slow growth from 2015 to 2018, and then showed a rapid growth in 18–19. This is also because of the increased attention and investment of the state to early childhood education, which shows the state’s attention and efforts to the popularization of preschool education, as well as the standardization and guidance of private preschool education.

1.3 Statistics and Analysis of the Basic Data of Privately-Run Preschool in Some Provinces and Cities (1) Basic Situation and Analysis of Private Preschool Education in Shandong Province in Recent Years. According to the Shandong Province Private Education Development Report in 2017, “By 2017, Shandong has 8,072 private kindergartens, 192 private primary schools, 317 private junior middle schools, 162 private high schools, 99 private secondary vocational schools and 40 private colleges and universities. In addition to the decline in the number of private secondary vocational schools,

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the number of other categories of private schools increased, especially the number of private kindergartens increased significantly.” It can be seen that private education plays an important role in the educational cause of Shandong Province, especially the role of private preschool education is still expanding. From 2014 to 2017, the number of private kindergartens in Shandong Province showed a trend of gradual growth. The number of private kindergartens increased from 7,185 in 2014 to 8,072 in 2017, with an increase of 12.35%, and the proportion of private kindergartens in the whole province increased from 38.81% to 42.44%. According to the observation of data from 2014 to 2017, it can be inferred that the scale of private kindergartens in Shandong Province showed an expanding trend, and the growth rate was relatively stable. Although the number of private kindergartens in Shandong Province is rising, it has not yet exceeded half of the total number of kindergartens. In terms of quantity, private preschool education is still an important part of private schools in Henan Province. During the five years from 2015 to 2019, the total number of private schools in Henan Province has continued to increase, and the number of private preschool education has also shown a trend of continuous growth, which is expected to continue to show an increasing trend in the coming years (Deng, 2013; He, 2020; Lu, 2020; Xue et al., 2019; Yuan, 2017; Zhang, 2017). From the perspective of the proportion of the number of kindergartens in the province, Henan kindergartens account for a high proportion of the total number of kindergartens in the province, accounting for nearly 80% of the number of preschool educations in Henan. And five years from 2015 to 2019, the proportion is relatively stable, but from the point of specific data, the number of private pre-school than still shows a downward trend, the quantity and the national non-governmental preschool education of trend is the same, is expected in the next few years, the number of private kindergartens in henna province will continue to grow, but the number of private kindergarten than will continue to slow down. This shows that the number of public kindergartens and universal kindergartens is growing, and Henan Province is paying continuous attention to preschool education, constantly solving the problem of “difficulty in getting into kindergartens” in Henan Province, and constantly satisfying the desire of Henan people to “get into good kindergartens”. The proportion of private kindergartens in Hebei Province is lower than that in the whole country, and the proportion of private kindergartens is less than 50%. However, from the statistics of 2016–2017, the proportion of private kindergartens has increased, which indicates that private kindergartens are developing and growing. From 2014 to 2019, the total number of private kindergartens in Zhejiang Province decreased, and the total number of kindergartens in Zhejiang Province also showed a downward trend. It is expected that the number of private kindergartens will continue to decrease in the next few years, but the reduction does not mean that it is not good, but a reasonable adjustment based on specific needs and the actual situation, which is to develop in a direction of higher quality and more beneficial to the people. It can be seen that the kindergarten enrollment rate of preschool children in Zhejiang Province is higher than that of Hebei Province, and the kindergarten enrollment rate of preschool children has been high from 2014 to 2019, which indicates that the popularization of preschool education

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in Zhejiang Province has been doing very well. Of course, this is closely related to the economic development level of Zhejiang Province itself. From 2015 to 2016, the number of private kindergartens showed a decreasing trend. The changing trend of the total number of kindergartens in the province is the same as that of the total number of private kindergartens. The proportion of private kindergartens in the total number of kindergartens in the province showed a continuous trend of decline during the five years from 2015 to 2019, but since 2018, the proportion of private kindergartens began to show an upward trend. According to the statistics of these five years, although the proportion of private kindergartens in Shaanxi Province fluctuates constantly, its proportion is not lower than 51%, which indicates that private preschool education plays an important role in private education in Shaanxi Province. By 2015, there were 189 private kindergartens in the city, accounting for 70.78% of the total number of kindergartens in the city. 26,450 children in kindergartens, accounting for 45.67% of the city’s children in kindergartens; The gross enrollment rate of preschool three years in the city was 52.04%, and the contribution rate of private kindergartens was 45.96%. We have effectively expanded the total amount of preschool education resources, supplemented the shortage of public kindergartens, and alleviated the problem of “difficulty in getting into kindergartens”. The objectives and tasks of the first three-year action plan for preschool education have been fully fulfilled. This is a statistical data of private preschool education in a city in Gansu Province, but it can also reflect the development trend and trend of private preschool education in part of Gansu Province. According to the relevant information of private preschool education in Tianzhu City, private kindergartens play an important role in solving the problems of preschool education in China and make an important contribution to solving the shortage of running kindergartens and alleviating the problems of “difficulty in entering kindergartens”. However, compared with the development level of preschool education in Zhejiang Province, only the gross enrollment rate is far behind the level of preschool education in developed areas. Therefore, there is still a long way to go for preschool education in Gansu Province (Deng, 2013; He, 2020; Lu, 2020; Xue et al., 2019; Yuan, 2017; Zhang, 2017). City, township, the number of private kindergartens in rural areas are also there is a growing trend, especially in the urban area of private kindergarten growth compared to the township and rural areas faster growth, the demand for preschool education and urban areas and urban economic development faster and relative factors have clear connection, but township of private kindergartens are stable growth trend, this is because the country’s emphasis on preschool education, help and support for private preschool. Generally speaking, private kindergartens in Shanxi Province have a good development trend, and the development speed of urban areas, towns and rural areas is relatively balanced. Through to the Jilin province from 2016 to 2020 the number of private kindergartens of simple statistics, can be directly found in Jilin province private kindergarten education main part of the basic situation of people, the second five years increasing number of private kindergartens in Jilin province, private kindergartens to alleviate “in difficult” problems made important contributions to

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the also to meet people’s diversified demands on pre-school education Jilin province provides a choice. Analysis on the Basic Situation of Private Preschool Education in Qinghai Province. The basic situation of pre-school education in Qinghai Province in 2018: there were 1,804 independent kindergartens in Qinghai Province, 69 more than last year, with a year-on-year growth of 3.98%; The number of children in the kindergarten (including children in the attached preschool class) reached 214,680, an increase of 7,432 people or 3.59% over the previous year; 1,320 kindergarten principals, 28 fewer than last year, down 2.08%; 11,502 full-time teachers, 839 more than last year, an increase of 7.87%; The gross enrollment rate for preschool education was 89.4%, 3.83 percentage points higher than the previous year. The basic situation of private preschool education in Qinghai Province in 2018: There were 568 private schools in Qinghai Province, 75 fewer than the previous year. There are 544 private kindergartens, with 91,549 students and 5,036 full-time teachers. 3 private primary schools; 11 private high schools; There are 7 private secondary vocational schools. Through to our country partial provinces and cities simple statistical pre-school education basic information can be found around the non-governmental preschool education cause positive attention and guidance in the party and the country gradually steady development, has obtained the certain result, but in some parts of ethnic minority areas, in particular, the preschool education development level and speed of the backward western regions and developed areas have a large gap. Different regions have different levels of preschool education development, which is closely related to the actual situation in the region, especially the level of economic development in the region. All regions should develop preschool education and improve the level of preschool education. We should not only pay attention to the quantity, but also to the quality of preschool education. It is not only necessary to actively respond to national policy provisions and calls, but also to combine the actual situation of different regions, seek truth from facts, make reasonable use of the power of private preschool education, and adopt measures tailored to local conditions to develop preschool education, so as to achieve the development goals of preschool education in China as soon as possible. Analysis of the current situation of the national private compulsory education. Nationwide, the basic development trend of compulsory education is still that public schools are the main body and private schools are beneficial supplement. Public schools still occupy the dominant position in the volume, and private education has effectively supplemented them. Public schools are still the absolute main body of compulsory education in China. According to the Compulsory Education Law of the People’s Republic of China, the government is the responsible subject and the subject of conduct in organizing compulsory education according to law. From the perspective of volume, public schools are still the absolute main body of compulsory education in China. According to the calculation, the number of students in public primary schools and public junior middle schools accounted for 91.05% and 85.76% of the total number

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of students, respectively. Public schools in the compulsory education stage occupy a dominant position in terms of size. In fact, with the strong support of the government, China’s public compulsory education has developed rapidly, and its quality has been constantly improved (Deng, 2013; He, 2020; Lu, 2020; Xue et al., 2019; Yuan, 2017; Zhang, 2017). First, the government has increased its input. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), as the government has increased investment in public schools in the compulsory education stage, public primary schools and public junior middle schools have gradually achieved balanced development and the overall quality of schooling has been continuously improved. Under the guidance of the strategy of “Three Priorities” (giving priority to education in the planning of economic and social development, giving priority to ensuring education in the investment of financial funds, and giving priority to meeting education in the allocation of public resources), the Chinese government has continuously increased its investment in education. In 2012, the proportion of financial expenditure on education in China’s GDP has historically broken through 4%, and the proportion has remained unchanged till now. The supervision and evaluation of the balanced development of compulsory education at the county level, which began in 2013, promotes construction by evaluation, and has effectively improved the quality of public schools through measures such as increasing funding input, improving the standard allocation level of schools, and improving the teacher supplement mechanism. By the end of 2018, 2,717 counties, county-level cities and municipalities directly under the central government had passed the national supervised evaluation, accounting for 92.7% of the country’s total, and 16 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government had passed the evaluation. Second, public schools are increasingly attractive to teachers. With the increase of public financial input, the salaries of teachers in public schools have generally been raised. The relative wage advantage of private schools is no longer significant, and the phenomenon of “poaching people” from public schools has been curtailed. The survey found that, with the exception of a few high-end private schools whose teachers’ salaries are higher than those of local public schools, the average private school teacher’s salary is only 40–50% of that of the same type of public school. In addition, the establishment of public-school teachers further enhances the attractiveness of public-school jobs, especially the difference in the types of pension insurance makes the public-school teachers’ post-retirement pay standard higher. According to the survey data, among teachers with floating experience, the vast majority (91.2%) have migrated from private schools to public schools, which further improves the quality of public schools. The private education to the public education of beneficial supplementary status has not changed. Since the implementation of the Private Education Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China (People’s Promotion Law for short) in 2003, China’s private schools have achieved leap-forward development, providing diversified choices for the society in the stage of compulsory education, and better meeting the needs of the people.

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First, the number and scale are growing steadily. From 2003 to 2018, the number of private primary schools in China increased by 8.9% and the number of students increased by 221.8%; The number of privately-run junior high schools increased by 49.6% and the number of students increased by 148%. It can be seen that the increase in the number of private-run compulsory education students is greater than the increase in the number of schools, indicating the significant improvement in the capacity of private-run schools. Second, the status of private education as a useful supplement has not changed. The number of schools and the number of students in privately-run schools at the stage of compulsory education accounts for a rather limited proportion of the total. From 2003 to 2018, the proportion of private primary schools in the national total increased from 1.33 to 3.82%, and the proportion of school students in the national total increased from 2.35 to 8.56%. The number of private junior high schools in China increased from 5.73 to 10.5% of the country’s total, and the number of students in junior high schools increased from 3.87 to 13.68%. On the whole, the beneficial supplementary status of private education to public education in compulsory education has not changed. Third, the development of private schools presents the characteristics of typology. According to different educational objects, private compulsory education has formed three different school-running modes in practice. The first is the private migrant school for the children of migrant workers, with a low fee standard and a position to help the government assume the function of public education service. The second is for families with a certain economic basis of private schools, fees are moderate, positioning is to provide a variety of education. The third type is private schools for high-income families, which charge high fees. Second, analysis of the situation and current situation of inter-provincial private compulsory education. Affected by the regional economic and social development level and the change of school-age population, the development of private schools in different regions of China presents different situations. Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet, Xinjiang and other western regions have a relatively low level of economic development, a relatively small school-age population, and a relatively small pressure on school enrollment. Public education can well meet educational needs. In addition, the consumption power of residents is low, and the profit space of private education is small. Private schools in these areas account for less than 1% of the students, and the scale of private education is small. Guangdong, Henan, Zhejiang and other regions have a relatively large proportion of private schools in China. These “big provinces of private education” have different development situations, which can be divided into three types. The economy is strong, and the province runs large education. Private schools are used to solve the enrollment problem of the non-native population. Guangdong Province is the representative. The high level of economic development in these areas has attracted a large number of foreign population and brought strong demand for education. The government is under great pressure to provide public education, but at the same time, the local private economy is developed, and private entrepreneurs have a strong tendency to donate money to run schools. Guangdong

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has the largest number of migrant populations in China, and the local public education resources cannot meet the demand at the moment, making it the province with the largest scale of private education in China. Especially in the Pearl River Delta region, private education has undertaken the educational needs of many migrants. Taking Guangzhou as an example, children of migrant workers account for 39.61% and 45.16% of the students in junior middle schools and primary schools, respectively. There is a great pressure on enrollment in compulsory education. In 2019, the number of privately-run junior high schools and students accounted for 48.61% and 32.14% of the total, and the number of privately-run primary schools and students accounted for 16.02% and 32.49% of the total, respectively. Private schools have helped the government to undertake the arduous task of enrolling the children of migrant workers and have promoted the realization of regional education equity. With a large population, the province runs large education, and private schools are used to solve the enrollment problem of local school-age population. Take Henan Province as the representative. As a populous province in China, Henan has a large local school-age population, while the government’s supply of public education resources is insufficient, which does not match the huge social demand. In 2018, the number of private primary schools and the number of students in Henan accounted for 10.02% and 16.32%, respectively. The number of private junior high schools and the number of students accounted for 18.12% and 20.08% of the total, respectively. With limited local financial funds, private education has become an important support for compulsory education. Strengthen education, strengthen education run by the province, and promote the diversified development of education through private schools. Shanghai, Zhejiang and other developed coastal areas as representatives. Education resources are concentrated in these areas, and competition between public and private schools for teachers and students is fierce. Concern about “public retreat and private advance” mainly exists in these areas. Take Shanghai as an example. After a long period of development, those non-standard and low-quality private schools in Shanghai have been basically eliminated. The development of private schools has promoted the overall improvement of education quality, but in a period of time, private schools with the help of “recruitment by the top” and the relatively independent advantages of running schools, did form a certain impact on public schools, causing the concern of “public retreat and private advance”. Especially in the junior high school, the difficulty of teachers, the loss of students and the shortage of funds make the public junior high school a relatively weak group in running schools on the whole. Private school enrollment ahead of public schools, many parents will choose to go to the “sprint” private schools, and the corresponding public schools as a “guarantee”. In this case, the competition for students of private schools is becoming increasingly fierce, and those public schools with good education quality become the “spare child” of school choice, resulting in the false impression that private schools are far stronger than public schools. The competition for students mainly by “pinching the top” has strengthened the stratification and caused the polarization of schools, which obviously violates the basic value orientation of compulsory education. To this end, in 2018, Shanghai took the lead in the country in implementing

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the “same enrollment for citizens” program, which normalized the development of private schools that had previously relied too heavily on competition for students (Deng, 2013; He, 2020; Lu, 2020; Xue et al., 2019; Yuan, 2017; Zhang, 2017).

1.4 Suggestions on the Development of Private Compulsory Education To promote the development of privately-run compulsory education and make compulsory education satisfactory to the people, there should be two important criteria. The first important criterion is “academic ability”. Whether the problem of “having access to education” has been fundamentally solved is the most fundamental prerequisite for people’s satisfaction or not. That is why we need to tap all our potential and increase the supply of education so that all children can go to school. The second important criterion is “go to school”. From the perspective of students, education should enable students to learn knowledge and skills, learn to think independently and attach importance to their feelings in the process of learning and growing up. Therefore, the development of quality education, let the students grow up, is an important goal of the people’s satisfaction education. No matter how high a level to the state and society need level, the development of education to cultivate more and more high-quality talents, serve the community, service the needs of sustainable development, the education can satisfy the society, people’s satisfaction, students after graduation can put this to use, and use of learned knowledge, social service to the nation. We will strengthen Party leadership over private compulsory education. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has attached great importance to education and made a series of major decisions and plans on education, which have deepened the Party’s understanding of the laws governing education under socialism with Chinese characteristics and provided fundamental guidelines for delivering education that satisfies the needs of the people. To realize the scientific development of education and run the education satisfactory to the people, it is fundamental to strengthen the leadership of the Party, which is the political guarantee for the scientific development of education. We should strengthen the Party building work of privately-run schools in an all-round way and arrange the Party affairs and administrative work simultaneously. Focusing on the fundamental task of training qualified builders and reliable successors for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, we will strengthen the management of the teaching staff and strengthen and improve the ideological and ethical work of minors. We will continue to develop universal and equitable education. The Outline of China’s education reform clearly states that education should be public welfare and universal. Therefore, the private compulsory education should serve as a useful supplement to the public education to meet the country’s development and the

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people’s ever-increasing needs for diversified education. Greater support should be given to privately-run schools for compulsory education by means of financial funds and infrastructure, and efforts should be made to narrow the disparities in educational development between regions, between urban and rural areas, and between schools in compulsory education. We will improve the financial aid system for students from poor families, increase the level of financial aid, and actively help children of migrant workers, especially children of migrant workers, have equal access to education. We will establish a long-term mechanism to standardize the development of private compulsory education. We will standardize the enrollment and running of privatelyrun schools and bring the enrollment of privately-run compulsory education schools under the unified management of local education administrative departments. To put an end to compulsory education schools to arbitrarily collect fees, and strictly prohibit the collection or disguised collection of donations linked to enrollment. All privately-run compulsory education schools will be included in the daily supervision of the school superintendent responsibility areas, and daily supervision measures will be improved. A reward, punishment and withdrawal mechanism will be established for privately-run schools, and non-standard behaviors of privately-run schools will be dealt with or punished in accordance with the regulations. Local governments should encourage and promote the quality development of privately-run education. It is suggested that the local government should carry out institutional innovation in such aspects as the admission conditions, administrative examination and approval methods, and multiple cooperation in running schools. The government can encourage social forces to set up high-quality private schools from the aspects of school land, tax reduction and exemption, financial support, etc., including providing site support, vacant factories and other schools that can be rebuilt, and making annual plans to provide land to support the school. We will increase fiscal and tax support, give tax credits and preferential treatment to privately-run schools, raise government subsidies for degree purchases, and encourage enterprises and individuals to make public welfare donations to educational undertakings. We will strengthen the building and management of non-government teachers, select a group of outstanding teachers with a strong sense of innovation, high comprehensive quality and good technical ability to form a contingent of key teachers, conduct regular education and training, and promote the development of teachers through multi-disciplinary interaction and multi-channel. In recent years, China’s private compulsory education is in the rapid development, but the public education is still in the dominant position. According to the data analysis, the development of private primary school education lags behind that of private junior middle school education. In addition, in the process of promoting privately-run compulsory education, some major provinces of privately-run compulsory education have problems such as “private advance and public retreat”. In the process of realizing fair and quality education, it is necessary to treat the rapid development of private education rationally, realize the coordinated development of public and private education, and better promote the basic balance of China’s compulsory education to high-quality balance (Deng, 2013; He, 2020; Lu, 2020; Xue et al., 2019; Yuan, 2017; Zhang, 2017).

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1.5 The Present Situation and Analysis of the Private High School Private education can inject fresh blood and innovative force into the society, complement and complement each other with public education, and jointly contribute to the realization of the construction of communism. Private education plays an extremely important role in China’s education. It plays an irreplaceable role in optimizing the allocation of educational resources, improving educational investment and improving the structure of running schools. Since reform and opening up, as the main form of social forces to run education, private education to develop national vigorously promote the development of private education and innovation, formed from preschool education to higher education, from academic education to non-academic education, the development of various types of levels, full of vitality, effectively increase the supply of education services, to promote the modernization of education, to promote economic and social development made a positive contribution, has become an important part of socialist education career. At the same time, due to the lack of deep understanding of private education, the existing laws and regulations cannot be well implemented, the existence of social prejudice against it, private education is also faced with many problems and difficulties restricting its development. The following focuses on the private high schools in private education and makes a brief analysis of the current situation and situation of private high schools in China. The analysis of the overall situation of private high schools in China. Private high school is one of the educational institutions in China, which is not invested by the state, and its operation is private. The current Law on the Promotion of Privately-run Education mentions the definition of the nature of privately-run educational institutions. There are mainly three criteria for the definition: First, privately-run educational institutions are generally held by social organizations or individuals, not by the state; Second, all the funds of private educational institutions are collected through other means, not from the national financial funds; Third, private educational institutions are mainly the structure of educational activities for the public and other educational institutions, rather than the education and training departments within the industry or enterprises. It can be seen that private high schools are educational institutions that are independent from government-run public high schools. In essence, private high schools are gradually developed and evolved from the government policy-based naming of “running schools by social forces”. Due to the acceleration of China’s economic development, public schools have been unable to meet the growing demand for education from students, so private high schools have gradually emerged. The first private high school in China was Anji Shinshu Private Senior High School, which was established in Hangzhou in 1984, laying the foundation for private high schools in China. Since then, China’s private education began to develop rapidly. Up to now, China’s private high schools have been rising steadily in terms of quantity, quality and other aspects. According to a document released by the Ministry of Education on August 31, 2020, as of 2019,

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there were 192,000 private schools at all levels, an increase of 8,052 over the previous year, accounting for 36.1% of all schools at all levels. The number of students enrolled was 17.743 million, down 54,000 or 0.3% over the previous year. The total number of students was 56.166 million, an increase of 2.384 million or 4.4% over the previous year, accounting for 19.9% of the total number of students. Among them, there were 3,427 private senior high schools, 211 more than the previous year; The enrollment was 1.359 million, an increase of 189,000 or 16.2% over the previous year; The total number of students was 3.597 million, an increase of 314,000 or 9.6% over the previous year, accounting for 14.9% of the total number of regular high school students nationwide, an increase of 1.1 percentage points over the previous year. In recent years, private high schools have not only seen a great increase in the number of schools and the number of students, but also have taken up a gradual increase in the proportion of ordinary high schools in China. The number of private high school students, enrollment and graduates is also growing. More and more parents choose to send their children to private high schools for education, and students have received a high-quality, comprehensive education. The overall number of private high schools in China has been gradually increasing since 2015, and the growth rate has accelerated in recent years. In addition, the number of private vocational high schools in China shows a decreasing trend, while the number of private ordinary high schools shows an increasing trend, and the proportion of private ordinary high schools in the national ordinary high schools is gradually rising, from 18.48% in 2014 to 24.54% in 2019. From the perspective of the number of regular high school students, from 2015 to 2019, the number of graduates, enrolments and students in private regular high schools has been on the rise year by year, entering a relatively stable development trend. Since 2014, the number of private vocational schools has gradually decreased, and the number of students, graduates and students has also decreased to a certain extent, and the scale of schools has been further reduced. In addition, China’s private high schools have not only improved in quantity in recent years, but also made great progress in their general quality and innovation level. According to the 2010 Policy and Regulations on Private Education, qualified high schools should be supported to cooperate with universities and research institutes to carry out research and experiments on the cultivation of innovative talents and establish bases for the cultivation of innovative talents. Then, in 2017, the Ministry of Education proposed to “support qualified ordinary high schools to carry out effective cooperation with institutions of higher learning and research institutes to promote the cultivation of innovative talents.” “Explore the full implementation of the credit system in post-high school education, the implementation of a flexible educational system and learners’ independent selection of courses.” Since then, it has been China’s time requirement for private high schools to innovate the talent training mode of ordinary high schools, increase diversity and continuously improve the quality of students. Nowadays, more and more private high schools are making more efforts to meet the growth needs of students with different potentials based on their own teaching conditions and educational resources. Private high schools actively practice the specific requirements of laws and regulations, devote themselves to cultivating students with scientific literacy and humanistic feelings, pay

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more attention to the differences of students, teach students according to their aptitude, and provide a variety of courses suitable for the needs of students. Many schools have launched a variety of compulsory and elective courses for students to learn, and tried the teaching method of class system, so that students can choose independently according to their own knowledge, ability, interests, life goals and so on. In addition, the cooperation between private high schools, universities and laboratories also broadens students’ horizons to a certain extent, providing students with more abundant learning equipment and exploration opportunities, enabling students to jump out of textbooks and carry out practice and improve their own quality. In terms of financial support, regular senior high schools adopt the mechanism of financial input as the main part, supplemented by fund raising from other channels. Funding for secondary vocational education shall be raised by the government, trades, enterprises and other social forces in accordance with law. In promoting the development of private education, the government has adopted the way of government purchasing services. The government provides funds, and social non-profit organizations serve as public service providers to contract services, thus establishing a contractual delivery mode of public services. In addition to financial input from the government, private high schools will also use other channels to raise funds, such as debt financing, equity financing and social donations. The distribution of private high schools in different parts. The distribution of private high schools is as follows: as of 2018, 88 in Beijing, 18 in Tianjin, 62 in Shanghai (as of 2017), 55 in Guizhou Province, 303 in Anhui Province, 61 in Chongqing Municipality, 53 in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 32 in Jilin Province, 36 in Heilongjiang Province, 88 in Shaanxi Province, 49 in Henan Province and 215 in Zhejiang Province. Secondary vocational schools, as of 2019 19 in Beijing, Tianjin, 6, 167 in Hebei, Shanxi, 94, 65 in Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, 85, 67 Jilin, Heilongjiang, 51 Shanghai 3, 24, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, 43, 103 in Anhui, Fujian, 29, 89 in Jiangxi, Shandong, 101, 157, henna, Hubei, 55, 215 of human, Guangdong, 112, 61 in guanxi, Hunan, 32, Chongqing 22, 171 in Sichuan, Guizhou, 41, 45, Yunnan Tibet by 0, 80, Shaanxi Gansu 30, 7 in Qinghai, Mingxia 7, Four in Xinjiang. We can draw a conclusion that the development of private education in each province is unbalanced. In the economically developed areas, the number of private high schools is more, and the development degree is higher. In economically less developed areas, the number of private high schools is relatively small, and the level of development is low. In addition, in the provinces with lower per student public funds, the scale of private education accounted for a larger proportion; In provinces with higher public expenditure per student, the smaller the proportion of private education scale is. This is not difficult to understand, because when the public funds per student reach a certain level to meet the development of public education, private education is relatively weak in competitiveness, so its development is not mature. The “Private Education Policy, Laws and Regulations” promulgated in 2010 emphasizes “promoting the reasonable distribution of regular high schools and secondary vocational schools, accelerating the popularization of senior high school education, and giving priority to supporting the development of senior high school education in areas with difficulties.” And 2017 “private education policy laws and regulations” stressed “the implementation

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of high school education popularization, and concentrated poverty-stricken county in the Midwest, national poverty alleviation and development work key, the old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority areas county construction and reconstruction of a number of conditions for offering education standard of ordinary high school and secondary vocational schools, to increase high school education resources.” All kinds of laws and regulations show that China is focusing on strengthening the construction of private high schools in difficult areas and constantly promoting the balanced development of education in different regions of the country. The concept of the development of private education in China has been to detail the development of private senior high schools in all provinces of the country on the basis of focusing on the coordinated, unified and sustainable development of private senior high schools across the country, and to give special policy care to poor areas, so that no region will be left behind. The practical problems of China’s private high schools. Although private high schools have developed rapidly in China in recent years and have a bright future, it is undeniable that its development is still restricted by some realistic factors. These problems, to some extent, limit the development of private education and lead to the failure of the overall level of private high schools to improve rapidly in a short time. Single income channel and inadequate financial support. According to statistics, in 2015, 10.20% of the income of education funds for private high schools in China came from public finance, 6.92% from the investment of the organizers of private schools, 1.06% from social donations, and 79.41% from the income from undertakings including tuition and incidental fees. This reflects that tuition and miscellaneous fees play a decisive role in China’s private high schools. Once the number of students drops or the level of teachers is not standard enough, it is easy for the schools to fail to operate normally due to the lagging social income. In terms of social donations, although the state advocates the social from all walks of life for private schools to implement donation activities, and in the 2018 revision of the law of the People’s Republic of China private education promotion law, the state to private school donated property of citizens, legal persons or other organizations shall, in accordance with the relevant regulations, tax reductions, and honors, but due to the relevant laws and regulations is still in a state of blank, and the lack of objective public school donation channels, most of the private high school from social donation income ratio is small. In addition, in terms of government funding, while in the private education promotion law of the People’s Republic of China stipulates clearly the local governments shall donate the operating funds of private high school in the government’s fiscal budget and set up a special fund to support good performance or contribution to the local education of the individual or organization. However, due to the ambiguous policy, no clear management system and other problems, the policy cannot be well implemented, and many private high schools cannot obtain high and stable financial support. The teaching staff is not stable enough. Considering the enrollment rate and other reasons, private high schools pay more attention to teachers’ academic qualifications and achievements rather than teaching ability and professional feelings when recruiting teachers. For example, most of the written tests for private high school

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teachers’ recruitment are the true examination questions of the college entrance examination of various subjects, with the focus on teachers’ problem-solving ability and academic performance. However, the recruitment concept of judging the quality and ability of applicants based on their college graduation and academic performance will lead to the lack of comprehensive ability to recruit teachers, who are of different levels and often lack of development potential. In the process of teachers’ work, because private high schools are different from public schools, students’ performance plays an extremely important role in the evaluation of teachers. Faced with competition from peers and themselves, pressure from schools, and high expectations from parents and students, teachers in private high schools tend to take higher career risks. Decision makers of private high schools will also establish various assessment mechanisms based on the consideration of school costs and school objectives, forcing teachers to constantly improve themselves. Under the situation of long-term pressure, teachers are prone to “job burnout” due to the continuous high intensity work and the tension in their hearts. They lose initiative and enthusiasm in work, and their professional feelings gradually disappear. Although private high schools can provide higher income for teachers, it does not mean that they have higher security. For example, the welfare supply of “five social insurance and one housing fund” and “housing fund” is far less than that of public schools. Teachers in public high schools have the social security treatment of “quasicivil servant” nature, which is generally long-term, stable and highly recognized in the society. However, teachers in private high schools have unstable treatment and low degree of job protection. Such a compensation system makes teachers in private high schools less satisfied with their career and lack of motivation in their work, thus affecting the teaching quality of teachers. The society still lacks the sense of identity for private high schools. Because the fees of private high schools are generally higher than that of public high schools, the acceptance of private high schools by ordinary people is greatly reduced. In addition, due to the low entrance threshold, weak social influence, lack of authority, and cannot be compared with public high schools in terms of teachers, teaching results and hardware facilities, many parents and students often do not choose the latter when faced with the choice between public schools and private schools. There is still a great gap in the understanding of private schools. Due to the prejudice of social concept, especially under the planned economy system for a long period of time, private high schools appeared later than public high schools. Therefore, the concept of “public is superior to private” has been deeply rooted in people’s hearts and it is difficult to change quickly. In addition, due to the lack of in-depth understanding of the policy, people in the society generally have the idea of “profit-making”, believing that private high schools are “in the name of running schools to achieve profits”, and they are often reluctant to send their children to private schools, believing that the teaching level of schools is not high, and the teaching objectives are deviant. To eliminate the shortcomings in the development of education run by the local high school, to improve the overall educational quality of private high school, promote the overall health and steady development of the education system in our country,

1.5 The Present Situation and Analysis of the Private High School

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should further improve the system of private education laws and regulations, and expand channels of funds raising, establishing the reasonable structure of teaching staff, changing the concept of social to private high school, to establish a good image of the private high school. To improve the problem of private high schools is a long-term systematic project, which requires the efforts of the government, society and schools in many aspects, mutual cooperation and coordination, so as to achieve good results. China has given a lot of attention to private high schools, along with the continuous improvement of private education laws and regulations and the 13th Five-Year Plan. Tracing back to the policy evolution of privately-run education, we can see the significance of privately-run education in education. The unique position of compulsory education in China’s education system makes privately-run compulsory education bear many missions. At the same time, the implementation of privately-run compulsory education policy is closely related to the development of privately-run compulsory education. Therefore, from the concept of social category run by the local compulsory education policy, thinking is the ability to draw the outline of the original idea of people to run by the local compulsory education, and run by the local people in the social practice of compulsory education present situation and the interaction between people, through the analysis of the carding policy gradually understanding the present situation of the compulsory education run by the local people and the development of the future. The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Compulsory Education clearly stipulates that compulsory education is implemented uniformly by the state and must be received by all school-age children and adolescents. In a sense, nine-year compulsory education is not only compulsory education, but also a public welfare enterprise that must be guaranteed by the state. Students at the stage of compulsory education do not need to pay tuition and miscellaneous fees. The state will establish a mechanism to guarantee the funds for nine-year compulsory education. Students’ tuition and miscellaneous fees during this period will be allocated by the state finance, which will guarantee the smooth implementation of the compulsory education system. Therefore, from the legal level, the state has full responsibility for the funding of compulsory education. Private education, as a supplement to public education, exists only to meet the people’s high-level education requirements, but in reality, the situation is more complex. Influenced by the integration of urban and rural areas, more and more migrant workers come to cities, which brings with it the education problem of their children. Due to the restrictions of household registration, residence period and the nature of parents’ work, many children of migrant workers in cities cannot enjoy high-quality public education in their destination areas. Therefore, private schools for migrant workers’ children have become a helpless choice for many migrant children. In nature, the state should bear the costs of compulsory education for all school-age children, but the quality education resources in cities are limited. In order to protect the interests of local residents, many public schools have set restrictions on household registration and social security, which objectively exclude these children

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who have migrated with them. In this case, the non-profit nature of private education arises at the historic moment. Thus, it can be seen that private education mainly plays two roles in the actual running of schools: one is a commercial mode of operation to meet the needs of the high-level education of the public education supplement schools, that is, elite education in the ordinary sense; The second is to provide non-profit public education supplementary private compulsory education for disadvantaged families in the region, which is caused by the imbalance of urban and rural development. According to the national development trend, the first kind will exist and develop in China’s education system for a long time, while the second kind will change, disappear or be incorporated into the common compulsory education system with the acceleration of the national urban–rural integration process, the reform of the household registration system and the continuous increase of the national investment in education. From the perspective of policy makers, private compulsory education is not equal to public compulsory education. The expectation of private compulsory education remains as an effective tool to bridge the gap and meet the needs of a small number of people. Therefore, there are few policies to limit it, and the requirements are mainly put forward from the macro level. From the perspective of relevant interest groups of the policy, the market audience nature of private compulsory education is similar to that of private high school education. Therefore, the policy control focuses on the qualification certification and the unity of management. At the same time, the local enrollment of children who have moved with them can be realized through private compulsory education (Deng, 2013; He, 2020; Lu, 2020; Xue et al., 2019; Yuan, 2017; Zhang, 2017).

1.6 Social Foundation for Privately-Run Compulsory Education The concept of education refers to the understanding and views on fundamental issues such as educational function, educational object, personnel training mode, educational system, educational structure, educational content, educational process and methods, reflecting the will of certain social groups in accordance with the requirements of political, economic and cultural development of a certain era. If public education embodies the country to the talent need to expectations, while the concrete behavior of private education under the background of present age crowd more education needs cannot be met, and when this need deeper spread to the compulsory education stage are more deeply shows a group of anxiety, the anxiety is the source of the transformation of education ideas. People began to agree that education is the key to maintain competitiveness of offspring steps, resources inheritance need education as a carrier for the successors on gold plating, this shift with the Chinese concept of the rise of the middle class seems to be synchronized, but this kind of idea transformation is not transformative,

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is essentially to maintain consistent, education is still the implementation class transition, the best means to prevent the class down to the middle class, or even to some extent, it also gradually becomes a proof of identity. Therefore, the private compulsory education is no longer to meet the needs of children or solve the problem of resource aggregation, but more international schools with quality-oriented education as the gimmick. The change of concept cannot simply be measured by progress or backwardness, but more by the change of demand. With the deepening of openness and the tide of globalization, people’s demand for education has increased the imagination of a global perspective. The market economy has triggered the urban consumption revolution, and the consumption culture has awakened the consciousness of private nature. People begin to break away from the omnipotence of the state, expand their private sphere, and pursue individual power and freedom. More and more families are willing to increase their economic input to buy personalized and diversified education services for their children, and the level of education consumption is constantly upgrading. As people attach a lot of significance to education, their expectations for education are rising, but in practice the fact is that education is not omnipotent. In a sense, the increased awareness does not necessarily bring about fundamental change, but rather draws attention to the many problems that remain unsolved in reality. And people’s desire to quality education and are willing to jump into the performance of the prisoner’s dilemma instead of exam-oriented education gave rise to the context of China’s policy of quality education that frequently appear in the teaching reform practice of fill short sex education, ability education, education, seems to suit the remedy to the case but get rich quick, more profoundly reflect when people for the needs of education transformation, policy to meet the demand the excitability of solutions are put forward. Private compulsory education can independently incubate a new way of education development in a relatively relaxed environment. It can make more attempts and operations above the horizontal level, meet diversified needs and integrate different styles. Meanwhile, its trial-and-error cost is relatively low. People demand for education transformation is accelerating, the power of the development of non-governmental education this momentum and inspire the trailing their children to school demand pressure is different, although the same problems, but in the long run, trailing of their children in question will eventually as the reform of the household registration system and relics, run by the local compulsory education development direction is more towards, marketization as a barometer of demand for basic education stage. Interaction between policies and social subjects. How to “ask the people about politics, ask the people about needs, ask the people about plans” in the educational policy process tests not only the political wisdom of the decision-makers, but also the mind and magnanimity of the administrators. At present, the “right of expression” and “right of participation” have gradually become the highlights of China’s political discourse system, and the “spirit of civic participation” and “the expression of public opinion’s wishes” have gradually become the way of life of citizens. Online and

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offline, virtual reality, rationality and complaint, truth and rumor all influence the policy discourse system and policy process to varying degrees. The original intention of policy formulation and the results of implementation often deviate and branch out due to the interaction with the subject being implemented. The top-level design of private compulsory education in the policy originates from the concept of balanced education development and aims to meet the diverse educational needs of the public, but in practice it has evolved into the rigid demand of school choice. The policy cannot change the internal demand, but can only adjust the demand through external means, while the subject tries to peek into the educational structure from the policy and tries to free ride to the greatest extent to seize educational resources. From the overall layout, the theme of the next policy is always to reconcile the contradictions in the interaction. Educational equity and social equity. It can be seen from the policy combing that the initial purpose of introducing the market mechanism into the field of education is to solve the practical problem of the shortage of education funds. And marketoriented operation makes some private schools with teachers, students and graduation rates of relative advantage, capital, technology, information and other commercial education in private schools are increasingly involved in the elements of the process, break the policy design of the compulsory education balanced state, that on the one hand, characterized by high quality teachers of agglomeration: private schools far higher than that of public schools attract faculty salary treatment, on the other hand, the quality of teachers and preferential enrollment quality students gathered. And between private schools and the educated can two-way choice, in fact is the essence of a purposeful selection, merit good students is not “inclusive” value idea “diverse class of students”, the screening effect of the unfair of entrance opportunity, people gained the right to choose, instead of forcing process more difficult and costly. The policy is trying to break the closed loop of resources brought by school choice and transfer to the battlefield of private schools, which makes the contradiction between efficiency and equity more prominent. The development situation of private schools in different regions is different. Even in the same city, some types of private schools will be sought after, and some will be neglected. Public schools and private schools’ admissions policy for all the school compulsory education phase, in order to realize fair competition of recruitment, but hit the attraction of the private schools is still strong, the ability to adapt to the policy change is strong and have not set up brand and reputation of ordinary private schools will face a risk of recruit students and survival threat (Deng, 2013; He, 2020; Lu, 2020; Xue et al., 2019; Yuan, 2017; Zhang, 2017).

References

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References Deng, X. (2013). The logical structure of public opinion expression in education policy. China Education Journal (08): 5–8. He, D. (2020). Analysis on the development status and countermeasures of private kindergartens— Taking the development of private kindergartens in Hubei Province as an example. Journal of Hubei Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 40(06), 131–136. Lu, Y. (2020). The generation and treatment of educational inequality behind the “private school choice hot” in the compulsory education stage. Journal of China Education, 20(12), 35–41. Xue, E., Fu, W., & Li, J. (2019). Policy foundation, challenge and response of preschool education legislation. China Education Journal, 20(12), 37–44. Yuan, Q. (2017). Development trend, existing problems and policy suggestions of private preschool education in China in the past ten years. Science in Education, 33(01), 10–17. Zhang, Y. (2017). Difficulties and outcomes of the development of private compulsory education in China. Teaching and Management, 20(24), 31–34.

Chapter 2

The Private Pre-school Education Policy in China

This chapter concentrates on exploring the private pre-school education in China. Pre-school education is an important part of education, is an important part of basic education, it is also an important beginning, lifelong education in China’s education system construction, the construction of preschool education has always been an integral part of the quality and level of compulsory education plays a vital role, also promote people ideological and moral qualities and scientific and cultural qualities. Pre-school education, as the name implies, is the educates entrance before accepting education stage, at this stage, educated young children, this period is the foundation of children’s physical and mental development and ability to improve phase, is also a period of rapid physical and mental development of children, therefore, the correct teaching guidance for young children to children’s preschool education, has a great effect on children’s physical and mental development. “Preschool education is of great significance to children’s physical and mental health, habit formation and intellectual development,” said the Outline of the National Program for Mediumand Long-Term Education Reform and Development (2010–2020), issued by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council. Follow the rules of children’s physical and mental development, adhere to scientific education methods, to ensure children’s happy and healthy growth. Some scholars also pointed out that “national financial support for early childhood education has become a worldwide development trend.” This obviously proves the importance and necessity of preschool education, and also highlights the important position of preschool education in the educational cause.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Private Education Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3272-3_2

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2.1 The Political Foundations of Private Preschool Education: The State’s Help and Support for Non-profit Private Kindergartens “Early childhood education was a private activity until the mid-19th century, but in the 20 century it gradually became a public responsibility.” In 1951, in order to improve the masses of working people’s cultural quality and cultural level, a thorough education of cadres of workers and peasants, promote the development of the national socialism construction, special authorization issued “on the decision of the reform of educational system”, in “decision”, preschool education be incorporated into the socialist education enterprise, put forward the importance of early childhood education and made the organization of the implementation of early childhood education, kindergarten construction planning: “kindergarten three ZuSui to seven children, to make their before into the elementary school to obtain a sound development of body and mind. Kindergartens should first be set up in cities where conditions permit, and then gradually spread.” But in fact, until the end of the 1980s, China’s preschool education did not highlight the “educational”, but with “welfare” as the main feature. “Kindergarten” is actually “nursery”, which is related to the background of The Times at that time. It is “a pre-school education system tied together with enterprises and institutions”. With the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, the establishment of the socialist market economy system, the preschool education also gradually begins to enter the “market” stage, but it also led to the preschool education is facing predicament: neither compulsory education, can’t occupy the important part of fiscal expenditure of government, at the same time also lost in the “welfare” stage “unit welfare funding channels. There is a certain imbalance between the government’s responsibility in preschool education and the proportion of social forces in preschool education, which also leads to a series of problems, prompting China to attach importance to the field of private preschool education, and for this field, many private preschool education policies have been implemented. In the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for Education Reform and Development (2010–2020), the active development of preschool education is an important part of it. “By 2020, one-year, two-year and three-year preschool education will be universally available in all areas where conditions permit,” the document said. In order to implement the spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee, the National Education Conference and the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010– 2020), the State Council issued Several Opinions of the State Council on the Current Development of Preschool Education, which pointed out that the development of preschool education should be placed in a more important position. In his report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping said, “We will make pre-school education, special education and online education a success, make senior high school education universally available, and strive to ensure that every child can enjoy fair and quality education.” “New progress has been made in ensuring that children are raised, students are taught,

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workers are paid, sick people are treated, old people are cared for, housing is provided, and the weak are supported.” “Young children have access to education” is a new term, new focus and new policy in the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which means that all school-age children aged 0–6 in preschool education will get better upbringing and education. In order to achieve “childcare”, we need to constantly improve preschool education facilities, including preschool education sites and infrastructure construction, but also need to constantly strengthen the teachers. According to the Statistical Monitoring Report 2019 on the Outline Program for the Development of Chinese Children (2011–2020) released by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2020, preschool education in China has received further attention and strengthening. In 2019, China continued to promote the implementation of the third phase of pre-school education action plan in counties. In terms of teaching places, there were 281,000 kindergartens nationwide in 2019, with a large number of kindergartens and sufficient teaching places. In terms of teachers, there were 4.916 million kindergarten staff and 2.763 million full-time teachers in 2019, up 8.5% and 7% respectively over the previous year. The faculty is also constantly strengthened and improved. In terms of the effectiveness of the policy, 47.139 million children were enrolled in preschool education (including kindergartens and attached classes), an increase of 1.2% over the previous year. The gross enrollment rate for preschool education nationwide was 83.4%, 1.7 percentage points higher than the previous year and far higher than the goal set in the Outline of “reaching 70%.” These data show that China’s “childcare” has initially shown results, the promotion and popularization of preschool education in the country has also seen initial results. In the development of preschool education, privately-run preschool education is always an important component and an important topic that cannot be avoided in the development of preschool education. In 2019, of the 281,000 kindergartens in China, 108,000 are public kindergartens and 173,000 are private kindergartens. Private kindergartens are an important driving force to promote “childcare”, and private preschool education is also an important subject of concern to the government. Preschool education is not compulsory education, so its particularity determines the important role of social forces in promoting it. The government also clearly understands the importance and necessity of privately-run preschool education and has made a series of policies to promote it. On behalf of the State Council, Premier Li Keqiang delivered a report on the work of the government to the National People’s Congress at the Third Session of the 13th National People’s Congress. In the 2020 Government Work Report of the State Council, Premier Li Keqiang pointed out: “We will ensure the success of special education and continuing education, and support and standardize private education. We will develop inclusive pre-sexology education and help private kindergartens.” In 2019, there were 281,200 kindergartens nationwide, of which 173,200 were private kindergartens, accounting for 61.6%. The number of public kindergartens is 108,000, accounting for 38.4%. The proportion of private kindergartens is almost twice that

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of public kindergartens. From this data, it can be seen that the proportion of private preschool education is too high in China. Private preschool education can supplement the public preschool education, especially the villages and towns such basic unit government’s financial strength is limited, private preschool education can promote the development of the local preschool education, improving the local education system, at the same time, the proliferation of private preschool education also means that the rapid development of China’s preschool education career, means the universal pre-school education obtained great achievements, reflects our country’s emphasis on preschool education, effectively relieves the problem of “difficult” in the park. However, the large increase of private preschool education accounts for far more than that of public preschool education in the overall cause of preschool education. In fact, this phenomenon does not really solve the livelihood problem of “difficulty in entering kindergartens”, and to some extent, it aggravates the social problem of “expensive enrollment in kindergartens”. The excessive expansion of the number of private preschool education will weaken the public welfare and universal nature of preschool education itself, but more impact on the market and capital-oriented, which is not the goal of China’s preschool education, nor can it help the cause of socialist education with Chinese characteristics to develop faster and better. At the same time, many private kindergartens also exist the qualifications of the organizers, the conditions for running schools and the quality of running schools do not meet the requirements. The government must take the leading position and assume the main responsibility in preschool education and cannot give way to social forces to dominate the cause of preschool education. In the face of such phenomenon, the government should actively shift function and seize their own dominance in pre-school education, actively perform their own functions and take their own responsibility, so in 2016–2020 policy stressed the need for private preschool education standard and management, such as the central committee of the communist party of China, the State Council on several opinions of the development of preschool education to deepen reform specification listed explicitly banned private kindergarten, at the same time, the government also accelerate the development of the preschool education, such as the modernization of Chinese education 2035 explicitly pointed out that to develop the public garden. However, these are not enough to solve the problems of “difficult access to kindergartens” and “expensive access to kindergartens”. In order to solve these two problems, the Party and the state have formulated the public welfare and universal development of private preschool education policy value orientation and built universal non-governmental kindergartens. “Universal benefit” is “universal preference”, which has the characteristics of universality, non-discrimination and non-reciprocity. Some scholars pointed out that “universality” is actually the continuation of the fairness and public welfare of preschool education: ‘Preschool education is a social public service project related to the happiness of thousands of families, and it has the characteristics of public welfare, fairness and non-profit. Inclusive nature is the continuation of fairness and public

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welfare in education. Its purpose is to enable the broad masses of people to enjoy equal opportunities to receive education, especially to provide educational means for the disadvantaged groups, so that they may change their original social status and thus promote social equity.” It also puts forward that universal kindergartens should have three characteristics: “open to the public, equal opportunities for children to enter kindergartens”, “fair prices, guaranteed education quality”, and “high-quality resources, benign development of kindergartens”. In view of the private kindergartens are numerous, the proportion is on the high side, non-governmental preschool education in the important position of preschool education enterprise in our country, promote universality private kindergarten set up, make the policy value orientation of public development is already the most important thing private pre-school education policy, as some scholars point of view, “development of universality private kindergartens can effectively alleviate the current shortage of public kindergarten degree problem, quickly to meet the needs of ordinary people to parity quality kindergarten education; It will help mobilize private capital to invest in preschool education and reduce the burden on the government to run preschool education.” Promoting private kindergartens to provide universal sex education services has become an inevitable choice to solve the problems of “difficulty in entering kindergarten” and “high cost in entering kindergarten”. Looking at the private preschool education policies from 2016 to 2020, we can find that “universality” has been repeatedly emphasized and constantly improved. First “about encourage social forces to run education to promote the healthy development of non-governmental education several opinions of the of the difference between for-profit and nonprofit private pre-school education organization support, to put forward in the modernization of Chinese education 2035 speed up the development of private kindergarten universality”, to “the government work report of the State Council in 2020,” proposed “the development preschool education, help the private kindergarten bail-out”, to draft the pre-school education law of the People’s Republic of China (draft) mentioned in Promoting the development of inclusive non-governmental preschool education has become an important policy goal of the central and local governments. Public preschool education is the symbol of “universality” and “public welfare”, but depend entirely on public preschool education to implement “pratt & whitney is totally unrealistic,” number one is the public preschool education is insufficient, can’t satisfy the entrance requirements of large, the second is the construction of public preschool education is covering the whole country need time and a lot of money, it is difficult to accurately in a short time to cover, will cause the unfair education. Therefore, the government must vigorously support inclusive private preschool education, not only to speed up the popularization of inclusive pre-school education, but also to promote educational equity, and at the same time to reduce the financial burden of the government. Of course, to support the development of universal private preschool education needs the support and help from the government in various aspects. Just as the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Private Education

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says, “The state shall actively encourage, vigorously support, correctly guide and lawfully manage private education.” The government needs to support and regulate the private preschool education, and also needs to vigorously develop the public preschool education, so as to run the pre-school education well. Through the above policy analysis of private preschool education, it can be seen that the implementation of private preschool education policy in China has been developing, reforming and improving continuously with the changes of social environment and the emergence of specific problems. The Party and the state have been constantly drawing experiences and lessons to achieve education fairness. The Private Education Promotion Law was first promulgated in 2002. Before that, private education in China was in a chaotic early stage of development and had not been standardized. From the policy perspective, China issued the Regulations on Running Schools by Social Forces in 1997. Opinions on the Implementation of the Ninth Five-Year Development Goals of the National Early Childhood Education; In 2003, the “Development and Guidance Opinions on Early Childhood Education Reform” was issued. If there is a large profit space, there will be problems. In recent years, the issue of kindergarten enrollment has been heard more and more frequently, and the topic of kindergarten school choice has also been put on the hot. On the one hand, the development of private preschool education has developed the economy of all regions, but on the other hand, this mode and operation mechanism inevitably bring about difficulties, especially the non-profit part of private kindergartens. First of all, China is a developing country, the development of economy is an essential content. At the present stage, China still lacks the social atmosphere conducive to the development of NPOs. On the one hand, in terms of policies, there is a lack of more active public policies. Some non-profit services and products provided to the society are often based on the extension of government functions. There are insufficient incentives for non-profit organizations in terms of policies and limited financial support. From the perspective of the public, the public’s understanding of such organizations is insufficient, and an encouraging and benign external environment has not been formed. And early stage NPOs themselves (such as pre-school education) have a hard time getting their message out. Secondly, many non-profit private kindergartens are actually closely related to profit-making social organizations, and the incentive policies of the state become more complex and lag behind, and the incentive effect cannot reach the expectation. In addition, non-profit kindergartens also have many problems in their own mode. The supervision mode and real-time information are insufficient. Once a problem occurs in a certain link, it will lead to a crisis of trust. In recent years, China’s efforts to carry out private inclusive kindergartens have become increasingly strong and oriented, and each local area has documents and identification methods for the protection policies of inclusive kindergartens according to its own situation. The universal kindergarten refers to the kindergarten that charges fees according to the government guidance price, with the guiding ideology of convenience and benefit for the people. In addition, for the non-profit private kindergartens, on the one hand, policies should be given to protect them, such as the legal system

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to protect their operation, special policies should be given to reduce the pressure of running schools, and appropriate subsidies should be given in terms of taxation. On the other hand, strict supervision and transparent fund allocation should be given, and the government should intervene in supervision. This point is also emphasized in the Private Promotion Law. The development of private education for non-profit purposes is related to the important function of political stability and social stability. Education is a complex social behavior, from its relationship with the politics, education is the pure land, besides political all education should not be excessive doped politics, but politics as part of our life seems more distant but is closely linked, and step in our political literacy education, and embody the many political education policy foundation, which is mentioned in this paper, the development of non-profit organization supervision, it is an essential part of the national development stage, is also the important measure of social order stability. Another example is the COVID-19 epidemic that began in early 2020, which delayed the opening of schools across the country and brought unprecedented challenges to kindergartens, especially private kindergartens. The Ministry of Education issued the Notice on Supporting Private Kindergartens during the Prevention and Control of the COVID-19 epidemic to guide local governments to take measures and strengthen classified support. Local governments focused on prominent problems and took precise measures to minimize the impact of the epidemic and ensure the healthy and stable development of private kindergartens. The government has made the following strategies to help private preschool education. We will increase financial support to boost industry confidence. The central government has increased transfer payments for preschool education, and local governments have coordinated funds to increase support for private kindergartens to ensure their operation and boost confidence. Beijing sets of COVID-19 outbreak notice during the support for the steady development of private kindergartens, ruled that all recognized by district education commission and conforms to the general conditions of the municipal financial aid kindergarten, one-time allocated to June 1, 2020—China’s fixed subsidies, lightens the outbreak of universality private kindergartens operate the pressure, has for more than 800 general kindergarten funding more than 1 billion yuan. Ninsun District, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province allocates public funds for private kindergartens and subsidize each teacher by 10,000 yuan per person. Jinhua Pan’an County allocates salary in advance by 4,000 yuan per certified teacher in private kindergartens. Jiangsu has increased its support for private kindergartens, especially inclusive private kindergartens. The total financial funds to support the development of preschool education in the province have reached more than 2 billion yuan. The provincial government promptly allocated funds from the central transfer payment and general awards and subsidies for preschool education to all kinds of kindergartens, and all localities accelerated the allocation of public funds per student for 2020. The introduction of financial institutions to support stable development. We will support and encourage banks to increase credit supply to private kindergartens that meet the loan conditions, and provide temporary loan extension, extension of interest

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payment, exemption of penalty interest and other temporary repayment arrangements for private kindergartens that are experiencing temporary difficulties due to the expiration of their loans and the epidemic. Shanghai Coordinating Bank customized inclusive financial service plan for private kindergartens, provided a certain amount of loan for daily operation turnover, and offered preferential loan interest rate. Shandong Tai’an clearly provides private park loan discount and financing guarantee support, bridge repayment and fund support as well as loan interest extension arrangements. Shohei of the XPCC encourages financial institutions to extend or renew loans to private parks that are experiencing temporary difficulties in operation, not to take out loans, not to keep lending, and not to press down on loans. The XPCC also encourages financial institutions to extend or renew loans to private parks that are severely affected by the epidemic and have difficulties in repaying their debts (Feng et al., 2007; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020). Through the provincial special fund to support the development of private education, Sichuan has supported cities and counties to carry out the work of helping and supporting inclusive private kindergartens and urged all localities to timely allocate the 2020 annual subsidy funds for inclusive private kindergartens and the funds for reducing or reducing the education fees to kindergartens. Fuzhou, Fujian province, allocated public funds to private kindergartens for the whole year in 2020, and the average public funds per student was raised from 450 yuan in 2019 to 600 yuan per student per year, benefiting 103 government-purchased private kindergartens and 110 private kindergartens that provide universal services. It has been incorporated into the local prevention and control system to relieve the pressure of fighting the epidemic. We should strengthen the overall planning of epidemic prevention and control in private kindergartens, take all aspects into consideration, treat them equally and promote them as a whole, and effectively guarantee the material needs of epidemic prevention and control in private kindergartens. In accordance with the standard of 4,000 yuan per class for private kindergartens in Wuhan, Hubei Province, a special one-time subsidy was provided to improve health infrastructure and epidemic prevention materials to ensure the prevention and control of the epidemic. Hefei, Anhui Province, has included private kindergartens in the city’s epidemic prevention and control work system, coordinated the deployment and supply of epidemic prevention materials, and provided channels for the purchase and purchase of epidemic prevention materials such as masks, disinfectant and temperature guns. Yilin in Sichuan has allocated a special fund of 3 million yuan to support the procurement of epidemic prevention materials for private kindergartens and other schools, so as to ensure the allocation and supply of epidemic prevention materials and minimize the impact of the epidemic.

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2.2 The Political Foundation of Private Preschool Education Two: The Party’s Grass-Roots Construction In the early stage of the development of private education, there are still many ambiguities in the policy of party construction. Article 4 of the General Provisions of the Private Education Promotion Law points out: Private schools should adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China, adhere to the direction of socialist education, adhere to the public welfare nature of education, and carry out the fundamental task of cultivating people by virtue. The community-level organization of the Communist Party of China in privately-run schools implements the principles and policies of the Party, plays its role as the political core, participates in major decisions of the schools and supervises their implementation in accordance with laws, these Regulations and relevant state regulations. In addition, there are guidelines for the Party’s grass-roots construction team of private schools mentioned in the Regulations on Social Schools and Several Provisions on Running Schools by Social Forces, but there are almost no further detailed regulations at the ideological level, especially for private kindergartens (Feng et al., 2007; Qin & Wang, 2012; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012). As a part of education, private education should also carry out the Party’s educational policy. Party construction in private education is particularly important, and is one of the more special department, because the private schools of investment funds from student tuition and social organizations, less from the construction of the country, so the private kindergarten is more like a private organization, in the work of party members to have a certain independence and clarity, party construction work for the state, not private employees. At the same time, Party base comrades shoulder the mission of spreading the great thoughts of the Communist Party of China, helping teachers and children to establish a healthy outlook on the world and life, supervising the work of private kindergartens, constantly expanding the Party’s team and developing outstanding talents. In the implementation of the construction of the party’s grass-roots work, the establishment of the organization is necessary, such as the establishment of the party branch, and so on, to the cultivation of the talent should have special policy, approaches and evaluation method, the contact between the party work team should regularly, the party’s grass-roots work should not only be superficial, more in-depth specific situation, make the people as the core, seeking truth from facts have practical significance. For example, in private kindergartens, the working position of the Party should be more on how to really run private kindergartens well and reduce formalism.

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2.3 The Economic Basis of Private Preschool Education Policy in China Preschool education includes both broad sense of education and narrow sense of education, generally speaking. Preschool education plays an indispensable role in the whole education system. Second, preschool education, usually aimed at children under the age of six, should be oriented to the future of the motherland and the hope of the nation. Because the particularity of the specific target is a fundamental factor in this aspect, it has become a reason that cannot be ignored in the whole education system. Equitable distribution of basic educational resources is the basic right of all citizens to equitably distribute resources. Due to the overlapping of various reasons, the uneven distribution of basic education resources in contemporary China has been shown in various regions. It occurs between all levels and sectors, between city and country, between levels and levels. If we fail to address this problem properly, educational inequities will gradually spread. In the period of China’s national rejuvenation, the fair distribution of basic educational resources should not be reduced to a stimulus in the field of diagnosis. The key to the distribution of basic educational resources lies in the deep medical history and the search for serious solutions for the establishment of basic education system. In this context, it can be said that basic education is the result of the history, ideas and policies of society, which have not been adequately taken into account. In general, basic educational resources are themselves essential features of public goods in order to achieve a base that can teach existing resources between neighborhoods, towns and villages. Therefore, the allocation of educational resources includes the following points: First, a fair distribution between schools and grades. In particular, to ensure equitable distribution of basic educational resources in contemporary China, a high-level working group has been established for this purpose. The Commission on Regional Policy, Regional Planning and Relations with Regional and Local Authorities unanimously adopted the report of Amnesty International. Second, the government is responsible for the fair distribution of basic education resources, supporting the nature of basic education, which is purely a public asset. Providing sufficient resources for basic education should be identified as an internal function of the government and ensuring that basic education has teaching resources. Third, improve the education policy of fair distribution must be assigned to basic education resources, the basis of the guarantee support fair principle as the value foundation of basic education, emphasize an equitable distribution of outstanding teacher resources is the foundation education, some policy is the key to the fair, realize the fair distribution of financial resources to ensure fair and promote policy is vital, fair distribution of urban and rural education resources is essential to the basic policy of fairness (Qin & Wang, 2012; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012). Since China’s reform and opening up in the 1980s, China has been reforming its highly planned economic system. The gradual transition to a socialist market

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economy. After more than 20 years of economic restructuring, according to statistics, private economy in China has developed rapidly, and personal income has shown a significant growth trend. In 2002, China’s urban and rural savings reached 86,811 billion yuan, close to the annual domestic income level. Previously, in the total amount of national economic activity, according to a 2000 survey by the International Monetary Authority, if the social economy by 1998, the two major sectors were divided into the public and civil society sectors, reducing the total amount of public economic activity. Up to 38% of GDP. If the state-owned holding domestic and foreign-funded enterprises are disturbed, the public financial institutions really collective and the agricultural sector, the private sector and the other three main economic activities, in the same period, the GDP is 37%, 30%, −33%. The market economic system was originally built on markets. Under the traditional planned economy system, the property right structure is the foundation of the unitary public ownership and distribution system. This is an average, low-wage employment policy, so that the gap between people’s income and consumption level is small. At a time when primary education was not universal, the level of children’s education was not high, but for a while “useless theoretical reading” prevailed. Although there are some differences between primary and secondary schools due to the region, region, school buildings, teachers, etc., the differences are not important. Reform and opening up, in order to meet the needs of economic and social development in the stage of national economic recovery, the state has put forward the requirements of “more talents, more talents and better abilities” for education. Then, under the circumstances of the limited financial capacity at that time, we completed the task and concentrated human, financial and material resources to build important schools including primary schools, middle schools and senior high schools, and achieved remarkable results in a short period of time. The construction of key schools has opened up the gap between primary and secondary schools. With the deepening of reform and opening up, people’s income has increased steadily. Especially after the planned economy system began to change to the market system, China’s property structure gradually changed to public ownership. The main body, real estate economy is the common development of diversification, the distribution system has also been transformed into the labor as the main body of the distribution, a variety of ways coexist. Under the guidance of the policy of “getting rich first”, the gap between private education has widened. In this regard, the need for children’s education is a big change. However, under the obvious state of contradiction between supply and demand, the good schools that the government can provide are very limited. Many parents try their best to choose a variety of key schools for their children, resulting in the loss of a large number of quality students in an ordinary class and a similar school, and the social phenomenon that the class population is insufficient. In order to prevent this waste of educational resources and violation of the behavior of the education law, the education departments of the people’s governments at all levels have taken a number of measures and ways to solve this problem and eliminate this problem. We will strengthen the upgrading of weak schools and accelerate the construction of teachers in regular schools, focusing on primary and secondary schools. But it takes some process. And some schools are

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taking advantage of rising tuition and debt costs to limit their financial means. Due to the serious contradiction between supply and demand, raising the tuition fees of high-quality schools will not deter parents from choosing high-quality schools for their children. In this situation, the market can create more business opportunities, and private schools and tutoring institutions appear and develop rapidly. They are products of the market economy (Feng et al., 2007; Qin & Wang, 2012; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012). Over the past 20 years, with the development of the economy and the reform of the economic system, China has solved the problems that have existed for a long time.” In the famine economy, the relationship between market supply and demand was gradually improved due to the transformation of seller’s market into buyer’s market. China’s economic development and the socialist market economic system are developing to a mature stage. In contrast, the supply and demand relationship in the field of education is gradually maturing, on the one hand, it can become the source of education. On the other hand, in order to meet the increasing demand of society for education, education cannot meet the financial supply of teaching. The rapid development of educational demand, especially the shortage of educational funds, has become a restrictive factor restricting the development of education. Many educational problems arise from the fact that we are actually facing an “education shortage”. The shortage of educational resources in our country is also transitional, which reflects the characteristics of economy at the same time. The characteristic of development maturity reflects the process of transition from planned economy to socialist market economy. It is characterized by general and financial, institutional and structural shortfalls. The overall shortage of educational resources is the reflection of the basic contradiction between supply and demand of education in China. For example, the educated population is large; Residents’ life has entered a well-off level, with high demand for education and high education consumption. Become a new hot spot of living consumption; The country decides to use Informaionization to drive industrialization, education must develop moderately ahead development strategy inevitably. These factors make our society’s demand for education keeps growing, but the scale of education does not expand. There are 230 million students in schools of all types of education alone. Because the country’s fiscal revenue, while the household income is still at a relatively low level, this inevitably limits the level of investment in education. In 1998, for example, China’s public education spending per person is 167 yuan ($20.2), it is each student’s spending is an average of 945 yuan ($114.4), well below the world average level ($241 per capita, 1995 ($1273) each student, this makes it hard for the supply of education funds to meet the needs of the existing education scale, the more restricted the further development of education undertakings. With the sustained and rapid development of economy, China’s finance from 1990 to 2000, the public expenditure on education increased from 16.9 billion US dollars to 256.3 billion yuan, of which the fiscal expenditure increased from 42.6 billion yuan to 208.6 billion yuan. However, in the early 1990s, spending on political education as a percentage of GDP declined each year. From the mid-1990s, the figure dropped from 3% in 1990 to 2.44% in 1995. However, this proportion did not reach 3.19%

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until 2001, which did not meet the requirements of the Outline of China’s education reform and development, which stipulated in the laws and regulations that financial education expenditure accounted for less than 4% of GNP in 2000. In 1995, public expenditure on education accounted for 4.9% of the GDP, which was the world average. After the implementation of the tax sharing system in the mid-1990s, the central fiscal revenue accounted for 38% of the total fiscal revenue, while the share of local fiscal revenue dropped from 62 to 48%. In particular, the county and township levels faced financial difficulties, which seriously affected basic education. However, in the process of China’s economic development, the talent structure is out of line with the economic structure, which forces universities to strengthen the connotation construction. (2) There is a serious shortage of high-quality professional talents in China, and there is a disconnection between the talent structure and the economic structure. This requires the Chinese government not only to strengthen higher education, but also to improve the education quality of the cultivation of high-quality talents. To grow fast on the track of cultivating outstanding talents and improving the quality of higher education is the inherent requirement of the healthy development of private colleges and universities, and also the primary task of their connotation development (Feng et al., 2007; Qin & Wang, 2012; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012). The key to connotation development lies in the construction of teachers. Teachers are the most important resource of a school. Without high-level and high-quality scholars, there would be no high-level and high-quality school. Not every high-quality school has connotation construction and quality development. Taking scholars as the fundamental foundation and respecting their labor, creation, knowledge, personality and moral character are the basic prerequisites for improving the quality of higher education. Taking scholars as the center, cultivating a good person, studious style, lofty teacher ethics and ideological realm will influence people imperceptibly. Cultivating talents is the fundamental to improve the discipline construction and education quality of the school, encouraging scholars’ teaching and scientific research and college students to participate in scientific research training, and taking the cultivation of innovative practice and innovative ability as the basic approach. Because the scholar can timely transform the scientific research process into the education process, the scientific research results into the teaching content. Introducing scientific attitude and innovative thinking spirit into educational activities; At the same time, the most advanced scientific and cultural knowledge and scientific and technological achievements at home and abroad can be added to the classroom. Creative teaching methods such as discovery teaching method, problem teaching method, discussion teaching method and open teaching method can be created or created in class. Environments improve the learning enthusiasm of college students, especially guide college students to solve problems at the same time, cultivate the ability of application and innovation, which is the foundation of the school, but also the development and future of the school. So, the school does not spare a lot of money to introduce outstanding talents, its role and value is immeasurable (Feng et al., 2007; Qin & Wang, 2012; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012).

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Private higher education is neither a research university nor a research institution. The core task of a university is to cultivate outstanding talents at different levels and in different fields. Private higher education, teaching and scientific research is to serve the central task is to foster talents need of the era, private colleges should as soon as possible from the knowledge structure of talents cultivation of a single, adaptation of the status quo of narrow, low transfer ability to adapt to high professional quality, strong ability to adapt the multidisciplinary training, school education and scientific research level enhances unceasingly, improve education quality, make the improvement of students’ professional quality and creative ability to make changes to adapt to changing social needs to cultivate excellent. Talents and even private universities play an active role in promoting the transformation of economic development mode. Therefore, in China’s social and economic transition period, the development of private higher education has some related problems. In China, the talent structure is disconnected from the economic structure in the process of transformation of economic development mode, and the number of students is decreasing. Although private universities and public institutions are facing the same problem of decreasing the number of students, private institutions are affected by unfair policies in terms of enrollment and treatment of teachers. Private colleges and universities themselves must keep clear and unique competitive strategy, fit the characteristics of national policies and regional structures, in order to establish quality standards and systems that meet the needs of the society. And define and implement a system to ensure that the quality of higher education meets the needs of society, strives to improve the quality of education in the characteristics of schools and professions, and establishes a private higher education that satisfies the people and has a good social reputation. Government plays an indispensable role in private higher education. The formulation and implementation of policy is primarily the responsibility of the government. Government support is directly related to the rise and fall of private universities, and the development of private higher education needs the joint participation, joint efforts and mutual cooperation of all relevant government departments. Under the guidance of the educational administration, the way to develop private higher education can only be an effective means. Therefore, private colleges and universities urgently need to wait for the elimination of discriminatory policies by the state and require the state to inject public funds into the education of private colleges and universities. The Ministry of Education and local governments provide educational subsidies to each student according to the number of students (accounting for 50% of the difference between central and local subsidies per student), which is set up for the formulation of preferential policies and effectively creates a good system and institutional environment for promoting and promoting the basic ability of private colleges and universities. On the other hand, China’s economic and social development needs private education. First of all, due to the development of market economy in our country, the social demand has increased, and labor in our country at present, only 70% of high school education, higher education, and only less than 3.5% of bachelor’s degree, 1% of the workforce, for example, it is difficult to adapt to the rapid development of science

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and technology in the twenty-first century the need of talent ability, it is hard to meet the needs of the development of socialist market. So we have a country with a large population and a large number of people who have to go to education, but funding only higher education will not be sufficient in quantity and quality to meet the need for higher education to transform from elite to mass. Second, the government’s planned economic system and investment operation give the state schools a certain monopoly on the competitive market, which inevitably leads to low efficiency and irrational allocation of resources. As the government is the sole investor in the country, sometimes government decision-makers provide an absolute monopoly and educational leadership and financial resource allocation, while government officials’ goal of generating income is the starting point of allocating part of resources, which may lead to unreasonable flow of resources and low efficiency. At the same time, the operation of the state university has been developing a closed mode, the lack of connection with the society, so that the university lacks the sense of competition and competitive vitality, which hinders the development of the socialist market economy. Third, the socialist planned economy is gradually replaced by the socialist market economy, the government has taken too much consideration of higher education institutions and did not give up the oppression, so that the state higher education institutions do not meet the market competition and deal with vocational training and education research plans, research and curriculum content do not make a rapid response; At the same time, the market demand of national schools belongs to the unified management mode, talent cultivation also belongs to the unified model of “mass production”, lack of individuality and creativity, no longer adapt to the requirements of market economic competition; In addition, demand for the services provided by higher education varies from social group to social group. Students and parents increasingly expect universities to offer personal and educational specialization in order to improve their competitiveness in the labor market. Fourthly, due to historical reasons, the overburden of public schools and the shortage of funds have become a serious problem affecting the development of higher education in China in recent years. Since the increase in university places in 1998, there has been a sharp increase in students’ access to higher education institutions, but no corresponding increase in the government’s actual financial allocation. Therefore, with limited funds invested by the government, there are many obstacles to ensuring the growing social demand for higher education (Feng et al., 2007; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020). To sum up, the our country higher education in the process of transition from planned economy system to market system, it is directly influenced by the socialist market economy, under the market economy system, to ensure the planned to break the traditional concept of school management in colleges and universities, according to the market demand to create the school management concept, to ensure that the college out of state dependence, in the most appropriate way to establish selfdevelopment and fair competition. At the same time, the development of private higher education further promotes the development of China’s socialist market

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economy, provides a large number of high-quality modern talents for the development of socialist market economy, and makes a contribution to China’s socialist construction (Feng et al., 2007; Qin & Wang, 2012; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012).

2.4 The Social Basis of Private Preschool Education Policy Abstract: Preschool education plays a vital role in people’s educational career. After the reform and opening up, the state has promulgated and issued a series of laws and policies to encourage the establishment and development of preschool private education. The social foundation of private preschool education will be analyzed and discussed from two aspects. They are the guiding role of national laws and regulations in the society and private preschool education, and the local government formulated some policies to follow up the development of private preschool education based on the local social situation. However, at present, there are still some urgent problems and shortcomings in the relevant aspects and policies of privately-run preschool education. The state should continue to adjust the relevant policies of privatelyrun preschool education according to the actual situation of the society, adhere to the “universality” of preschool education and guide the correct development of privatelyrun preschool education. Preschool education in a broad sense refers to the education implemented by 0–6 years old or 7 years old children. It is the education implemented by parents, preschool teachers and other children using a variety of ways and objects to systematically and scientifically stimulate their intellectual thinking and make their brains perfect. Preschool education is the initial stage of children’s learning and the most important part of the preschool education system. It is also the most basic stage of infant intelligence development and the fastest stage of development and formation of intelligence. Therefore, the correct and reasonable preschool education has a great role in promoting people’s intelligence and development. The purposeful and planned education can effectively promote children’s development, promote the coordination and connection between preschool education and children’s development, and form an interactive relationship of mutual restriction and mutual influence. Therefore, such an important preschool education needs the correct and reasonable guidance of national policies. The close connection between education and culture, politics, economy, science and technology and human beings determines the sociality of educational policies. The essential attribute of education is also an activity to develop human beings. In history, every change of educational policies reflects the needs of the society or adjusts the current social contradictions. For example, the “economy-oriented” education policy or the enrollment expansion policy are all timely educational policies issued by the state and the government according to the specific situation of the society. Similarly, in the aspect of preschool education, the state has also adjusted its policies

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to meet the needs of the whole society under the premise of focusing on the needs of different times. In preschool education, it is divided into private preschool education and public preschool education. Since entering the twenty-first century, public preschool education has developed rapidly, while the proportion of private preschool education has decreased slightly. According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, from 2014 to 2019, the proportion of public kindergartens (including kindergartens run by education departments, collective kindergartens and kindergartens run by other departments) in China continues to rise, while the proportion of private kindergartens continues to decline. This is due to the unprecedented strengthening of control over social capital entering kindergartens in China. By the end of 2019, there were 173,200 private kindergartens in China, which accounted for 61.61% of the total number of kindergartens, although the number increased somewhat. However, we can still see that private preschool education will still account for a large part of China’s preschool education and even the main position in the future for a long time. Private preschool education is run by individuals, which is relatively more open and freer, so it needs more management and control from national and government policies.

2.5 The Guiding Role of Laws and Regulations and the National Government on the Subject of Private Preschool Education As mentioned before, in order to adjust the needs of the society in different periods or solve some problems in the society, the national government will issue different laws and regulations or formulate different policies over time to adjust and guide the whole private education industry from a macro perspective. Between 1978 and 2018, the state issued a total of 43 policy documents, mainly issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the State Council and the Ministry of Education. Their achievements and influences on society can be roughly divided into three stages.

2.5.1 Restoration and Development of Private Education and Supplement of Public Education (1978–1992) In 1978, after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee, China began to implement reform and opening up. In 1981 followed the sixth plenary session put forward the plan and give priority to, market regulation is complementary, 12, 1984 the third plenary session put forward the “planned commodity economy”, 1987, 13 big points out that establishing “plan and market unity within system”, the price mechanism function restoration in our country, the market adjusting range

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is expanding, and preschool education field photograph echo with these changes. Private education has begun a new stage of exploration. In 1982, the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China pointed out that “the state encourages collective economic organizations, state enterprises and institutions and other social forces to conduct various educational undertakings in accordance with the provisions of the law”, and the provision encouraging social forces to run schools is exactly the symbol of the rise of private preschool education. During this period, the national education policy is mainly explored step by step, which is mainly reflected in the exploration of pre-school education management system, education standards and the nature of the industry. During this period, promulgated and issued the regulations on the city kindergarten work (1979), the state education commission on several ideas to develop the rural preschool education (1983), the State Council on forwarding state education commission and other departments about leadership and management responsibilities clear early childhood education career instruct” (1987), “the kindergarten education outline (trial draft)” (1981), the infant normal school teaching plans to test a draft (1980) and other documents. These emphasized the economic benefits of the development of preschool education, holding preschool classes as an important way to promote economic development. Due to the economic and social reform in rural and urban areas, some kindergartens relying on collective economic organizations and state enterprises and institutions have separated from the original social economy, which has opened up space for social forces to run kindergartens. At that time, private preschool education had to be responsible for its own profits and losses. Moreover, under the influence of social environment and the values of administrators, private education, especially private preschool education, had very weak economic returns. Therefore, many schools are non-profit or make little profit. Many operators also show a spirit of selfless dedication to the society and the public. With the development of time, the government also acquiesced in the development of private education, allowing market subjects to explore schools independently under the permission of the legal system. Therefore, at that time, the enrolment rate was not significant, and the pattern at that time was reflected as “weak market, weak government”.

2.5.2 Development Stage of Private Teaching (1993–2010) At the Party’s 14th National Congress in 1992, it was formally stated that the goal of structural reform was to “establish and improve the socialist market economic system” and to “enable the market to play a fundamental role in the allocation of resources under the macro-control of the socialist state.” The following year, the state promulgated the Outline of China’s Educational Reform and Development, which recognized the deficiencies of the country’s educational development and the problems that our society still needs to solve. On this basis, we will deepen reform of the education system and give strong support and guidance to private education.

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In order to solve the problem of social illiteracy, the party and the country increase educational investment from many aspects. In 1997, the party’s 15 big pointed out that “to fully give play to the role of market mechanism, improve the macro modulation system”, after this countries and issued the State Council on forwarding the Ministry of Education and other departments on early childhood education reform and development of guidance (2003), the three-year secondary infant normal school teaching plan (1995), the Ministry of Education about standard of elementary school and kindergarten teacher training work notice (2005), and other laws and regulations. Especially in 2003 published private education promotion law of the People’s Republic of China, has been clear about the nature of the private education and status, determines the “private education career also belong to public welfare undertakings, is also part of the socialist education”, and also to the establishment of private education, school, organization and activity, teachers and educates, management and supervision, support and reward made specific provision, from then on, the Chinese private education to the way the development of the specification (Feng et al., 2007; Qin & Wang, 2012; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012). At this stage, the development of private preschool education was in a state of slow exploration, but after the introduction of relevant laws, private preschool education in China began to develop rapidly like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. At the end of the twentieth century, an investigation by the UNESCO Committee of the National People’s Congress of China found that only one tenth of the institutions or individuals investing in education were for public welfare purposes, while the other 90% were motivated by interests. In order to stimulate the enthusiasm of the public, the People’s Promotion Law clearly stipulates that in addition to paying or withdrawing the necessary fees in accordance with the state regulations, investors can obtain reasonable returns after the school balance. Moreover, the People’s Promotion Law also clearly stipulates the relevant provisions of “support and reward” for private education, which gives a reassuring assurance to many people who want to run schools but are still hesitating. With government support and reasonable profits, these have greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of social forces in establishing preschool education. At the same time, the country vigorously promotes the role of education, which also makes more and more people realize the importance of preschool education and are willing and take the initiative to send their children to preschool education institutions. This encourages the enthusiasm of running a school, forming a virtuous circle. As of 2004, the number of private schools accounted for more than 50% of the country’s total. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the number of private schools, the number of teachers and staff, and the number of children enrolled in private schools have increased by more than 3% each year.

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2.5.3 Improvement of the Policy System of Private-Run Preschool Education (2010–Present) In the previous stage, China’s preschool education continued to develop, and China’s exploration of private education gradually became clear, and the understanding of its management and content was constantly improved and clear, and increasingly accurate and effective. Marxism holds that qualitative change is the inevitable result of quantitative change. Therefore, under the guidance of the state, the private preschool education in China began to change from quantity to quality. In 2010, the state promulgated the Outline of the National Program for Mediumand Long-Term Education Reform and Development (2010–2020). The Outline of the Plan for Education was formulated in accordance with the strategic deployment of the Seventeenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China on “giving priority to the development of education and building a powerful country with human resources” in order to promote the scientific development of education, improve the quality of the people in an all-round way and accelerate the process of socialist modernization. At that time, the state and society recognized that “science and technology are the primary productive forces” and had already determined the training of talents as the basis for the realization of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Outline of Education Planning stipulates the direction of education development and reform in the future from all angles. As for preschool education, it has been clearly pointed out that preschool education should be universal. At that time, social subjects had realized that advanced knowledge and excellent technology could lead to a better life, and the rewards of mental work were getting more and more favorable. So, the whole society has raised the degree of attention to education, preschool education has been further developed in the flood. During this decade, although the proportion of private education in the preschool education system has decreased, it is still far higher than that of public preschool education. In general, with the continuous improvement of national policies, the development of China’s private education system is relatively healthy on the whole.

2.5.4 Guide of Different Local Policies in Different Provinces to Private Education Under the general layout of national laws and policies, private education in China has developed rapidly in the past 40 years since the reform and opening up. Each province also carries on the control to the private pre-school education respectively according to its own situation and the detail. First of all, the government’s financial investment in preschool education. The development level of private preschool education will be affected by the different levels of economic development, social development and population size in each region. At the same time, the per capita disposable income of farmers and workers

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also determines the popularization and development of preschool education in local areas. There on behalf of the “measures for the management of private kindergartens in Jiangxi province” (2007), the “measures for the management of private kindergartens in Anhui province” (2006), “interim measures for the kindergarten fee management in Fujian province” (2007), the Zhejiang province education department about kindergarten rating and for private kindergarten review notice and the kindergarten’s bid to host the measures for examination and approval of Zhejiang province (trial) (2008), etc. Up to now, according to the government’s financial input and regulation dimension, preschool education can be divided into four types: private education supported by weak regulation (mainly in Zhejiang Province); Strong control and support for public enterprises (represented by Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Hebei); Strong regulation mixed type (represented by Anhui Province); Weak regulation and insufficient input (represented by Zhejiang Province). In many areas, there is a phenomenon that public preschool education and private preschool education exclude each other, and it is difficult to find a dependent relationship between private preschool education institutions and public preschool education. However, the proportion of private education in many economically underdeveloped areas is also very high, which is caused by the low threshold of running private education or the lack of regulation by the local government.

2.5.5 Problems Still Existing in the Policy of Private Preschool Education 1.

2.

As mentioned above, the threshold of running private education is very low, which leads to many people opening “black gardens” in violation of the law in order to make profits. In addition, some governments do not control and support private kindergartens constructively, and do not strictly regulate the access threshold and comprehensive treatment screening of private kindergartens. So many “non-registered kindergartens” that is, black park will be wantonly development, profiteering. It is difficult and expensive to enter the garden. The difficulty of entering kindergartens is a widespread phenomenon in this society, especially in the provinces and cities where the development situation is relatively good. In essence, the quality of education cannot be guaranteed. Part of the reason is that in the stage of preschool education in China, teachers in private kindergartens do not belong to the establishment, which makes it difficult for private preschool education to enjoy national financial support. As a result, small-scale preschool education occupies a dominant position in preschool education in China. In the long run, the quality of education cannot be guaranteed. Parents also generally do not trust the quality of education for small private schools. Moreover, due to some conceptual factors and the mentality of comparison, most parents prefer to seek places at large sums of money, which also leads to a certain “gap between the

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rich and the poor” between private kindergartens. As the public park occupies a small share in our country now, so the quota is difficult to win. In contrast, good teachers, good facilities and good reputation of the private park has become the focus of parents seeking money. And these private parks themselves, the pursuit of high-quality education at the same time to ensure profits, so the fees will be much higher than the ordinary private education and public private education. This, to a certain extent, cuts off the low-income families in cities and the families of farmers and migrant workers. As a result, it is often difficult to find a park, so it is understandable that a few years ago, “140 people queued in the snow in Beijing to get 50 places”. Difficulties in the construction of teachers in private parks. As mentioned above, private kindergarten teachers cannot enjoy the same treatment as public kindergarten teachers because it is difficult to participate in the national establishment, which leads to the low enthusiasm of most people to apply for private kindergartens. Our private kindergartens and give priority to with a small kindergarten, at the same time so itself cannot give a more attractive than the public kindergarten teachers’ treatment, only a handful of the kindergarten “noble” limited places have good treatment, but the price is high, so led to the vast majority of private preschool education faculty construction is suffering.

2.6 Prospects and Suggestions of Private Preschool Education Policy At present, China’s preschool education has faced such problems as “difficulty in getting into kindergartens” and “high cost in getting into kindergartens”. Therefore, China issued the “Several Opinions of the State Council on the Current Development of Preschool Education” in 2010. In the Ten Articles of the State, it is mentioned that preschool education is “universal”, which means equal education and basic public services. Under the premise that the cost of preschool education is generally high, persistence is the goal of “universality”. In conclusion, “difficult” in the park is mainly manifested in the “into the garden to” we can improve the educational quality of private preschool education, in addition to intensify supervision and audit efforts with kindergarten, curb the existence of “black garden” in society, is also, by strengthening the faculty of the preschool education to improve the educational quality of private preschool education. Among these, the primary problem to solve is to ensure the treatment of teachers in private preschool education. It can be solved by guaranteeing the treatment and social status of teachers by legislation or increasing the number of teachers or indirectly improving the treatment of teachers by increasing the subsidies and support for private preschool education. Through the above concept combing, we have a general understanding of the direction, goals and difficulties of preschool education reform, as well as the basic role of culture in policy. In the policy change of preschool education, the cultural foundation is accompanied by the whole process, among which there are two obvious points, that is, China has always been

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asking for fairness and justice, and the confidence to lead education with excellent culture. Public welfare and universal benefit: the concept of fairness and justice with Chinese characteristics. In the process of modernization, we also realize that fairness is not equal to equality, fairness is not equal to the distribution of all resources, but public welfare, different, so a fair education policy is particularly important, only it can achieve the fair distribution of education resources. At the same time, we also noticed that in our country, fairness is more like a process, a means, and equality is the highest real end. For example, everyone should not drop out of school because of economic difficulties, and educational resources should be equalized… This kind of universal proposition has already reflected the “universality” of China’s education, and it is more implemented in the “equality”. Fair education can almost erase and make up for family background, social class, ethnic group, gender characteristics, etc. This may have something to do with the highest ideals that we cherish and strive for as a socialist country. But at the same time, we also encourage people’s free and all-round development, and encourage free competition based on individual ability, which shows a certain degree of tension with “equality”. Some scholars think that this is because the actual face two kinds of education fair benefit distribution principle, respectively is the guiding principle is the difference principle, competitive profit distribution stress free competition, based on the universality and the guiding principle is the principle of equality, profit distribution stress equal concern for vulnerable groups, this makes more differentiation and stereoscopic education fair. The heterogeneity of China’s concept of equity based on the western theory of equity and justice above shows that China’s educational equity is a very complex and tense system. In fact, in terms of our traditional culture, the concept of educational fairness has a long history. Confucius, China’s great educator, put forward the idea that “education should be free from discrimination”. In modern times, this view means that everyone should have access to education, and objective factors such as economic difficulties cannot be the reason for not attending school. In the past, the public garden, private garden less expensive, which ACTS as a deterrent to preschool education popularization, PuHuiYuan through the guide private kindergartens, adopt the way of price guide kindergarten provides general service, also through the government subsidies to ensure general operation of kindergarten, which maintains the quantity advantage, also enlarged the price advantage, to gradually ease into the garden, the garden of your problem. Everyone had a different understanding of the fair, but under the same culture, we have to fair ten million, there are still common in the explanation of our fair society is the social progress, the education fair education is open to all, this kind of idea drive continuously optimize education policy, according to the construction of fair education policy to promote a fair education environment. Some private kindergartens’ teaching contents go their own way, for profit, catering to parents’ impatience, deviating from scientific teaching content, lack of

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cultural connotation, and just blindly inculcate knowledge. This approach is tantamount to a hasty way to grow up. Therefore, from the policy level, private kindergartens should not take “bilingual teaching” and “foreign teachers” as gimmicks but should take excellent culture as guidance to provide scientific and high-quality education. How does culture intervene in early childhood education so as to internalize the core socialist values? Through games, culture can be well integrated into children’s thoughts. As the Opinions on Deepening the Reform of Educational System and Mechanism said, kindergartens should follow the rules of children’s physical and mental development and take games as the basic activity. For example, handicraft activities can be integrated into folk culture, and festival celebrations can also involve traditional culture, which can enhance children’s understanding of grand concepts such as country, value and culture in their infancy. In short, culture enhances its influence through educational policies, which is not only the call of The Times, but also the requirement of national confidence. We asked for fairness and opened private kindergartens to more people. We firm cultural self-confidence, to early childhood education to take scientific methods. The development of preschool education is always on the road. The discussion on private preschool education will not stop, and the policy will be updated. As the basis of the policy, culture is bound to continue to play a role in preschool education (Feng et al., 2007; Qin & Wang, 2012; Wei, 2002; Zhang, 2020; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012).

References Feng, X., Cai, Y., & Yan, L. (2007). The development trend of world preschool education: National financial support for preschool education. Research of Preschool Education, 20(05), 3–6. Qin, X., & Wang, M. (2012). Connotation, measurement criteria and policy suggestions of inclusive kindergarten. Preschool Education Research, 20(07), 22–30. Wei, J. (2002). Reflection on the party construction in private schools. School Party Construction and Ideological Education, 15(12), 20–22. Zhang, Q. (2020). Reflections on several issues of party construction in private colleges and universities. Journal of Theoretical Studies, 24(5), 105–107. Zhuang, X., & Cheng, L. (2012). The significance, dilemma and countermeasures of the development of inclusive private kindergartens. Research of Preschool Education, 20(11), 45–49.

Chapter 3

The Private Compulsory Education in China

This chapter focuses on examining the private compulsory education in China from multiple perspectives. As a large part of the private education, the private compulsory education is very important, and because it is a part of the compulsory education, the status of the private compulsory education appears more important, the analysis and research of the private education policy also appears particularly important. In this paper, the content of private education policy analysis, due to the limited level, can only be on the basis of policy documents for a relatively shallow analysis. At the same time, due to run by the local compulsory education is the intersection of private education and compulsory education, the state of private education and compulsory education have more detailed specification, specifically for private compulsory education policies is not much, so this article mainly from the private education policy and compulsory education policy analysis of these two aspects related to run by the compulsory education policy. It is analyzed from four aspects: the historical review of private education policy; The nature and status of private compulsory education; Private compulsory education requires high-quality and balanced development; The fund and income of private compulsory education. Since the emergence of private compulsory education, gradually occupy a higher and higher position in the field of compulsory education. Over the past decades, in order to strengthen the encouragement, guidance and management of private compulsory education, new policies and regulations have constantly emerged, and therefore private compulsory education has achieved considerable development. Starting from the policy of privately-run compulsory education in China, this paper discusses the process of gradual perfection of the policies and regulations of privately-run compulsory education in China, the political basis of these policies, a series of experiences acquired in the process of its development, some problems arising, and the future development direction of privately-run compulsory education.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Private Education Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3272-3_3

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3.1 Introduction Since the reform and opening up, the Chinese government has made steady progress in the reform and construction of Chinese education. At the beginning of the reform and opening up, due to the large population base and insufficient education and teaching funds, private education, as a supplement to the state public education, came into being. With the development and progress of the society, private education has also been developed, playing an increasingly important role and position in China’s education. With the continuous supplement of education and teaching funds, the role of private education is more reflected in the diversification of education, the promotion of education equity and the healthy development of education. Private education has become an indispensable part of China’s education. As an important part of private education, private compulsory education has made do contributions to the cause of Chinese compulsory education. Because of the uniqueness of compulsory education, the state pays more attention to and guides the private compulsory education.

3.2 The History Review of Private Education Policy Since the reform and opening up, the Chinese government has never stopped paying attention to and guiding the construction of private education. This part will review the history of the national policy on private education. The emergence of private education policy can be traced back to 1982. The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, adopted in 1982 at the Fifth Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, clearly stipulates for the first time: “The state encourages collective economic organizations, state enterprises and institutions and other social forces to establish educational undertakings of all kinds in accordance with law.” Later, in 1985, the Decision on the Reform of the Education System put forward the guiding principles for encouraging private education: “Local governments should encourage and guide state-owned enterprises, public organizations and individuals in running schools, and encourage units, collectives and individuals, on a voluntary basis, to donate money for education, but no apportion shall be forced.” At the same time to carry out the standardization of the non-government education school requirements, respectively, in 1987 “about social some interim provisions on the strength of running a school, in 1995 by the education law of the People’s Republic of China, regulations on the social forces of running a school, developed in 1997 2001” education class a people-run non-enterprise unit registration method specification for private education further. In 2002, a breakthrough was made in the legislative work of privately-run education. The Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Privately-run Education, which provided a legal basis for the development of privately-run education, deleted the expression “not for profit” for the first time, and allowed the government to make reasonable returns within the

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scope prescribed by law. In 2004, it issued the Implementation Regulations of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Privately-run Education to guide the implementation of the Law on the Promotion of Privately-run Education. Keeping up with the development of the times, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Privately-run Education was amended in 2016, and then the Implementation Regulations of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Privately-run Education was revised to guide the implementation. In addition to the above-mentioned documents, is more important in private education funding problems, countries in 1994 “about private schools to raise funds from the social issues notice”, released in 2005 on the printing of “private education fee management interim measures notice, the Ministry of Education issued in 2012 the Ministry of Education about encouraging and guiding private capital into the education field to promote the healthy development of non-governmental education implementation opinion”, for the funding of private education run by the compulsory education in particular has played a guiding role. With the rational arrangement of the Chinese government, private education in China is improving and developing healthily (Li, 2020; Lu, 2020; Sun & Cheng, 2020; Wu & Ma, 2020; Wu & Zhi, 2020).

3.3 The Nature and Status of Private Compulsory Education At the beginning of the reform and opening up, private education was put forward mainly to solve the shortage of funds for running schools. In 1987, the “Several Interim Provisions on Running Schools by Social Forces” clearly pointed out that “Running schools by social forces is an integral part of China’s education and a supplement to running schools by the state.” As a major component of private education, private compulsory education was mainly a supplement to public compulsory education at the beginning of its emergence. With the continuous development of the socialist society with Chinese characteristics, the nature and status of private compulsory education in China’s education have also changed. The Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Privately-run Education, passed in 2002, clearly states that “Privately-run education belongs to public welfare undertakings and is an integral part of socialist education undertakings. The state implements the policy of actively encouraging, vigorously supporting, correctly guiding and administrating privately-run education according to law.” And recognized that “private schools and public schools have the same legal status”. For private compulsory education, the Act also requires: “Where the people’s government entrusts a private school to undertake the task of compulsory education, it shall allocate the corresponding educational funds in accordance with the entrustment agreement.” It makes private compulsory education equal to public compulsory education in terms of law and education. At the same time, the bill also requires

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protecting the autonomy of private schools: “The state guarantees the autonomy of private schools.” The promulgation of the Private Education Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China makes the private education in the relationship between public and private education in a subordinate position for a long time to begin to change. Private education schools and teachers and students have the same rights and interests as public schools and teachers and students (Li, 2020; Lu, 2020; Sun & Cheng, 2020; Wu & Ma, 2020; Wu & Zhi, 2020). The Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for Education Reform and Development (2010–2020), issued in 2010, states: “We will vigorously support private education. Private education is an important growth point for the development of education and an important force for educational reform.” As a major part of private education, private compulsory education plays an increasingly important role and status. The private compulsory education has become a strong competitor with the public compulsory education. Through teaching competition, the education reform has been promoted. At the same time, the private compulsory education has also provided an elitist teaching environment for some high-income groups, so that the people have a richer choice. In 2016, the state amended the Private Education Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China by changing Article 18 to Article 19, which reads: “Sponsors of private schools can independently choose to set up nonprofit or profit-making private schools. However, no profit-making private schools providing compulsory education shall be set up”; “The sponsor of a non-profit private school is not allowed to gain from running the school, and the school’s running surplus is all used for running the school”; “The organizer of a profit-making privately-run school may obtain the profit from running the school, and the school’s running balance shall be dealt with in accordance with the Company Law and other relevant laws and administrative regulations”; “After a privately-run school has obtained the schoolrunning permit, it shall register as a legal person, and the registration authority shall handle the registration according to law”. It clearly points out that private compulsory education is non-profit education, and further defines its school-running nature. In general, the character and status of China’s current run by the local compulsory education is non-profit, public interest, with equal legal status and rights and interests of the public compulsory education school, is “important growth point of education development and the important force to promote the reform of education”, provide the people with a variety of school choice (Li, 2020; Lu, 2020; Sun & Cheng, 2020; Wu & Ma, 2020; Wu & Zhi, 2020).

3.4 Privately-Run Compulsory Education Requires High-Quality and Balanced Development With the development of society, the development of education in different regions is not the same, some areas of education development are good, some areas of education development is not very good, which leads to the existence of education resources

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in education and teaching is not equal, there is an unfair phenomenon of education. The Chinese government attaches great importance to this phenomenon and has adopted a series of measures to promote educational equity, especially in the stage of compulsory education. In 2017, the 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of National Education used a large space to require the balanced and high-quality development of compulsory education, which mainly includes three aspects: to promote the balanced development at the county level; Narrow regional disparities; We will consolidate and improve popularity. In promoting the balanced development of the county in the aspects of the planning requirements: accelerate the county construction standards of urban and rural compulsory education in school, teacher preparation standards, embrace public funds benchmark quota, the unity of the basic equipment allocation standard, and implement the policy of “two free fill” a complete coverage of urban and rural, the basic realization of the county intercollegiate resources equilibrium configuration. Promote urban and rural principals and teachers exchange rotation, so as to promote the balanced development of education to a certain extent. Promote strong schools with weak schools and other forms of schooling to achieve the purpose of “accelerating the expansion of quality education resources coverage, and vigorously improving the quality of compulsory education in rural areas and weak areas”. In terms of narrowing regional disparity, the planning requirements: at the provincial level to narrow the gap between provincial compulsory education development level, at the same time “to adjust measures to local conditions to build perfect compulsory education schools around the construction standard, basic science and promoting urban and rural compulsory education school’s standardization construction, improve the conditions of weak schools and boarding schools”. In terms of national distribution, we should strive to promote a more balanced development of compulsory education in the eastern, central and western regions, and improve the quality and guarantee of compulsory education in the central and western regions so as to narrow the educational and teaching gap between them and the developed eastern regions. In terms of consolidating and improving the popularization level, the Plan requires that we focus on improving the quality of education in rural, remote, poverty-stricken and ethnic minority areas where dropouts are concentrated. We will put in place various systems and programs to improve the popularization of education, and at the same time, we will give more support to poor students to make sure that no child is left behind. And on this basis, we should “accelerate the realization of compulsory education school management standardization and improve the overall quality of compulsory education”. In the same year, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Education System and Mechanism, which once again mentioned promoting the balanced and high-quality development of compulsory education. The document requires that the system and mechanism of balanced and high-quality development of compulsory education be improved and proposes some specific measures to ensure that the work of promoting balanced and high-quality development of compulsory education can be carried out in an orderly manner and achieve the goal.

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As a part of compulsory education, privately-run compulsory education naturally shoulders the mission of promoting the balanced and high-quality development of compulsory education and make do contributions in promoting the balanced and high-quality development of compulsory education with its own uniqueness. Thanks to the efforts of the Chinese government and all sectors of society, remarkable results have been achieved in the balanced development of compulsory education. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, we have made up for the shortcomings in rural education, and 99.8% of compulsory education schools nationwide have met the basic requirements. The congestion of compulsory education resources in urban areas has been alleviated, and the proportion of large classes in compulsory education has been reduced to 3.98%. At the same time, we should pay more attention to care for special groups, so that the sunshine of educational equality can be spread to every child. The problem of fund and income of privately-run education plays an important role in the practice of running schools of privately-run education, which is related to whether privately-run education can develop correctly and realize its functions. Since the birth of privately-run education, the Chinese government has attached great importance to the management of funds and income of privately-run education. In 1994, it issued the Notice on the Issue of Privately-run Schools Raising Funds from the Public. In 2005, it issued the Notice on Printing and Distributing the Interim Measures for the Administration of Fees for Privately-run Education. Released in 2012 the Ministry of Education about encourage and guide private capital into the education field to promote the healthy development of non-governmental education implementation opinion “to guide the specification of non-government education funds and income problem, at the same time in other private education policies and regulations, such as:” private education promotion law of the People’s Republic of China in capital and income of private education is also carried out. Private compulsory education as a part of private education, because of its unique compulsory education, in the aspect of funds and income management and regulation is particularly important. At the beginning of the development of private education, the state defined private education as public welfare and non-profit, which made the funds of private education basically only come from donations, and the shortage of funds is certainly not conducive to the long-term development of private education. In response to the needs and realities of social development, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Privately-run Education, passed in 2002, for the first time omitted the expression “not for profit” and proposed that the government should allow academics to earn reasonable returns within the scope prescribed by law. Article 51 of the Private Education Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China (2002) clearly stipulates that: After deducting the running cost, reserve the development fund and withdraw other necessary expenses according to the relevant regulations of the state, the investors can obtain reasonable returns from the running balance. From a practical point of view, private education later obtained more sources of funds and developed much faster than before.

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The relatively rapid development of private education, making part of private school education and the law of the People’s Republic of China private education promotion law “stipulated by the relevant to deviate from the spirit, aiming at this phenomenon, the Chinese government in 2005” about print and distribute “private education fee management interim measures notice problem to regulate private education funds and charges, the file points out:” voluntary school degree education tuition standard, according to the principle of education cost compensation and due consideration factors to establish a reasonable return. For privately-run compulsory education, the document specifically requires: “A privately-run school entrusted by a people’s government at the county level to undertake the task of compulsory education shall not charge a fee higher than that of a local public school of the same level.” In terms of funds, the Implementation Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Encouraging and Guiding Non-governmental Funds to Entering the Education Field and Promoting the Healthy Development of Non-governmental Education issued in 2012 required that the channels for non-governmental funds to participate in the development of education should be expanded, and clearly pointed out that “domestic and foreign funds are allowed to carry out Chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools in accordance with the law.” This further expands the source of funds for private education, and the scale of funds for private education has been considerable. In terms of income, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Private Education, revised in 2016, further takes into account social realities, clearly states that “the organizers of private schools can independently choose to set up non-profit or for-profit private schools.” However, for privately-run compulsory education, there are special requirements: “No profit-making privately-run schools providing compulsory education shall be established” (Li, 2020; Lu, 2020; Sun & Cheng, 2020; Wu & Ma, 2020; Wu & Zhi, 2020). So far, the private compulsory education has been significantly standardized in terms of funds and income, that is, the participation of private capital is encouraged in the aspect of funds, and the establishment of profit-making compulsory education schools is not allowed, but the administrators are allowed to get reasonable returns from the school balance. This chapter analyzes the contents of the policy of private compulsory education from four aspects. In general, China’s current requirements and positioning of private education are as follows: non-profit and public welfare, an important force in the reform of the education system, and a powerful force conducive to promoting educational equity and improving educational level. Today, China is run by the local compulsory education has been nearly 40 years of development history, in the 40 years, the Chinese government pays attention to the guidance and management of the non-government compulsory education, have introduced a number of policy guidance and management, which makes the system of the compulsory education run by the local people and the improvement of the management way get preliminary, but its development is a long way to go. The Chinese government has been paying uninterrupted attention to the work of privately-run compulsory education, and it is very necessary to guide and supervise its development.

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3.5 The Politics of China’s Private Compulsory Education Policy Since the reform and opening up, in order to meet the country’s strong demand for talents and people’s increasingly diversified education needs, private education has gradually appeared in people’s vision. As a brand-new education system, the private education has changed the previous mode of government-run education and turned to be integrated with the society, which has injected fresh vitality into the education system. In recent years, with the continuous improvement of relevant regulations and policies, private education accounts for a higher and higher proportion in compulsory education. As an important part of socialist education, privately-run compulsory education has been developing step by step. While removing obstacles, it has formed some characteristics, accumulated some experience and also emerged some problems. According to the concept of private education, private compulsory education refers to the social organizations or individuals outside the state institutions, using non-state financial funds, open to the whole society to recruit junior high school students. At present, “state-owned and privately run” and “privately owned and privately run” are the two major types of private compulsory education in China. “State-owned private”, “state” refers to the nature of the school belongs to the public, government, school superior unit is the department of education, school, land owned by the state. “private” refers to the school to undertake by the individual, mainly refers to the source of funds, the government is not responsible for the school the funds required for the normal operation, including office gold fee, teachers’ salaries and so on, by the school self-raised funds, can absorb social funds to maintain the school running. “Private ownership” refers to educational institutions that are all owned by individuals, such as schools.

3.6 Current Situation of Private Compulsory Education in China In recent years, the market scale of privately-run primary and secondary schools in China has been rising continuously because of the coincidence between privately-run primary and secondary schools and the consumption upgrading demand of middle and high-income families and the education demand of migrant workers’ children. Education statistics show that in 2019, there were 6,228 private primary schools nationwide, an increase of 49 or 0.79% over the previous year. The enrollment was 1.59400 million, an increase of 37,400 or 2.41% over the previous year; The total number of students was 9,449,100, an increase of 603,300 or 6.82% over the previous year. There were 5,793 private junior middle schools, an increase of 331 or 6.06% over the previous year. The enrollment was 2,431,100, an increase of 126,400 or 5.48% over the previous year; The total number of students was 6.8740 million,

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an increase of 51,100 or 8.03% over the previous year. Overall, primary and junior high school students account for about 1/4 of the total number of students in private compulsory education. Compared with the data in 2018, there were 6,179 private primary schools (there were 161,800 general primary schools in China), an increase of 72 or 1.18% over the previous year. The enrollment was 1,553,100, an increase of 176,100 or 12.79% over the previous year; The number of students on campus reached 8.8457 million, an increase of 70,400 people or 8.65% over the previous year. There were 5,462 private junior high schools (out of a total of 52,000 in China), an increase of 185 or 3.51% over the previous year; The enrollment was 2,304,700, an increase of 213,800 or 10.22% over the previous year; The total number of students was 6,363,000, an increase of 586,200 or 10.15% over the previous year. On the whole, the government controls both the quantity and scale of private compulsory education.

3.7 Classification and Mode of Private Compulsory Education According to the way of running schools, private schools in the stage of basic education in our country mainly have several modes of running schools, such as private citizens, cooperative schools, enterprises, public institutions and Sino-foreign cooperative schools. According to the needs of parents, private education is mainly divided into three types: basic private education for middle-income families, migrant schools for low-income families, and “aristocratic” schools for high-income families. Privately-run basic schools: Privately-run basic education attaches importance to school characteristics. Many private primary and secondary schools provide diversified educational services with the concept of “quality-oriented education, all-round development and EQ cultivation”. In some boarding private primary and secondary schools, the way of education is not limited to classroom teaching. Students’ daily life, food, clothing, housing and transportation are all important aspects of school education. The whole educational activities are extended to the campus environment, student dormitories, dining halls, infirmary and various places, running through the whole life of students. Students learn to be independent and socialize with others. The running philosophy of some private schools has injected fresh blood into compulsory education. Migrant Children’s Schools: Many children of migrant workers in cities are restricted by their household registration, which prevents them from attending local public schools. Therefore, Migrant Children’s Schools came into being, providing compulsory education services to students whose household registration is not in the local area, which is an important supplement to government-run compulsory education. These schools offer functions such as babysitting for parents who work harder. (3) Private schools catering to high income groups: the tuition standard of public education is lower, and the emphasis is on universal education and the right

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of all students to receive education. Due to the limitation of China’s current national conditions, the environmental conditions of public compulsory education are relatively general, the service is not strong, and the management is relatively traditional. While private education usually charges a higher standard and is capable of providing students with more superior teaching facilities, school environment, and better teachers, which can meet the personalized educational needs of some middleand high-income families. Many boarding private primary and secondary schools aim at letting children “learn to live” and have special life teachers to teach and examine them from dormitory hygiene, life skills and personal habit formation. School at the same time in various extracurricular interest class, chess, calligraphy, piano, painting, ball games, etc. at the same time, also set up pottery, flowers, model, planting and other labor practice course, let the children in the high school, high school to play, so that the students not only the good conduct, life habit, but also make the children more love life, to learn how to live (Li, 2020; Lu, 2020; Sun & Cheng, 2020; Wu & Ma, 2020; Wu & Zhi, 2020).

3.8 Problems Existing in Privately-Run Compulsory Education at This Stage The emergence of private education has enhanced the vigor of compulsory education, but its “personal undertaking” attribute means that the state still needs to manage it. Some local management omissions have led to an imbalance in the development of public and private schools and a small number of private schools operating in violation of regulations. The government gives too many preferential conditions to private schools, and the status of public compulsory education is compromised. The local government diverted some students from public schools to private ones, which triggered public dissatisfaction and led some people to gather to petition. The government neglects the management of privately-run schools, and privately-run compulsory education schools take evaluation and charge students in violation of regulations. Although the law forbids the establishment of for-profit schools in the compulsory education phase, the phenomenon of illegal fees still exists. Three private junior high schools in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, illegally collected 7.12 million yuan in donations linked to enrollment. After being urged by the Ministry of Education, the Yinchuan municipal government made a response, requiring the three schools to return the fees within a certain time limit, and banning them from the national support policy and the evaluation of excellence and excellence at all levels in 2019. The school principals were held accountable and criticized publicly.

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3.9 Summary of Policies on Privately-Run Compulsory Education On November 26, 1982, in the Report on the Draft Amendment to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China delivered at the Fifth Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress, Chairman Peng Zhen put forward the principle of “running education on two legs”. In 1985, along with the acceleration of reform and opening up process, the central committee of the communist party of China has made a “decision on reform of the education system”, point out “to encourage and guide the national enterprises, social organizations and individuals in running schools”, the state of social organizations and individual citizens in accordance with law, education, to actively encourage, support, correct guidance, strengthening the management policy. This period of the emergence of private education more than non-academic background of cultural tutoring nature of the training institutions. The Program for China’s Education Reform and Development, issued in 1993, stipulates that “the government should change the pattern of running schools and gradually establish a system in which the government plays the main role and all sectors of society work together to run schools.” Since then, the scope of private education has expanded from the original training institutions to primary and secondary schools and vocational training and other fields. In 1997, the State Council promulgated the Regulations on Running Schools by Social Forces, which was the first administrative regulation regulating privately-run education in New China, marking that China’s privately-run education has entered a new stage of running schools, managing and administering according to law. At the end of 2002, the Private Education Promotion Law was promulgated, which further standardized the conduct of running private schools. The private education in China has entered a period of rapid development. The “Promotion Law” stipulates that private educational undertakings belong to public welfare undertakings and are an integral part of socialist educational undertakings. The state implements the policy of actively encouraging, vigorously supporting, correctly guiding and administrating privately-run education according to law. China has always recognized the value of running schools by social forces and the important role of private education in training talents and supplementing public education. From the social forces to school regulations to “private education promotion law”, has always recognized the important position of private compulsory education in our country, and fully affirmed the run by the local compulsory education in the development of education cause in our country, promote the construction of socialist material civilization and spiritual civilization, and improve the general mood of society play a positive role, as the supplement of the national education be included in the national economy and social development plan. China protects the rights and legal status of privately-run schools and gives them certain preferential policies. The state recognizes that all social organizations and individual citizens, as independent subjects of rights, run schools according to law, guarantees that schools, their teachers and students enjoy equal legal status with

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those in public schools, and protects the autonomy and legitimate rights and interests of privately-run schools from infringement. The state gives preferential policies to privately-run schools, such as tax incentives for school-run industries and land requisition for school construction. Because of the social attributes of private schools, if they are allowed to develop freely, it will inevitably lead to adverse effects such as vicious competition and education marketization. China’s “Private Education Promotion Law” stipulates that “profit-making private schools with compulsory education shall not be implemented”, in order to protect the public welfare nature of compulsory education. If compulsory education can be run for profit and run by the people continuously, governments at all levels will inevitably lack the motivation and enthusiasm to maintain the commonweal and balanced nature of compulsory education, which will fundamentally undermine educational fairness. As a result, on the one hand, it is difficult for the disadvantaged to enjoy high-quality educational resources, which impair educational fairness; on the other hand, it will pay a heavy economic price to enjoy high-quality resources through for-profit private schools. Forbidding the establishment of profit-making schools in the compulsory education stage is the embodiment of returning to the essence of compulsory education.

3.10 Future Development Direction of China’s Private Compulsory Education Policy To develop private education, we should adhere to the principles of “educating people first, moral education first, classified management, public welfare orientation, environment optimization, comprehensive policies, management in accordance with the law, standardizing school running, encouraging reform, and linkage between upper and lower levels”, and focus on the deployment and promotion from six aspects. First, strengthen the Party’s leadership over private schools. Conscientiously strengthen the construction of the party in privately-run schools and give play to the role of the party organization as the political core. We will strengthen and improve ideological and political education and integrate core socialist values. Since the reform and opening up, the development of private compulsory education in China can be divided into the following four stages: the initial recovery period (1978–1992), the rapid development period (1993–2002), the standardized development period (2003–2016) and the connotation development period (2017 to now). 1. The initial stage of recovery. From the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in 1978 to the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1992, the period can be regarded as the initial development period of private compulsory education. On the one hand, “the people’s attention to education continues to improve, the recovery of public basic education has been unable to meet the people’s growing demand for more, better and more distinctive education”; On the other hand, since the reform and opening up, the policy environment of the country is increasingly relaxed, which gives the possibility of social forces

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to participate in the education industry. The state is also constantly exploring changes in the form of running schools and actively encouraging social forces to participate in education. Article 3 of the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Some Issues Concerning Popularizing Primary Education issued in 1980 puts forward the school-running policy of “walking on two legs”, encouraging social forces to participate in the school-running, and laying the foundation for the development of private basic education. In 1985, the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Reform of the Education System was promulgated, which clearly stated: “Local governments should encourage and guide state-owned enterprises, public organizations and individuals in running schools, and encourage units, collectives and individuals, on a voluntary basis, to donate money for education,” further clarifying the principle of encouraging private basic education. The Interim Provisions on Running Schools by Social Forces issued in 1987 standardized private compulsory education for the first time. In 1992, the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was held, which called for further “encouraging multi-channels and multi-forms of social fund-raising and non-governmental education, changing the practice of state-sponsored education” and promoting education to enter a new era of rapid growth. 2. Rapid development period. The promulgation of the Outline of China’s Education, Reform and Development in 1993 marked the rapid development of privatelyrun compulsory education. “Chinese education and the reform and development outline” point out: “must give full play to the government at all levels, the social various aspects and the enthusiasm of the masses of the people”, “change the pattern of government won the school, and gradually establish a government as the main body of running a school and the social from all walks of life common school system”, “the state of social organizations and citizens in accordance with law, education, to actively encourage, support, correct guidance, strengthening the management policy of”. During this period, “favorable policies and loose supervision environment” provided “fertile ground” for the development of private compulsory education. Data show that from 1994 to 2003, the number of students in private primary schools increased from 203,621 to 2,749,341, an increase of 1250.22%; But at the same time, the extraordinary speed of development is also insufficient preparation of some schools, hurried horse. Some schools have poor teaching conditions and poor teachers. Some schools have been closed because they do not meet the conditions for running schools and are not allowed to run schools. Against this background, the state promulgated the Notice on the Issue of Privately-run Schools Raising Funds from the Public in 1994 and the Law on the Promotion of Privately-run Education at the end of 2002 to further regulate the development of privately-run compulsory education. 3. Standardized development period. The promulgation of the Law on the Promotion of Privately-run Education marked the basic establishment of a legal system of privately-run education in China, and also brought privately-run compulsory education into a stage of standardized development. The Law on the Promotion of Privately-run Education further clarifies the public welfare nature

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of privately-run education undertakings, “having the same legal status as public schools, and the state guarantees the autonomy of privately-run schools”. In 2004, the Regulations for the Implementation of the Private Education Promotion Law was reviewed and passed, further standardizing the organization, establishment, organization and activities, assets and financial management of private schools. However, in the standardized development period of private education, there are still many problems, such as “how to clarify the school property rights, how to make the investors’ returns legal, reasonable and easy to operate, how to effectively supervise private schools”. Despite this, China’s private compulsory education still made outstanding achievements in this stage: in 2016, there were 5,975 private general primary schools in China, 116 more than the previous year; The enrollment of 1,277,600 students, an increase of 34,000 over the previous year; The total number of students was 7.563,300, an increase of 425,100 over the previous year. 5,085 private junior middle schools, 209 more than the previous year; The enrollment was 1.8874 million, an increase of 180,100 over the previous year. The total number of students was 5.328,200, an increase of 298,900 over the previous year. 4. Connotative development period. In 2017, the new Private Education Promotion Law came into effect, marking that the management of private education has entered a new period of connotative development characterized by classified management. According to the new Private Education Promotion Law, “The sponsor of a private school may independently choose to set up a nonprofit or profit-making private school. However, no profit-making private schools providing compulsory education shall be set up”. “This is because the nature of compulsory education determines that it is not suitable for for-profit private schools to implement, otherwise it may affect the implementation of compulsory education government responsibility, affect the balanced development of compulsory education.” In the same year, the Ministry of Education approved by the State Council to set up the “Inter-ministerial Joint Conference System for Private Education” to coordinate and promote the reform and development of private education under the leadership of the State Council. In 2018, the Regulations on the Implementation of the Law on the Promotion of Privately-run Education were revised to further clarify and refine the conduct of running privately-run schools. In 2019, the General Office of the Ministry of Education issued the Notice on the Work Key Points of the Inter-ministerial Joint Conference on Private Education Work in 2019, which proposed to “improve the system and the supporting policies”. “Improving quality and guiding healthy development”; “Innovation management, transformation of government functions” three key work points, and stressed the need to “research and develop non-profit private school supervision and management system”; In 2020, the reply letter on the Third Session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) No. 1065 (Education No. 068) proposal pointed out that the relevant system of private education should be further improved and the coordinated development of public and private education should be promoted. We should improve the classified management system and clarify the principle that “schools implementing

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compulsory education shall not be registered as for-profit private schools” once again. We should strengthen the construction of teachers in privately-run schools and protect the legitimate rights and interests of teachers and staff in accordance with the law (Li, 2020; Lu, 2020; Sun & Cheng, 2020; Wu & Ma, 2020; Wu & Zhi, 2020).

3.11 The Mode and Achievement of Private Compulsory Education In the development of private compulsory education for more than 40 years, three typical modes of “state-owned and private”, “privately-owned and private” and mixed ownership have been formed. These three patterns will be analyzed below. 1. “State-owned and private” mode. “State-run” primary and secondary schools are divided into two categories: social schools (also known as “privately-funded” schools) and public schools (also known as “privately-funded” schools). Socially sponsored schools refer to schools that are run by individuals or social organizations on the basis of certain start-up funds and lease or borrow certain sites from the education departments of the government or other departments. Public “transformed” schools are those in which the government, in accordance with the educational needs of the society, transfers the original state-owned public schools or newly built schools by the government to social organizations or citizens with the status of legal persons for transformation and operation in accordance with legal procedures. 2. The “people owned and run by the people” model. “Privately-owned and privately-run” schools are run by individual citizens, social groups or other social and economic organizations. The essential characteristic of this mode is that the main body of fund raising, and investment is non-governmental legal person or natural person. According to the main body of running a school and the source of funds for the standard, it can be divided into individual run school, institution run school, enterprise run school and educational group school. Among them, Education Group’s school market positioning is accurate, business design and conception is special, and action is coordinated and consistent. This school-running mode is conducive to improving the use efficiency of educational resources and expanding the influence of high-quality education brands. 3. Mixed ownership model. Mixed sector of the educational mode is a kind of multilateral cooperation model, general business unit enterprise by the government in various main knowledge capital technology such as personal management, and other elements involved in the school, as the public–private partnership in the field of private education promotion, increasing the school-running mode, mixed sector of the private schools can give full play to the positive role of different governance subject, improve the use efficiency of education resources, guarantee

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the stability of school running, is helpful to improve the teaching quality of education. In 2016, Several Opinions of the State Council on Encouraging Social Forces to Run Education and Promoting the Healthy Development of Private Education clearly pointed out that we should “innovate education system and mechanism, explore multi-subject cooperation in running schools, and promote the PPP mode of cooperation between government and social capital. Encourage and encourage private capital to participate in the construction and operation management of educational infrastructure and provide specialized services… Explore the establishment of mixed-ownership vocational colleges, allow capital, knowledge and technology management and other elements to participate in running schools, and enjoy corresponding rights to encourage”. Private primary and secondary schools are more flexible in the choice of students and the management mode than public schools, which is conducive to the innovation of education and teaching and stimulate the creative vitality of talent cultivation. The encouragement and support of the state to the private education is not only for expanding educational resources, realizing and guaranteeing the nine-year compulsory education, but also because it has seen the unique internal vitality and innovative potential of the private compulsory education, which will greatly promote the modernization process of China’s compulsory education. After more than 40 years of joint efforts by governments at all levels and private schools, China’s private education has initially formed a benign situation of “running schools with local characteristics, standardized support from the government and orderly internal management”. In 2019, there were 6,228 private primary schools in China, an increase of 49 or 0.79% over the previous year. The enrollment was 1.59400 million, an increase of 37,400 or 2.41% over the previous year; The total number of students was 9,449,100, an increase of 603,300 or 6.82% over the previous year. 5,793 private junior middle schools, an increase of 331 or 6.06% over the previous year; The enrollment was 2,431,100, an increase of 126,400 or 5.48% over the previous year; The total number of students was 6.8740 million, an increase of 51,100 or 8.03% over the previous year (Li, 2020; Lu, 2020; Sun & Cheng, 2020; Wu & Ma, 2020; Wu & Zhi, 2020).

3.12 Problems and Suggestions of Private Compulsory Education 1. Similar positioning, lack of innovation motivation. Some private primary and secondary schools lack innovation, only blindly imitate the mode of running a school run by the public school, did not develop their own independent ideas and teaching content. The reasons are as follows: firstly, the introduction of the new Private Education Promotion Law clearly prohibits the establishment of compulsory education schools as profit-making schools, and the government is the main provider of compulsory education services. Therefore, on the one hand, private primary and secondary schools inevitably lose the innovation power brought by

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the pursuit of profits; On the other hand, the curriculum of private primary and secondary schools must be unified with the national standards, which means that private primary and secondary schools in the teaching content of innovation space compression. Second, entrance pressure is common problem facing all school, run by the local people had to put graduation rates in the foundational status of primary and secondary schools, only the foundation of guarantee can make it for competition with public schools, and the considerations make private primary and secondary schools have to put the main content of the teaching in the test range, the main purpose of the teaching is confined to “high”. 2. Fail to enjoy the same treatment as public education. Although “Private Education Law” stipulates that public and private education should be treated equally, and both of them enjoy the same legal status, but in the process of implementation, there are still unfair phenomena between private public primary and secondary schools. This point is reflected in the treatment of teachers and the guarantee of private schools’ autonomy in enrolling students. First of all, because of the system model is different, “private primary and secondary school teachers’ pension insurance relationship between public schools and poor cohesion, run by the local teachers mostly belong to the employment contract personnel, belong to the personnel, labor, education ‘across areas, this leads to run by the local teachers often cannot enjoy the same social welfare and public teachers, their retirement also below the level of public teachers”; Secondly, there are private schools enrollment scope, time restrictions, some private schools cannot be in a specific scope of enrollment, enrollment time is later than the public schools, which leads to poor quality of private schools students, as time passes, will have an impact on its competitiveness. 3. Bottlenecks of the sources and use of funds. In terms of fund source, compared with western developed countries, private primary and secondary schools in China have not formed multiple fund-raising channels, and the ability to absorb social funds is still weak. In terms of the use of funds, the use of funds in private primary and secondary schools is relatively flexible, but at the same time, there are problems of misuse of funds and lack of financial supervision. This is partly because the funds of private primary and secondary schools are managed by the principal and the board of directors. On the other hand, the relevant financial supervision system has not been fully established, or the implementation of specific supervision has not been implemented in place. In view of the above problems, in 2020, the reply letter to the Third Session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) No. 1065 (Education No. 068) proposal pointed out the guiding ideology of “increasing support and optimizing the development environment of private education, promoting the coordinated development of public and private education, and treating public and private education equally”. As a matter of fact, now the development direction and basic principles of private compulsory education have been basically determined, the policy is inclined from “what is” to “how to do”, in-depth

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implementation process, implementation of the theoretical level of various requirements, and explore a new and more sound management mode from practice. From this point of view, in the implementation of the New Deal, we should adhere to the combination of national uniform regulations and local characteristics. The macro environment, scale, speed, quality and benefit of the development of private education in different parts of the country are different. Therefore, we should encourage local governments to adapt measures to local conditions and carry out practice and innovation at the grassroots level. For example, as of 2017, more than 10 provinces in China had lifted the control of private education fees. In addition, on the issue of education equity, on the one hand, we should promote the equal treatment of private and public education and create a good and fair environment for private compulsory education. On the other hand, it is also necessary to regulate and control some private schools’ behaviors such as “poaching” and “pinching points” by relying on powerful funds, so as to avoid causing social anxiety and educational inequality (Li, 2020; Lu, 2020; Sun & Cheng, 2020; Wu & Ma, 2020; Wu & Zhi, 2020).

References Li, X. (2020). Development history and significance of policies and regulations of private higher education in China. Educational Development Research, 20(24), 63–68. Lu, Y. (2020). The generation and treatment of educational inequality behind the “private school choice hot” in the compulsory education stage. Journal of China Education, 20(12), 35–41. Sun, J., & Cheng, J. (2020). The design and promotion of the “citizen enrollment system” in compulsory education schools. Journal of China Education, 20(07), 44–49. Wu, H., & Ma, Y. (2020). An analysis of the development achievements and mechanism of private education in China—Also on the mistake of “pinching the point.” Fudan Education Forum, 18(04), 72–78. Wu, J., & Zhi, T. (2020). Promoting the collaborative development of private and public schools in compulsory education stage: Current situation analysis and countermeasures suggestions. People’s Education, 20(09), 29–32.

Chapter 4

The Private High School Education in China

This chapter concentrates on exploring the development of private high education in China. With the development of China’s economy and society, private education has also developed rapidly. Private high school education, as a part of private education, is also the focus of China’s education. Article mainly rely on the law of the People’s Republic of China private education promotion law, “national medium and long-term education reform and development plan outline (2020–2020)”, about to encourage social forces to run education to promote the healthy development of non-governmental education several opinions such as policy documents about the content of the education run by the local high school, and analyze how to promote the development of education run by the local high school in China and the relevant policy guidance. Due to the public’s attention to high school education in our country, the teaching quality of private high schools also needs to be guaranteed. At present, private high schools in China are often in the development of two polarization of public high schools. One pole is that private high schools provide higher quality and higher level of education due to more freedom or more sufficient funds. Of course, this also means that the educated have to pay higher tuition and other economic costs. The other pole is the relatively poor enrollment of students in private high schools, which can be seen as a supplement to public high schools to some extent and can also promote the popularization of high school education in a certain way. However, from another perspective, the teaching quality and level of such private high schools are often worrying. No matter which level of the two poles, they are obviously not on the same level with the public high schools, and “leading” or “supporting” are not conducive to the development of high school education in the long run.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Private Education Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3272-3_4

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4.1 Introduction With the development of China’s economy and education, private high schools are attracting more and more attention from the country and society. In 2019, there were 3,427 private general high schools in China, 211 more than the previous year. The enrollment was 1.359 million, an increase of 189,000 or 16.2% over the previous year; The total number of students was 3.597 million, an increase of 314,000 or 9.6% over the previous year, accounting for 14.9% of the total number of regular high school students nationwide, an increase of 1.1 percentage points over the previous year. Both the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Private Education (hereinafter referred to as the “People’s Promotion Law”) and the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan (2020– 2020) (hereinafter referred to as the “Planning Outline”) reflect China’s support and promotion for private regular high schools. Through the content analysis of China’s private high school education policy, we will clearly define the nature and orientation of private high school education and see China’s standardization and promotion of private high school education from the perspectives of economy, politics, culture, society and people. According to Article 3 of Chapter 1 of the People’s Promotion Law, “Privatelyrun education undertakings belong to public welfare undertakings and are an integral part of socialist education undertakings. The state implements the policy of actively encouraging, vigorously supporting, correctly guiding and administrating privatelyrun education according to law. People’s governments at all levels shall incorporate privately-run education undertakings into their plans for national economic and social development.” This regulation clearly defines the nature and status of privately-run education. As an important part of privately-run education, privately-run ordinary high schools are also “public welfare” in nature and a part of socialist education. We should adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China and cultivate people by virtue. But at the same time, due to the classified management of private education, private high school education is also divided into two categories: “for-profit” and “non-profit”. How to understand the “public welfare” and “profit-making” of private high school education plays an important role in our understanding of private high school education (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016). Public welfare of education means that the benefits brought by education are public, social and integral, and the nation, the public and even the whole human beings are the subject of interest. The profit-making of education is based on the educational service as a kind of consumer goods, and the educational provider obtains the profit return according to the commodity trading rules. Thus, it can be seen that the non-profit nature of private high school education is an attribute of the nature of education itself, which does not conflict with profit-making and can coexist. In private high school, public welfare and profit-making can promote each other to some extent, ensure good private high school education of the public welfare, to make every student to get a good education, promote the development of education, access to

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social recognition, which can attract more students and social capital, to achieve its profit. Of course, not all privately-run high schools are for profit. According to the People’s Promotion Law, privately-run schools in the stage of non-compulsory education can independently choose for-profit or non-profit privately-run schools, and the organizers of non-profit privately-run schools are not allowed to gain from running the school, and the school’s running balance is all used for running the school. The organizer of a profit-making privately-run school may obtain profits from running the school, and the school’s running balance shall be dealt with in accordance with the Company Law and other relevant laws and administrative regulations. According to the division of profit and non-profit, the support and help given by the state in the policy also have certain differences. Generally speaking, in terms of fairness and efficiency, public education tends to do better than efficiency, while for private education, due to the introduction of partial market-oriented operation and management, it tends to do more prominent in efficiency issues such as resource allocation. Whether for profit or non-profit, it is the top priority to keep the non-profit nature of private education through government policies, regulations and management. Of course, the above is only the common characteristics of private education, for private high school education, in addition to this kind of commonality, also has its own uniqueness. The biggest difference between high school education and other stages of education lies in the fact that high school education faces the college entrance examination directly. To some extent, it can also be said that high school education faces a child’s future directly. At least from the public point of view, it will affect a student’s life choice in the next ten years. In general, China supports, encourages and helps the private high school education. In the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for Education Reform and Development (2010–2020), China clearly proposes to deepen the reform of the school-running system and vigorously support private education. Private and public senior high school education jointly promote the development of education in China. Of course, the support and promotion of private high school education is to promote its healthy development. It is to make public high school and private high school have the same status. There is no such thing as “one is better than the other” and strive to achieve educational equity.

4.2 How to Promote the Development of Private High School Education In order to support and promote the private high school education, the first thing to do is to protect the private high school education funds and other economic basis. First of all, when the relevant legal persons apply for the establishment of private high schools, their qualifications should be strictly checked. This point is reflected in the relevant provisions of the bid report. According to the provisions, the bid report must be clear about fund raising and management, the amount of funding sources

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and property rights, etc., and the evaluation and audit of school funds should be carried out in the admission stage. Moreover, its assets use and financial management after its establishment should also be subject to the supervision of the examination and approval organs and other relevant departments. This audit and supervision is beneficial to promote the healthy development of private high school, try to avoid school can’t keep caused by money problems, education problems, such as accident, leading to students at the same time the government auditing supervision can also make teachers including parents more at ease, run by the local high school students achieve parent-school mutual trust. Secondly, the government’s economic support for private high school education is not limited to financial subsidies. At present, China classifies the for-profit and nonprofit private senior high schools and establishes a differentiated policy system, with the purpose of actively encouraging and supporting social forces to run non-profit private senior high schools. Although the government provides tax incentives, special funds and credit support to both for-profit and non-profit private high schools, it gives greater support to non-profit private high schools. According to “Several Opinions on Encouraging Social Forces to Run Education to Promote the Healthy Development of Private Education”, non-profit private schools enjoy the same preferential tax policies as public schools. Non-profit privately-run schools supply land by means of allocation, while profit-making privately-run schools supply land according to the corresponding national policies. In the 2010–2020 planning outline, it is also clearly proposed that we should vigorously support the private education and improve the public financial support policies for the private education. This series of regulations and opinions reflect the government’s determination and attitude to provide strong economic support and material guarantee for the running of private high schools. These support and assistance also reduce the initial investment and cost of establishing private high schools to a certain extent, reduce the economic burden and pressure of the founders, and also help to further attract more social forces and social capital to invest in the education of private high school (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016). The People’s Promotion Law clearly stipulates that privately-run schools and public schools have the same legal status, and the state guarantees the autonomy of privately-run schools in running schools. The state protects the legitimate rights and interests of the organizers, principals, teaching staff and educates of privatelyrun schools. Promoting law by the people itself also provides legal protection for privately-run education. It is also clearly stated in the Outline of the Plan that privately-run schools, students and teachers shall be accorded equal legal status with public schools in accordance with the law, and the autonomy of privately-run schools shall be guaranteed. We will sort out and correct all kinds of discriminatory policies against private schools. This requires the establishment and protection of the status and role of private education from the “superstructure” level. For private senior high school education, the state has also made instructions at the strategic level. In the Opinions on Deepening the Reform of Education System and Mechanism, it is clearly pointed out that we should promote the reform of education methods in ordinary senior high schools and deepen the reform of education

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and teaching in ordinary senior high schools. We should improve the system for supporting and regulating the development of privately-run education, improve the relevant policies for supporting the development of privately-run schools in finance, land, registration and fees, and improve the supervision mechanism. The state has adopted a series of legal documents, regulations and opinions to support and promote the development of private high school education from the legal level. The teaching quality and level of private high school education largely depend on the level and quality of teachers. Therefore, how to guarantee the quality of teachers in private high school is also an important issue in education policy. According to the relevant regulations of the people to promote law, run by the local high school teachers and public high school teachers have equal legal status, private high school recruitment of teachers should have the teaching qualifications prescribed by the state, run by the local high school teachers in the business training, position employment, commendation and reward for teaching age and length of service computing, in accordance with the law, social activities, have rights to equal to public school faculty. There are also relevant regulations to guarantee the salaries, welfare benefits and other legitimate rights and interests of the teachers. In terms of qualification, job evaluation and employment, which teachers are very concerned about, teachers in private high schools and public high schools have the same status and treatment. Only by ensuring the relevant treatment of teachers in private high schools, can teachers in private high schools feel more assured and attract more excellent teachers to enter private high schools, so as to improve the teaching quality and teaching level. Only by ensuring the qualifications and quality of teachers can students and parents be more assured of the school, and further improve the recognition of private high schools in the public mind, so that private high schools can truly enter the society. In terms of students, there are also relevant provisions in the Law to ensure that students from privately-run high schools and students from public regular high schools have the same status and treatment in the aspects of award evaluation, admission to higher education and employment, social preferential treatment, medical insurance and so on. As an important part of private senior high schools, the legitimate rights and interests of teachers and students can only be guaranteed to promote the healthy and smooth development of private senior high school education (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016).

4.3 Policy Guidance for Private High School Education “Modernization of Chinese Education 2035” put forward ten strategic tasks, which mentioned to enhance the level of high school education popularization, promote the coordinated development of secondary vocational education and ordinary high school education, encourage the diversified development of ordinary high school with characteristics. In order to promote the popularization of high school education

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and promote the promotion and development of ordinary high school, private ordinary high school is an essential link. There is no doubt that China’s education policy supports, encourages and helps the education orientation of private high schools on the whole. Through the analysis of the all kinds of documents of education policy, we can see for promoting private high school education, policy in our country have the following several direction: one, to encourage positive social forces to run by the local high school education, through the addition of social capital to further promote the development of non-governmental education, but also promote the high school education level and quality of ascension. This can also be seen from the various kinds of support and help for private high school education stipulated by the policy. Through various support and development, the pressure and burden of the founders can be reduced, so as to encourage more social forces to establish private high schools. Second, we need to deepen the reform of educational systems and mechanisms, combine delegating power, delegating power, and providing services, enhance the enthusiasm and creativity of private high school education, reduce unnecessary government intervention, and further stimulate the vitality of private education. In addition to necessary government supervision and approval, the government should reduce its intervention in private high schools and give full play to the enthusiasm and initiative of private high school education on the premise that all kinds of recruitment and recruitment activities of private high schools are not in violation of regulations. There are some differences between private high schools and public high schools in the management system. For private high schools, we should respect their management and decisions, and support and encourage them in all kinds of recruitment activities under the premise of legal compliance. (3) Encourage the establishment of non-profit private high schools and increase government support and assistance to help the smooth development of private high schools. Through greater support and assistance to non-profit private high schools, more social forces are encouraged to run non-profit private high schools, so as to further promote the popularization of high school education and promote educational equity. (4) Encourage privately-run high schools to provide the education needed in their regions, to a certain extent, complement the public high school education, and jointly promote the development of high school education in their regions. Therefore, in order to establish a private high school, it is also necessary to investigate the high school education situation in the region, provide the education needed by the region, and make up for the shortcomings. In the new era, the main contradiction in China’s education has been transformed into the contradiction between the people’s growing demand for fairer and higher quality education and the unbalanced and inadequate development of education. The balanced development of high school education is also an important issue at present. Private high school because of its autonomy and flexibility, often to the public, and some deficiencies of high school education, such as in the quality education, teaching infrastructure and teachers, the more flexible free capital allocation and closer to the market way of income can often lead to more efficient allocation of resources, but also the resulting education fair question. Does the development and expansion of private high school education promote educational equity or aggravate educational

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inequality? In the opinion of the author, private high school education not only provides more flexible high-quality education, but also further stimulates the quality improvement of public high school education. Private high schools and public high schools promote and complement each other to jointly promote the development and popularization of high school education. Run by the local high school are not all, of course, advantages, run by the local high school education in the admissions policy before has the phenomenon of crossregional recruit students, there are also many public high school in the name of private high school admissions to different regions, some parts of the government for private high school recruit students of cross-regional and admitted ahead chaos of recruit students turn a blind eye, was due to the entrance of the government performance, to a certain extent. Compared with public high schools, private high schools have greater autonomy and flexibility, so it is easy to appear some chaos in enrollment management. How to strengthen supervision without harming the creativity and autonomy of private high schools is an important issue for relevant government departments to consider. Although there are many problems in private high schools, private high school education will inevitably become an important link to popularize high school education and promote a more balanced and higher-level development of high school education through continuous deepening of reform. In all kinds of policy documents for private education issued by our country, we can see the national government attaches great importance to private education. The development of private high schools and the government and society’s attention to private education also reflect the improvement of our country’s economic development level from another aspect. As a part of private education, private high school is only an epitome of the development of private education in China. Supporting, encouraging and promoting the development of private education will surely further promote the overall development of private education (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016).

4.4 Legal Status of Private Ordinary High Schools In order to adapt to the diversified teaching needs, our country has also developed different education and teaching models, among which in the high school stage, there are public ordinary high schools and private ordinary high schools. By analyzing the development situation, existing problems and issued policies of private ordinary high schools, this paper summarizes the political basis of four private ordinary high schools: legal status, policy regulation, differentiated policy system and the political basis of relevant contents. In the end, the author points out the problem of the development of private high school education: the contradiction between the characteristics of competition and the goal. The first is the “autonomy” of private education. In Article 5 of the Law on the Promotion of Private Education of the People’s Republic of China, Private schools and public schools have the same legal status, and the state guarantees the autonomy

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of private schools in running schools. “The state protects the legitimate rights and interests of the organizers, principals, teaching staff and educates of privately-run schools.” This is the policy basis for the development of private high school education. It determines the ordinary high school education run by the local people and the public ordinary high school education has the same legal status, and from the role of the school, whether it is the organizers of the school, the principal, teachers and educates, their rights and interests are protected by the law, so that they had certain legal status, become the cornerstone of the education run by the local high school. Article 51 clearly stipulates that “after deducting the running cost, the reserved development fund and other necessary expenses related to the state, the investors may obtain reasonable returns from the running balance.” The “fair return” rule is the one that gets the most attention. It has been pointed out in Article 3 that “privately-run education undertakings belong to public welfare undertakings and are an integral part of socialist education undertakings”. It explains the basic nature of private ordinary high school—public welfare. Therefore, private ordinary high schools cannot take profit as the purpose; However, unlike the western developed countries that rely on social donations to run private schools, there are few cases of social donations to run schools in our country. Most of the private schools in our country are run by investment. Although private ordinary high schools have a clear public welfare nature, the “reasonable return” limits the economic benefits gained from investment in running schools to a reasonable range. This not only makes the investment cannot be in the name of the private general high school to obtain profits, but also can make the investors can obtain a part of the return, and within the reasonable scope of the law. This not only ensures the economic source of the private ordinary high school, but also ensures the public welfare of the private high school. Therefore, it is the political basis of the policy to provide the legal status and standardize the basic nature of the policy.

4.5 Government Regulation of Private Ordinary High Schools In the Implementation Regulations of the Private Education Promotion Law, we focused on analyzing the motivation and content of the revision in 2018 to analyze the contradictions and the resolution process arising from the continuous development of private high school education in recent years, and the policy basis reflected from it. Social regulations mainly guarantee the teaching quality and teaching environment, especially Article 33 of the Draft for Examination “Provisions on the qualifications of staff in privately-run schools. In order to ensure the interests of the educates, the state shall identify and prove their knowledge, experience and skills and issue vocational qualification certificates”. And other regulations, can alleviate the above mentioned private general high school teacher unreasonable problem, strengthen

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the teaching level of teachers, improve the threshold of private general high school teachers, effectively protect the interests of the educated, that is, private general high school students, so that they enhance their competitiveness in the competition link of the college entrance examination; Unfair competition regulation can effectively promote technological progress and protect the welfare of the educated, especially for the non-private ordinary high schools. Therefore, the government regulation, which plays a major role, has further standardized and promoted the private ordinary high schools in the form of laws and regulations.

4.6 Differentiated Policy System of Private High Schools In the draft has been clearly defined, the non-profit private and for-profit private boundaries. Therefore, the public welfare attribute of private ordinary high schools cannot be changed. However, it is pointed out in the “Several Opinions of the State Council on Encouraging Social Forces to Run Education to Promote the Healthy Development of Private Education” in the basic principles: “implement non-profit and for-profit classified management, implement differentiated support policies, and actively guide social forces to run non-profit private schools. Adhere to the public welfare nature of education, both non-profit private schools and for-profit private schools should always put social benefits first.” This, to some extent, guarantees the public welfare nature of private regular high school education. However, at the management level, it began to classify management and adopt different support policies. “The state actively encourages and strongly supports the establishment of non-profit private schools by social forces. People’s governments at all levels should improve the system and policies to support non-profit private schools in government subsidies, government purchase of services, fund awards, donation incentives, land allocation, tax reduction and other aspects.” The state has a higher support for non-profit private schools. But public education and non-profit non-governmental ordinary high school education still cannot meet the public demand for education, so the state of for-profit private education also have certain subsidies: “the people’s governments at various levels can be according to the needs of economic and social development and public service demand, through the government purchase services and tax incentives and other means to give support to the for-profit private schools.” Such a differentiated policy system not only helps to meet the educational needs of different public, but also does not destroy the public welfare nature of private education. It is also one of the policy bases of private education (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016).

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4.7 Political Basis of the Contents of Private Ordinary High Schools “Several Opinions of the State Council on Encouraging Social Forces to Run Education to Promote the Healthy Development of Privately-run Education” also has a provision on the education content of privately-run schools: strengthen the Party’s leadership over privately-run schools. Conscientiously strengthen the construction of the party in privately-run schools and give play to the role of the party organization as the political core. We will strengthen and improve ideological and political education, incorporate core socialist values into the whole process of education and teaching and into all aspects of teaching and educating people, and constantly strengthen teachers and students’ confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Students in high school are the successors of socialism in their youth, and they are at an important time node for the development of values. At this time, the education of socialist core values is particularly important. At this point in the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics confidence, confidence, system theory, the culture which is better for teenagers in constant development on display during the patriotism thought, after high school is the university stage, at this time to strengthen the education of socialist core values is more advantageous to the choice of national construction professional, create their own dream and strive for construction of country. High school stage is an important stage to cultivate young people’s nationalism. Therefore, private ordinary high schools should also pay attention to the cultivation of this kind of nationalism. In general, the policy of private ordinary high schools has four political bases, which are the legal status, policy regulation, differentiated policy system and the political basis of relevant contents.

4.8 The Social Basis of Education Policy of Private Senior High School in China Since China’s private education was restored in the 1980s, it has been extended to various stages and fields in our country, causing profound changes in the educational concept and making great progress in practice, but there is no sufficient support in the legislation. Until 2003, the promulgation and implementation of the Private Education Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China marked the basic establishment of China’s private education legal system, thus promoting the further healthy development of China’s private education. Non-governmental education is the mainstream of public education outside of the important energy, the development of private education to a certain extent, make up for the public education in such aspects as parents and student demand diversity and selectivity, private education and public education complement each other, in promoting the overall reform of school-running system of our country at the same time, also try our best to achieve the optimal allocation of education resources.

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Among them, the development of private high school education in our country is particularly outstanding. Private senior high schools are divided into private ordinary senior high schools and private vocational senior high schools. In the education market which is adapted to the market economic system and the more perfect competition mechanism, the existence and development of private ordinary high schools and public ordinary high schools complement and compete with each other, which conforms to the rules and requirements of the whole market. Private vocational education is an important part of China’s vocational education, which plays an important role in increasing the supply of vocational education, improving the quality of vocational education and promoting the reform of vocational education mechanism. At present, the private secondary vocational education in China provides the main force for the general technical personnel in a certain extent, and also makes the whole high school education more diversified. However, the overall development of private vocational high schools is relatively slow, and the moral education quality of students and the management of teachers are also chaotic, which needs to be further improved (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016).

4.9 The Social Basis of Private High School Education Policy After the reform and opening up, the society led by the market economy has been developing continuously, and the overall wealth of the society has been increased. Meanwhile, it has also brought many new changes in concepts. In terms of high school education, more and more ordinary people have more financial support and will to cultivate. As a supplement to the shortage of resources in public high schools, private high schools provide enrollment opportunities for students who cannot directly enter ordinary private high schools or provide more choices for families with sufficient resources and financial resources. The running methods and concepts different from traditional public education also attract more students. Although private ordinary high schools are not as socially recognized as mainstream public schools, their diversified means of enrollment publicity and the good results of some private education groups also win them a certain reputation. In addition, with the improvement of social economic and cultural development level, the whole society’s concept of private education has been greatly changed, and the prejudice against private regular high school education has been greatly reduced. At the same time, the professional running of private vocational high schools can shorten the time for the skilled labor force to enter the society and reduce the burden of the family and the whole society on the supply of such students. It can be seen that students from ordinary families can obtain the opportunity to continue their studies by entering private high schools without dropping out, and some students who enter secondary vocational schools can acquire the basic skills for social work at an early age. The demand of children of rich families for higher quality, more diversified

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and international education promotes the development of the higher-order mode of private high school education, which not only improves the allocation of highquality education resources, but also explores the path and provides a paradigm for the education reform of the whole society. Although our country present stage of high school education popularization degree is higher, but the number of public ordinary high school recruitment of students is still low, and people continue to order after the compulsory education stage of higher education will along with the time development is becoming increasingly intense, contrasts between them, and reflect its as private high schools in this area and the existence of complementary public high school has an important significance. In recent years, the admission rate of public high schools in some areas of our country is only about 50%, and many high schools use various means to charge high school selection fees in the process of enrollment, resulting in a great increase in the difficulty of entering public high schools, while the advantages of private high schools providing services at all levels are fully reflected. Thus, the low enrollment rate of public high schools and the difficulty for students from many families to enroll are one of the important thrust forces for the development of private high school education. In 2017, a total of 85 privately-run schools were approved to enrolled students across the provincial cities, with a enrollment plan of 6,789 students. This measure, on the one hand, effectively solves the recruitment dilemma of private high schools across provincial cities and stimulates the enthusiasm of schools. On the other hand, it has checked the enrollment disorder of private high schools and maintained the normal enrollment order of ordinary high schools in the province. It can be seen from this that the recruitment of private high schools in Henan Province fully reflects the pulling effect of the local government on the policy of supporting the development of private high schools. Under the premise of optimizing the allocation of educational resources and solving students’ enrollment needs, the two-direction kinetic energy of the low enrollment rate of public high schools and the pulling force of policies greatly promotes the development of private high schools’ education. At the present stage, there is a big contradiction between supply and demand in the establishment of teachers, especially in the private schools, there are a large number of extra teachers. In 2018, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening the Reform of Teacher Team Construction in the New Era, which proposed to take various forms to increase the total number of teachers and standardize the staffing of primary and secondary school teachers. However, in the process of practice, “the country has not yet equipped with strong operational strategies, and local governments are faced with the contradiction between supply and demand of teachers and the quality of teachers, so they have actively carried out the exploration of superimposed teachers within the national policy framework”, and there are still “problems such as poor pay of superimposed teachers, strong mobility and low quality of teachers. The actual survey found that there are still a large number of new job seekers continue to enter the ranks of supplementary teachers, delaying the removal of supplementary teachers” and other

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problems (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016). The small number of public teachers has formed an important push for more teachers to enter the private education system. However, the development of private education has not yet matured and has great potential and attracted capital, which is one of the important forces to promote teachers to join the private high schools. Private high schools provide a large number of relevant positions for superimposed teachers. Private education groups also offer high salaries to teachers with their market-based operation mode and strong financial resources, so as to attract outstanding talents who are difficult to be recruited. In addition, supernumerary teachers also have the characteristics of mobility and relative freedom, although it is unfavorable to the management and overall development of the teacher team. But for some job seekers in the new era, it is attractive. In some private high schools, the choice of multiple positions, the relatively free management and the higher salary have become an important pull to recruit teachers. However, there are still many problems to be solved in the recruitment of teachers in private high schools. For example, in the article Research on Problems and Countermeasures of Private High School Teacher Recruitment, it is mentioned that there are still problems in the teacher recruitment process of private high schools, such as not strict enough qualification examination of applicants, not scientific enough criteria for the selection and recruitment of new teachers, short-sighted view of recruitment leads the school into a vicious circle of continuous recruitment and so on. The reason lies in the lack of high-quality recruitment team and human resource management talents in private high schools, the lack of founders’ understanding of private teachers’ recruitment rules, and the lack of effective supervision and restriction in the recruitment process. In the face of these deficiencies, private high schools should take the initiative to improve the mechanism of teacher selection and management and adjust it in time according to the actual situation of school development. China is in the important advanced period of socialist modernization development, take a new road to industrialization and the construction of the socialist innovative countries in industry and services, and other major areas need to cultivate a large number of new technical talents to adapt to the country’s economic transformation, and family economic conditions are relatively poor, academic performance, and relatively weak students comprehensive quality and needs to survive in the early time of skills. Private vocational high schools are just the bridge to solve these two dilemmas. They can cultivate the basic qualities and skills required for students to engage in a certain profession or production labor, and effectively meet the mutual needs between the society and job seekers to cultivate suitable talents for the society. As a “platform” to solve the “contradiction between supply and demand” in the development of talent and market economy, private vocational high schools provide services for consumers (referring to the families of students who choose to study in private vocational high schools) and social industries in need with their special advantages. Private vocational high schools are both public welfare, social and profit purposes, this special existence mode needs us to carry on the whole and comprehensive review of it. The social function of private vocational high school is self-evident, and its existence has

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quite important social value. However, the overall management of private vocational high schools is relatively loose, and some aspects are inconsistent with the social mainstream value and development requirements, so it is more necessary for the national policy level to carry out appropriate and powerful macro-control.

4.10 Summary and Suggestions on the Problems of Private High School Education Government level lacking of education run by the local high school management, mainly there are laws, regulations and policies related to lag behind the actual running situation, the policy implementation does not reach the designated position, the relevant government departments in the management of the private high school absence problems, these problems block the private high school education to develop in the direction of standardization, rationalization, is also a big hindrance for the education of the whole society. In addition, for ordinary people, private high school fees are relatively high. Compared with the government’s encouragement and support and financial subsidies for public high schools, private high schools are more of the main financial support for students to pay the fees. The high cost makes it difficult for many students from poor families to continue their studies and drop out of school to work. Moreover, due to the deep-rooted education mode and concept of traditional public high schools, private high schools are also faced with problems such as less students and uneven quality (less high-quality students) in the process of enrollment. Among them, take the development of secondary vocational school as an example. In 2015, the number of students in secondary vocational schools was 16.567 million, accounting for 41% of the total number of students in senior high schools. By 2017, the number of students in secondary vocational schools was 15.92 million, accounting for 40.01%. The comparison of these two years shows that the number of students in secondary vocational schools is constantly decreasing. However, the overall enrollment quality of private high schools has always been a controversial topic in the society. In terms of the learning ability of basic knowledge, the enrollment of private high schools is limited by its enrollment advantages, so it is not as good as that of public ordinary high schools. In addition, the quantity and quality of the private high schools in the regional development of the problem of imbalance, China’s eastern and western regions and the private high school education within the region there are large gaps. In first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, private high schools have become veritable aristocrats, largely for the children of either the government or the rich. Within the region, the overall level of private high school education in provincial capitals and developed cities is far higher than that in ordinary counties and districts, and its more far-reaching development potential is comparable to that in economically underdeveloped areas outside provincial capitals.

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With the popularization of higher education and high school education, China’s education has entered a “post-universal era”. In the “post-universal era” of education, the division of labor between vocational high schools and ordinary high schools is relatively clear, but their self-positioning and development goals are not clear, there are also problems such as following the trend of development, confusion of school philosophy, standardization of model, and plateformization, so that they lose their original characteristics of development. Aimed at the problem of lacking, run by the local high school education management advice led by relevant government departments, give play to the role of the macroeconomic regulation and control, establish relevant supervision and management mechanism, through the classification, partition management, and other functions of refining the way to achieve the timely and effectively to private high school in the school unreasonable behavior constraints, and in the process of management. In view of the problems that education in private high schools is difficult to rely on its own market to make reasonable adjustment, and the fees are too high compared with those in public high schools, the government should introduce the corresponding reasonable subsidy mechanism and increase the financial support for private high schools. Students in private high schools are also the children of state taxpayers. The state can reduce the tax on private high schools and reduce the cost of running private high schools, so as to reduce the fees paid by parents of students. Increase the corresponding welfare security for teachers in private high schools. Private high schools themselves can also make up through school-enterprise cooperation and other means. In view of the regional imbalance in the development of private high schools, we can carry out east–west cooperation, and improve the quality of private high schools’ education by means of experience impartation from developed regions to private high schools in less developed regions and designated assistance. At the same time, through the cooperation between well-known education brands and the government’s education support policies, the education brand can enter the grassroots pilot. In this way, while building brand awareness, education enterprises can also realize the “poverty alleviation” for grass-roots education. For education “the popularization era”, the private and public high school high school also encountered difficulties and the development of its special problem, run by the local high school under the guidance of the socialist mainstream values, need more widely to a wide range of social investigation, understand the forefront of the market development trend and the needs of the development of the students’ quality and grasp the good private high school in the future development direction (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016). Run by the local high school education is an indispensable part of our country education career, the functions of the government departments should give full play to the functions of macroeconomic regulation and control, and the market work together, make the education run by the local high school to market supply and demand and price mechanism, optimizes the allocation of education resources, classification management and support, to establish a supervision and management mechanism, improve education quality, make education brand, so as to effectively promote the healthy development of the sustainable development of education run by the local

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high school organization. At the same time, private senior high schools themselves should make continuous progress and seek a balance between socialized service and commercial supply. We will continue to draw on new drivers of development under the broad premise of enabling, encouraging and supporting policies.

4.11 The Political Basis of Private High School Education Policy Private high school education is an indispensable part of China’s education. This paper summarizes the four political bases of private high school education policy, namely management system, legal status, construction of teachers, and improvement of administrative law enforcement system and mechanism, through the issuance of documents and the study of relevant scholars. The policies carried out by the government on these four bases are an important guarantee for the development of private high school educational organizations. The development of senior high school education is closely related to the compulsory education and higher education, and it is an important bridge between them. Since the reform and opening up, especially since the promulgate of the Private Education Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the People’s Promotion Law) in 2002, the private education in China has developed rapidly, which has met the public’s demand for diversified education and made contributions to the modernization of education and the development of social economy. The 19th CPC National Congress and the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee pointed out that we should support and standardize the education run by social forces. Private educational undertakings belong to public welfare undertakings and are an integral part of socialist educational undertakings. The state implements the policy of actively encouraging, vigorously supporting, correctly guiding and administrating privately-run education according to law. Private high school education is an important part of private education and an indispensable part of China’s education. The political basis of its policy is mainly experienced in four aspects: management system, legal status, construction of teachers, and improvement of administrative law enforcement system and mechanism. Article 19 of the People’s Promotion Law stipulates that “the sponsor of a privately-run school may independently choose to set up a non-profit or profit-making privately-run school”. A school offering compulsory education may not be registered as a profit-making privately-run school. The People’s Promotion of Law and Several Opinions have clearly defined the direction and specific requirements for the reform of establishing a classified management system. Private senior high schools are an important way for social forces to run schools. In recent years, the number of private high schools in China has increased greatly, but the quality is uneven. In 2019, there are 3427 private high schools in China, 985 more than in 2014, an increase of 40.3 percentage points. There were 1,985 private secondary vocational schools, 358 fewer

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than in 2014, a decline of 15.3%. There are 1,068 comprehensive high schools. The number of private secondary vocational schools gradually decreased, the number of private ordinary high schools increased, and the emergence of both the comprehensive high schools. The rapid development of private high schools poses a great challenge to the management of local governments. For privately-run high schools, the organizers of profit-making privately-run high schools can get the income from running the school, and the balance of running the school will be distributed according to the relevant regulations of the state. Privately-run senior high schools shall enjoy the property rights of legal persons according to law. The local government has issued supporting documents for classification management, and designated existing private schools to choose classification schemes. It is a huge project to promote the classified management of private education from the central government to the local government, which requires close cooperation from all sides. The local government should start from solving the problem to create the policy environment of classified management and classified support for the private education. Promote various measures according to local conditions, grasp the strength of reform, strengthen supervision and management, and do a good job of risk prevention. According to the contents of Promoting the Standardized Development of Private Education in the “Key Work Points of the Ministry of Education in 2021” issued by the Ministry of Education on February 4, 2021, the main task at present is to straighten out the management system and mechanism of Party building work in private primary and secondary schools. For private senior high schools, we should study and formulate the implementation opinions on standardizing the enrollment of private senior high schools and promote the comprehensive implementation of the synchronous enrollment policy of private senior high schools (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016). The Law of Promoting the People has made it clear that private schools and public schools have the same legal status. On April 6, 2017, at a news conference, the Ministry of Education in the conference to introduce the high school stage of education popularization crucial plan, the plan calls for 2020 high school gross enrollment ratio of more than 90%, so the national education system in the years to build and expand high schools, the purpose is to complete degrees in popularizing high school education. As a result of the monopoly of public schools, private senior high school enrollment situation is grim. In the traditional concept, the private high school education status is underground, and students and parents are not assured about the teaching quality of private high school, which is a major obstacle to the development of private high school education. Some place to encourage for social forces to run education, students in private schools and public school students have the equal legal status, the student status management, commendation and reward for, education, government funding, graduate employment and residence, social preferential treatment and medical insurance, shall enjoy the same public school students of the same level and kind treatment, secondary vocational and technical education of the education run by the local schools can be set in accordance with the tenet and training target independent professional, courses and use teaching materials, to achieve the education administrative department under the State Council standards

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prescribed by the course run by the ordinary high school, can independently carry out education teaching activities, the textbooks selected should be examined and approved according to law. These measures are conducive to the improvement of the social status of private high school education, can change the social stereotype of private high school education, and promote the development of private high school education. The Plan for Tackling the Popularization of High School Education clearly points out that the “obvious shortcoming” of the popularization of high school education is “the lack of total teachers, the shortage of full-time teachers of some subjects in ordinary high schools and the shortage of” double-qualified “teachers of secondary vocational education”. According to the research data in 2017, according to the number of high school teachers required by the existing number of high school schools and conditions, the number of ordinary high school teachers missing in the poor areas of central and western China is as high as 57,000, and the provinces with severe shortage of ordinary high school teachers are short of 17,000, with a teacher-student ratio of more than 1:17. The ratio of teachers to students in secondary vocational schools is calculated by the standard of 1:20, and the number of secondary vocational teachers in the poor areas of central and western China is about 90,000, while the provincial administrative region with the most prominent shortage of teachers is 12,000, with the ratio of teachers to students exceeding 1:20. Influenced by social prejudice and treatment, private high school education is faced with the problem of excessive teacher mobility and unstable teacher team. A considerable part of private high school teachers regards private high school as a springboard to enter public school. The flow of teachers has a serious impact on the education and teaching quality of private high schools, so private schools have to retain talents through higher welfare benefits. Because private high school education organizations lack financial support from the government, the salaries of teachers and staff are mainly from students’ expenses, which means the continuous increase of tuition fees. In recent years, the country has launched a number of systems, ensure that private school faculty from policy in business training, position employment, commendation and reward for teaching experience and seniority calculation, and social activities, etc., equal to public staff rights according to law, and continuously reform and perfect the system of basic oldage insurance for enterprise employees, run by the local teachers to stay in private high school (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016). The privately-run schools should make scientific positioning according to the specific conditions of the schools, vigorously strengthen the construction of teachers, attract all kinds of high-level talents to teach in privately-run schools, cooperate with local governments to build the brand of privately-run high schools, cultivate high-quality educational resources, and comprehensively improve the quality of education and teaching. In December 2019, the Ministry of Education issued the opinions on strengthening education administration enforcement ([2019] no. 17) of political science and law, to clear the category of law enforcement, compaction law enforcement responsibility, perfecting law enforcement agencies, improve staff quality, improve the law enforcement mechanism, education will be thoroughly

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implemented, department of education and improve the administrative law enforcement ability and level. In recent years, the masses of the people for some private schools in the enrollment, fees, management of the disorderly thinking, the request to improve the administrative law enforcement mechanism is more and more loud. In the field of private education and training, there are many cases of institutions running away with funds. In the field of private higher education, the unstable events of two private universities in 2015 have attracted wide attention of public opinion. Private education and capital contact is frequent, many education groups intensive listing, private schools profiteering caused the high attention of all walks of life. With regard to this important political foundation, some scholars believe that local governments should strengthen the construction of education law enforcement teams, establish a joint law enforcement mechanism led by the examination and approval authorities, and intensify the investigation and punishment of illegal school-running behaviors. The departments of education, human resources and social security shall strengthen the industry management and form a mechanism in which the division of labor takes the lead in each link and cooperates with other relevant departments such as industry and commerce, civil affairs and public security. In 2011, the General Office of the State Council issued the Notice on the Implementation of the Pilot Reform of the National Education System. Wenzhou, as one of the four pilot counties and cities in Zhejiang Province, has successfully explored the Wenzhou experience of private education due to its great reform intensity and the government’s sufficient attention, and has been at the forefront of the reform of private education in China. At the end of 2011, the CPC Wenzhou Municipal Committee and the Municipal Government jointly issued the “1 + 9” document, which established the top-level system design in a timely manner and established and improved a series of promotion and guarantee mechanisms, such as the joint meeting of departments, the performance appraisal report of district and county governments, the law enforcement inspection of the People’s Congress, and the inspection and supervision of the CPPCC. To 2013, the leadership succession is fully confirmed the Wenzhou nongovernment education embodies the spirit of creativity and comprehensive reform advanced ideas, pointed to “take out the leader of the first national reform of courage and boldness”, further intensify reform, has new breakthrough in the original basis, efforts to make “national pilot” “national demonstration”. Therefore, introduced the upgrade version of the “1 + 14” file, the file “1 + 9” part has made the elaboration, such as registered as a private institution legal person of private schools, to implement the teachers’ social security policy, teachers’ social insurance premium of pay of full specified amount unit should pay part of the teachers in private schools, to carry out the local minimum wage system and accounting system as the precondition, etc. On this basis, five additional documents, including Measures for the Reform of Private Non-Enterprise Legal Person Schools into Enterprise Legal Person Schools (Trial), were added to further improve the top-level system design of classified management (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016). The “1 + 14” policy for the classified management of private education in Wenzhou, in terms of system construction, firstly, the classified management policy system is introduced, and the system is comprehensively innovated, which basically

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covers the important issues mentioned above. Wenzhou took the lead in the classification registration of for-profit and non-profit private schools. At present, there are 537 registered schools, among which 443 are non-profit private schools and 94 are for-profit private schools (including 3 primary and secondary schools). In December 2015, the classified registration of about 700 new schools was completed. Second, we will ensure equal treatment. We will ensure that teachers in privately-run schools enjoy the same benefits as teachers in public schools, such as retirement allowances, medical insurance and housing accumulation funds. Currently, 3,255 people are insured by public institutions and 3,576 are insured by medical insurance. Third, innovate financing support policies and realize the first pledge loan of the right to collect fees in the stage of national basic education. At present, the city has completed 42 loans from private schools to financial institutions, with a total credit line of 1.1 billion yuan. In addition, P2P financing products pledging property rights or hosting rights are currently being explored. Fourth, we will innovate the property rights system. Based on the actual national conditions, it is clearly stipulated that the capital contribution property belongs to the investors of privately-run schools, and the investors’ shares of property (shares) can be transferred, inherited and donated, but the funds shall not be withdrawn during the school’s existence. At the same time, we should establish an incentive system for non-profit private schools, and stipulate that private schools with enterprise legal persons can make profits according to the enterprise mechanism. Fifth, we will innovate the system for running schools. It explores various modes of running schools, such as entrusted management, PPP mode, citizen cooperation, donation and mixed ownership. Wenzhou non-governmental education reform during the “twelfth five-year” made great progress, but because of the complexity of the non-government education itself, there are still many problems unsolved, such as detailed specification and open questions, classification in the process of advancing the management system of the department’s coordination problem, cancel the investor reasonable reporting system after the problem of how to promote the enthusiasm of social power. The reform of private high school education in the new era should focus on cultivating high-quality private teaching resources, conscientiously implement the spirit of the 19th CPC National Congress, and fully implement the Party’s education policy under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Combined with the specific situation in various areas of the implementation of the act of the people and promote, solve the supervision mechanism, the treatment of teachers, the recruitment of students and teaching levels of related issues, the government strengthen the guide private secondary vocational education technology talents cultivation orientation, the enhanced role of promoting private high school, build a batch of influential and competitive national education brand, cultivate a group of have ideal, state run by the local educators. It is suggested that private educational organizations implement group strategic management and build educational brands. Take the lead of famous schools, drive the development of other private schools, integrate excellent teachers, hardware and software equipment, etc., to achieve the sharing of high-quality educational resources. All schools not only maintain unified coordination and management, so as to ensure the quality

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of education services, but also maintain relative independence. They set up their own characteristics according to school conditions, so as to truly achieve mutual benefit and mutual growth (Huang, 2015; Ran & Wang, 2020; Wang, 2011; Xue, 2020; Yang & Zhu, 2016).

References Huang, H. (2015). Research on public finance risk avoiding in supporting non-profit private universities. Modern Education Science Higher Education Research, 15(2), 131–134. Ran, Y., & Wang, Y. (2020). Zhang Wenjing. Function, dilemma and breakthrough path of private vocational education in China. Contemporary Vocational Education, 20(04), 32–39. Wang, S. (2011). Discussion on classified management of private education. Educational Research, 20(12). Xue, E. (2020). Forms, problems and path of universal high school education in China. China Education Journal, 20(10), 11–19. Yang, X., & Zhu, J. (2016). A comparative study on the education funds of private and public high schools in the county of Y County in Hubei Province. Journal of Hubei University of Science and Technology, 36(3), 91–94.

Chapter 5

The Private Higher Education Policy in China

This chapter involves examining the development of private higher education policy in China. In the late 1970s, the first batch of private colleges set up, but their common characteristic is as follows: one is the education level is not high, main is to restore the university entrance exam system after the university entrance exam qualifications to provide tutoring and actual demand for the society set up some skills classes, is not true sense of the universities, so they called “college” or “self-study university”, such as remediation mechanism and training institutions; Second, with the basic no inheritance in the history of private universities, private universities in a short period of time in the early days after foundation of people’s existence, but this time, the private colleges and universities are mostly western imperialist penetration church schools, so the central committee of the communist party of China issued in 1952 after the instructions about Catholicism, Protestantism departments were eliminated in the adjustment, change the names or merged with other public colleges and universities, so the private higher education has disappeared for a period of time; Third, there is neither adequate legal protection nor reliable sources of funding.

5.1 Introduction Since China’s reform and opening up, develop the socialist science and education, improve and develop the productive forces has become the historical task in the new period, the country mainly from the legal policy to encourage and support the development of private higher education in 1982 “the constitution of the People’s Republic of China” (hereinafter referred to as the “constitution”) Article 19 explicitly pointed out that, in the country, the development of the cause of socialist education, improve the scientific and cultural level of the people of the whole country; The state runs schools of all kinds, makes primary compulsory education universal, develops secondary, vocational and higher education, and develops preschool education. The © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 E. Xue and J. Li, Private Education Policy in China, Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3272-3_5

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State encourages collective economic organizations, state enterprises and institutions and other social forces to establish educational undertakings of various kinds in accordance with the provisions of law. The constitution is the fundamental law of our country, which means that the private higher education has officially stepped into the higher education field of our country in the legal sense and confirmed its legal status. Only with the guarantee of law and the encouragement and support of the state, private higher education can be full of vitality step by step. On May 27, 1985, the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Reform of the Education System (hereinafter referred to as the Decision) was adopted at the Central Conference of the Communist Party of China. The Decision points out that “according to the decision of the central government on the reform of the science and technology system, institutions of higher learning should take full advantage of their relatively complete disciplines and their advantages of having a large number of teachers, graduate students and senior students, so that they can make greater contributions to the development of science and technology. In order to enhance the ability of scientific research, to train high-quality professionals. It is a very important and urgent task to reform the teaching contents, teaching methods and teaching system and improve the teaching quality in accordance with the principle of combining theory with practice and under the guidance of dialectical materialism and historical materialism in the reform of higher education system. In view of the existing drawbacks, various experiments of teaching reform should be carried out actively, such as changing the situation of too narrow specialty, streamlining and updating the teaching content, increasing the practical links, reducing the required courses, increasing the elective courses, implementing the credit system and double degree system, increasing the time for self-study and extra-curricular learning activities, and developing them in a guided way. We must mobilize and educate the whole Party, the whole society and the whole nation to show concern for and support the reform of the educational system and develop the cause of education. We encourage all democratic parties, people’s organizations, social organizations, retired cadres and intellectuals, collective economic units and individuals to actively and voluntarily contribute to the development of education in various forms and in various ways, in accordance with the principles and policies of the Party and the government.” “Decision” in the discipline construction in colleges and universities, research ability, the faculty, cultivating mode has made new demands, and so on, it also requires the private colleges in our country must comply with the development of The Times, make reform, specification development, and further encouraged the social from all walks of life force to participate in the construction of education, to elementary education and higher education contribute strength. Since the “decision” issued in 1985, in the education system reform, the development of private colleges tend to be more standardized, private colleges to promote our country’s education fair and education resources optimization restructuring has played a very big role, private colleges own development to deepen the higher education system reform in our country, meet the diversified demands of the masses to accept higher education, for the country to train various kinds of applicable talents,

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play an important positive, this is our country’s higher education mechanism of a significant achievements of reform and innovation. “Private education promotion law of the People’s Republic of China” (hereinafter referred to as “the promotion law”) is for the implementation of the strategy relying on science and education, promote the healthy development of the private education, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of private schools and the educators, in accordance with the constitution and law, education law, issued in 2003 and revised in 2013 and 2018. The promulgation of laws specifically aimed at private education has further developed and standardized private higher education, which is embodied in the following aspects: The public welfare nature of private education has been clarified. Article 3 of the Promotion Law clearly points out that the private education enterprise belongs to the public welfare enterprise and is an integral part of the socialist education enterprise. That is to say, the public welfare nature of the private education is clearly defined. However, since the reform and opening up, under the market economy, the private education in our country has appeared the commercialization tendency, some private schools in the process of running a school there are random charges, random enrollment, random diplomas and other phenomena, resulting in a negative social impact, leading to the public welfare of private schools by the society questioned. The attributes of private education stipulated in the Promotion Law require private schools to take social public interests as the main goal, instead of maximizing interests as the most important school-running goal, which means that higher private education also belongs to private education, and its public welfare attribute is conducive to regulating its fee standard. The profit-making attributes of private education are stipulated. The “Promotion Law” clearly stipulates the profitability of privately-run schools, pointing out that the investors of privately-run schools can obtain reasonable returns in the process of running schools. But at the same time, the Promotion Law emphasizes that private schools are not profit-oriented, and profitability is an incentive measure for investors, in order to attract social funds to invest in and support private education, so as to be more conducive to running large private higher education. We will further increase support for private education. The Promotion Law strengthens the government’s support for privately-run education. The Promotion Law stipulates the government’s supporting and rewarding measures for privately-run education and points out that the government can set up special funds for rewarding, subsidizing and commending privately-run schools. In addition, according to the Promotion Law, the government can transfer or lease idle state assets to private schools in the form of funding to promote the development of private education. Private higher education is an important part of private education and a supplement to China’s higher education. Increasing the support for private higher education plays an important role in promoting the prosperity of higher education. Enhance the presence of independent colleges. In the “Promotion Law” mentioned to reduce the administrative management of independent institutions, enhance the responsibility of independent institutions. The concrete measures are for the government to disclose the relevant information of independent colleges and

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universities in time in the daily administration, so as to give play to the supervision role of the society on independent colleges and universities. It reaffirms the equality between independent colleges and public universities and emphasizes that independent colleges enjoy the rights and interests stipulated by law in the aspects of grant application, staff treatment and welfare insurance. Actively improve the classified management of independent colleges, so that independent colleges enjoy land, tax, finance and other supporting policies. Improving the sense of existence of independent colleges is an important measure for the development and expansion of private higher education. The main difference between private higher education and public higher education is the investor, so there is a difference between public and private higher education. Reducing the administrative management of private higher education is the characteristic measure that makes private higher education different from public higher education. Standardize the internal management of independent colleges. Standardized management is an important condition for the healthy development of independent colleges and an important guarantee for the survival of independent colleges themselves. The Private Education Promotion Law has further improved the internal management of independent colleges, requiring the establishment of decisionmaking bodies such as the board of directors and the board of directors in the development process of independent colleges, clarifying the authority of these institutions and improving the internal supervision mechanism of colleges. To establish an independent college information disclosure system, let social forces participate in the process of college development, and create a fair and transparent space for development (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006).

5.2 The Existing Problems of Private Colleges and Universities and the Policies Aimed at the Problems In the 1980s, as a result of the public university education resources are limited, in order to promote the development of education, to encourage and support the development of private education, but at that time, the status of private education is still in the cram school, it has to do with the state and society is far to private colleges, must need to innovation and change, and should be formed in 1985 promulgated the “decision on reform of the education system of the central committee of the communist party of China” for private colleges provides an opportunity. The status of running a school is guaranteed by law, and the improvement of the qualification and level of running a school is closely related to the management and training methods of colleges and universities, as well as the final feedback to the society. Since the reform, the country and the government to private colleges pay more attention to, reflected in such aspects as strengthening support, the government encourage support, after all, is the external support, and more within the power lies in private colleges, improve the

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infrastructure construction, specialty cultivation mode, introduce outstanding faculty, strengthen the academic power, to attract talent into and is improving teaching level of down-to-earth. In the 40 years of development of private colleges and universities, although some universities stand out and are recognized by the society, tens of millions of graduates have gone to society and become the backbone of enterprises. However, from the perspective of education level, the scale and faculty of private colleges and universities are not as good as those of ordinary public universities. Only a few private colleges and universities are different. Most of their lecturers are hired from key universities and famous universities with high salaries, so the teaching quality is more guaranteed, which is also an important reason why a few universities stand out. In compulsory education stage (in terms of Sichuan province), run by the local school level is generally higher than the average level of education, education in high school stage (Sichuan province), although private school level is still higher than the average education level, but the most widely recognized by society or public schools, and by the university stage, in terms of the present stage, the public school running status and education level is obviously much higher than that of private schools, run by the local school level although there has been a great improvement in complying with age and policy, but overall is still a long way to go. A privately-run school refers to a school or other educational institution legally run by a social organization or individual other than a state institution with nonstate financial funds. The private colleges and universities belong to the private schools, the public colleges and universities have the state financial subsidies, but the private schools do not. Although some private colleges council has a strong financial support, in addition to the high tuition and fee income more than public colleges and universities alumni donations, such as scientific research prize money income, can provide good infrastructure conditions, the introduction of outstanding teachers, to provide high-quality scientific research, so as to attract outstanding students graduating from high school, and more in the direction of virtuous cycle development; And some private colleges are facing serious funding problems, become the bottleneck of restricting its development, this kind of colleges and universities often without the support of the board and alumni, because national limits on the amount of tuition fees for private universities, private universities charge tuition and fees can only meet the school daily, to accumulate savings, somewhat only by expanding scale of higher education, to reduce the cost of running, and that only through the tuition is very difficult to finish the sustainable development of itself, the unreasonable financing way without improvement, the development environment of private higher education will deteriorate, eventually lead to the failure of the private higher education. In recent years, the government has increased the financial aid to the private colleges and universities, and the “Promotion Law” has made clear provisions on the public welfare of the private education. “Promotion Law” mentioned in the third article: “private educational undertakings belong to public welfare undertakings, is an integral part of the socialist educational undertakings. The state implements the policy of actively encouraging, vigorously supporting, correctly guiding and administrating privately-run education according to law.” The “Promotion Law”

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and its “Implementation Regulations” have also made corresponding provisions on government support. Articles 44 and 45 of the Promotion Law respectively stipulate that “People’s governments at or above the county level may set up special funds to finance the development of privately-run schools”. “People’s governments at or above the county level may take financial assistance and other measures to support privatelyrun schools.” Article 41 of the Regulations on the Implementation of the Promotion Law also clearly stipulates: “People’s governments at or above the county level may set up special funds for privately-run education development in light of the specific conditions of their respective administrative regions. The special funds for privatelyrun education development shall be managed by the financial departments and shall be used by the educational administrative departments or the labor and social security administrative departments after being submitted to the financial departments at the same level for approval.” The above provisions affirm the nature of private higher education as a public welfare enterprise and clarify the funding channels supported by the government. But we found that it is not a problem, that is for a grant from the government responsibility in the above provisions are using “can” authorized sexual norms, lack of “should” compulsory standards, do not have mandatory and too general, the proportion of financing way, financing for private universities and the division of responsibilities between governments at all levels are not clear. As a result, in practice, there is buck-passing and arbitrariness among different levels of government. In addition, there are no encouraging regulations, so the funding of private colleges and universities by governments at all levels is naturally reduced or reduced, and it is difficult to share the responsibilities. Another example is that Article 48 of the Promotion Law stipulates that “the state encourages financial institutions to use credit means to support the development of private education undertakings”, but in reality, public colleges and universities often enjoy discount interest loans from the government, while private colleges and universities are hard to get. In terms of student aid, it is also difficult for most private universities to apply for the full amount of state student loans and grants. Therefore, it is far from enough to make clear the necessity of government support for the development of private higher education. What is more important is to make reasonable arrangements for the ways of government financial support and provide more rigid regulations in law. In China, compared with the management of middle and high schools, the management of most public universities is relatively free and open, while the management of some private universities is extremely strict, which is “even worse” than that of middle and high schools. However, strict management does not mean high level, but worse level. Stricter regulation may just be for better profits. The purpose of a school can be divided into two main categories: one is to keep students out of trouble, and the other is to better recruit students. In the first article, compared with the key universities, the students who choose the private schools tend to be mixed up and make trouble more often. For the sake of the reputation of the school, more strict management measures are taken (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006). Giving priority to the development of education and the concept of education modernization, the state actively encourages and strongly supports private

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higher education. Education is an important cornerstone for national rejuvenation and social progress. Comrade Deng Xiaoping once said: “If we want to catch up with the advanced world level, where should we start? I want to start with technology and education.” The Thirteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China further put forward the “century-old plan, education-oriented”. The 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly put forward “education priority development”. The so-called “education priority development” refers to: education is fundamentally determined by social production and economic development level, that is, productivity determines the level of education; And education is an important factor to promote the development of social productivity, through education to train high-quality labor force, the dissemination of knowledge and technology; The development level of education and social productive forces is unbalanced. In line with the concept of giving priority to the development of education and the modernization of education, the state actively encourages and strongly supports private higher education.

5.3 Background and Development of Private Higher Education Policy in China Since the Reform and Opening up 40 years Ago To understand the economic basis of China’s private higher education policy, we should first understand its background. In different periods, it showed different economic characteristics. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was held in 1978, the whole society was in urgent need of talents of all kinds. Under the implementation of the intellectual policy, some social personages and retired educators who are enthusiastic about the education undertaking voluntarily engage in cultural tutoring and vocational technical training activities, thus opening the curtain for the recovery and development of private education in contemporary China. Reviews the 40 years’ development of private higher education in China, it can be roughly divided into three stages, and each stage has its own characteristics in the development of educational policy and economic basis. The first stage was the period of the restoration and establishment of private higher education with non-academic education as the main body (1978–1992). The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China promulgated in 1982 stipulates that “the state encourages collective economic organizations, state enterprises and institutions, and other social forces to establish educational undertakings of various kinds in accordance with the law,” providing a legal basis for the development of privately-run education. Since then, private schools have sprung up. However, at that time, private higher education accounted for a small proportion of China’s total education, which was basically the product of meeting social and market needs.

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The second stage is the period of rapid development of private higher education (1992–2010) with both support and regulation. In February 1993, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council promulgated the Program for Education Reform and Development in China, which proposed to “change the pattern of government-run schools and gradually establish a system in which the government plays the main role and all sectors of society work together to run schools.” The Education Law of 1995 clearly points out the nature and status of private education in China and emphasizes the non-profit principle of private education again. In 1997, the Regulations on Running Schools by Social Forces was promulgated, which stipulates that the fee items and standards of privately-run schools shall be examined and verified by the examination and approval organs and checked and approved by the finance department and the price control department. But because the policy system is not mature enough, it leads to a series of problems such as the conflict between profit and public welfare. The third stage is to explore and establish a new period of classified management of private higher education (2010–present). During this period, the Law on the Promotion of Private Education stipulated that the operators of private schools could earn “reasonable returns”. This regulation was once regarded as the greatest progress of the Private Education Promotion Law, which was considered to creatively solve the contradiction between the non-profit nature of private schools and the economic motives of the organizers. However, the “Private Education Promotion Law” does not explain how to implement “reasonable return”, “return” what is “reasonable”? Where is the line between “reasonable” and “unreasonable” returns? Is it the market or the government that defines and supervises it? Obviously, these questions are not easy to answer. The final result is that in more than ten years after the promulgation of the Private Education Promotion Law, the “reasonable return” clause has been in vain, and almost no private colleges and universities have obtained the return through the reasonable return system design. In order to solve the dilemma of reasonable returns, the idea of classification management was proposed. The idea of classified management of privately-run education appeared in the process of formulating the Law on the Promotion of Privately-run Education. It was only because the idea of a “reasonable return” prevailed that it was not adopted. The Outline of the National Medium- and LongTerm Plan for Education Reform and Development (2010–2020) explicitly proposed the classified management of privately-run schools in the national policy documents for the first time. The private schools are divided into non-profit and profit-making categories, and the two categories are given different financial support policies, land and tax preferential policies (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006).

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5.4 Models, Achievements and Experiences of the Economic Basis of China’s Private Higher Education Policies The development mode of China’s private colleges and universities. Private higher education institutions can be divided into three categories: private undergraduate, private junior college and independent college. Private colleges and universities have been growing increasingly in recent years, with the characteristics of diversified investment subjects and diversified running modes. There are four main school-running modes, which have realized the overall improvement and sustainable development of school-running level. Rolling development by learning. Tuition fees are the main source of school funding. Private colleges and universities must make use of scale expansion to realize the maximization of cost and benefit. With the Yellow River Institute of Science and Technology as the representative, the private colleges and universities have realized the transformation from “ugly duckling” to “white swan” with the continuous development of learning and cultivation. To inject funds into the development of production, nourishment and education. It is funded by domestic strong and well-funded companies, enterprise groups, or Chinese at home and abroad to create a first-class teaching environment, introduce modern management mechanism, and form the characteristics of high investment, high starting point, high standard, high speed and high efficiency. Collectivization is an important mode of large-scale and intensive running of private colleges and universities. “Collectivization of private colleges and universities” means organically combining a number of private colleges and universities to form a group through various forms and realizing the scale effect of talent cultivation by virtue of the scale advantage. The main advantages of group schooling are that educational resources can be shared, the effect of group schooling can be magnified, and the financing channels of school running funds can be expanded. For example, the strong support of the capital market can be obtained through listing financing, which reduces financing costs, promotes the good operation of schools, and strengthens the development momentum of private higher education. It is a very effective choice under the current school environment. Such as Beijing Nanyang Education Group, Ningbo Huamao (Education) Group, etc. Private and public-assisted school-running development mode. In economically developed areas, some local governments have funded the development of privately-run colleges and universities, forming a privately-run and public-aided mode of running schools. The Zhejiang provincial government’s support for Shuren University is a typical example. “Citizen Integration” attempts to break through cooperative schooling. Nowadays, the new round of industrial transformation represented by intelligent manufacturing is developing rapidly. In order to adapt to the situation, the national double first-class universities give the private universities a boost in running schools. If Beijing Geely

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University and Peking University sign a strategic cooperation framework agreement, Peking University will give strong support to Geely University in discipline and specialty construction, faculty, scientific research innovation, transformation of scientific and technological achievements and other aspects. Achievements in the policy and economic foundation of China’s private higher education. After nearly 30 years of hard struggle and tortuous development, China’s private higher education has achieved the following achievements: China’s private universities have expanded the opportunities to receive higher education, provided multiple choices, promoted educational equity, and expanded the scale of higher education. In 2019, there were 757 private institutions of higher learning in China, accounting for more than 28% of the country’s higher education. It has made a positive contribution to the popularization of higher education in China (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006).

5.5 Contribution of China’s Private Higher Education to National Economic Development The tuition and miscellaneous fees of students increase the fund income of private colleges and universities. Compared with public colleges and universities, China’s private colleges and universities are basically established and developed by relying on the input of the organizers and the tuition and miscellaneous fees of the students. Student tuition and fees are also higher than those of public colleges. Tuition fees for private higher education in China are rising year by year. The average annual tuition fee for private higher education in China increased from 10,983 yuan in 2014 to 13,530 yuan in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 5.4%. In addition, driven by rising costs and improved quality of private higher education, the average annual tuition fee of private higher education in China is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4.8% from 2018 to 2023, reaching 17,095 yuan in 2023. Students’ consumption drives economic growth. In addition to tuition and miscellaneous fees, students also need to pay for meals, transportation and school supplies. According to the survey data, the direct consumption brought by each increase in the number of students in private colleges is 12,383 yuan per year. Taking the catering industry as an example, for each additional student in private colleges in 2007, the incremental additional demand for the catering industry was 3,229 yuan per year. After the enrollment expansion of 670,800 people, the incremental final demand for the catering industry was 2,165 billion yuan, and the incremental total national economic output caused by the catering industry was 5,502 billion yuan (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006).

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With the rapid expansion of the student scale, it is inevitable for private colleges and universities to construct the basic facilities such as school buildings, large equipment and books resources. From 2003 to 2007, the total fixed assets of privately-run colleges and universities increased from 39.114 billion yuan to 125.829 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 24.93%, and its proportion in the total fixed assets of national colleges and universities also increased from 10.3 to 15.45%. The increase in output driven by infrastructure investment in private colleges and universities has been increasing from 29.5% in 2004 to 36.46%, which once again proves that private higher education is playing an increasingly important role in the whole higher education system. In a word, private higher education, as a development force that cannot be ignored, plays an increasingly important role in both the whole higher education system and in the process of economic development.

5.6 Experiences on the Economic Basis of Private Higher Education Policies in China Private higher education policies should follow the reality of social and economic development. Early reform and opening up, the non-public sectors of the economy begin to recover, but this time, the social composition of the private economy is still weak, direct result was the private colleges are lack of record of formal schooling education necessary premises and sources of funds, lack of social capital is also attractive, mainly rely on the social donation and the operators to maintain enthusiasm, not form a virtuous circle of education quality and managerial benefit. In the 1990s, China’s socialist market economic system reform gradually, the private economy rapid development, according to the National Bureau of Statistics data show that in 2002, the private sector output value reached 1.74 trillion yuan, accounting for GDP 14.31%, growth and incremental is very considerable, urban and rural residents savings deposits increased from 1.1757 trillion yuan to 8.691 trillion yuan, the potential for private higher education consumption ability have made great progress. After China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, the non-public sector of the economy has been energized unrelentingly, and private higher education has a broader prospect of obtaining funds for running schools. Implement classified management and improve the efficiency of financial funds. The second revision of the Private Education Promotion Law in 2016 registered for-profit private higher education institutions and non-profit private higher education institutions separately, classified management, enjoy different treatment and funding policies, and solved the problem of reasonable return that has plagued the development of private higher education since the 1980s. Non-profit-making private colleges and universities can also legitimately obtain government funding support through their public welfare nature, which lays a foundation for the further development of private higher education.

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In classified management of the private higher education as an opportunity to promote higher education funds use mechanism reform, the financial education funds at from classified by institutional transition is classified by capital USES, whether public or private colleges and universities, the government’s financial support should be limited to the public welfare of its USES, so also facilitate education funds investment and fiscal fund performance audit of the new management tools, improve the pertinence and efficiency of education funds, the modernization of higher education management system. Create a modern enterprise “talent chain” by focusing on the cultivation of high-level talents instead of making profits by running schools. In recent years, China has focused on the application of the integration of industry and education in the field of education and issued several opinions on deepening the integration of industry and education and other important policy documents. However, the integration of industry and education has indeed encountered various practical problems and resistance. At the same time, the distance between research universities, research institutes and the market is also gradually widening. Therefore, under such circumstances, private colleges and universities become the intermediate force that effectively connects the market with the industrial frontier. In 2013, Mr. Chen Yidan stepped down as Tencent’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and promised to run a non-profit private university without taking a penny from the university. Guangdong Country Garden Vocational College is a private university with a charitable nature. Geely has established 9 colleges and universities in 23 years, insisting on education as a public welfare undertaking, with no economic return… These entrepreneurs, who are passionate about education, do not make profits by running schools. Instead, their goal is to cultivate a group of high-end technical and skilled workers in big countries. They focus on the cultivation of high-level applied talents and create educational miracles one after another. As an important part of socialist education in China, private education relies more on strong economic support. As the forefront of reform and opening up, Guangdong has been the top GDP in China for many years. In 2016, the total investment in local education funds in Guangdong Province reached 336.754 billion yuan, an increase of 10.50% over the previous year, exceeding the national level and exceeding the GDP growth in the same year, and accounting for about 8.7% of the total investment in education. Of this, 5.059 billion yuan was invested by the organizers of private schools, an increase of 1.774 billion yuan, or 54%. Guangdong, with a strong economic foundation, has attracted the attention of its private education industry, which has attracted the well-known domestic education equity investment fund— Shoukong Fund. Guangdong province for the private education, especially private higher education bricks and tiles. As a special economic zone, Shenzhen has grown from a small border town to a national economic center and an international city. This is because it attaches great importance to education investment while realizing rapid economic development, so its private education has become the most powerful new force in the province and even in the country. By vigorously developing private education, Shenzhen has

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cultivated more creative and innovative talents, who have also made outstanding contributions to promoting Shenzhen’s economic development. Thus, the relationship between education and economy is mutually influencing. The role of education in economy is to train high-quality labor force through education, provide talents for economic activities, and provide tools for economic activities through the generation of new knowledge through education. At the same time, the economy has an effect on education, which can provide funds, equipment, facilities and other material basis for education, and determine the content, methods and other elements of education. However, the relationship between the two is not always synchronous and common development, some regions are very developed, but the education is relatively backward, some regions are very developed, but the economy is relatively backward (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006).

5.7 The Relationship Between Education Policy and Economy of Private Colleges and Universities At the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized the concept of “people-centered” development. Any kind of education should pay attention to people’s sense of gain in the end, and ideological and political education should pay attention to the unity of theoretical education and personality education, and finally realize people’s allround development, which is different from the purpose of economic development. China’s financial input to private colleges and universities is limited, if only relying on a single channel of government input, will restrict the limited allocation of private colleges and universities education management resources. In addition to the financial resources input from the government, private colleges and universities should actively seize all kinds of opportunities in the society, integrate all kinds of resources in the society, and take the initiative to establish various cooperative relations with enterprises and institutions. School-school cooperation and school-enterprise cooperation should be carried out to realize resource co-construction and sharing and maximize educational management resources. In addition, private colleges and universities can seek diversification of investment subjects and financing channels and be good at using external financial resources to help the development of their own schools. The government has taken measures to encourage effective competition. Instead of deciding whether a public school or a private school determines the allocation of research funding for teachers and student funding, the government uses “excellence” and “equity” as the criteria for research funding and student funding respectively. (1) Clarifying the ownership of the rights of scientific research achievements in cooperation between universities and industries, and establishing the benefit distribution mechanism; (2) Enhance the motivation and enthusiasm of cooperation between universities and industries, and establish

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a mechanism of interest coordination; (3) Set up the management and coordination institutions of universities and industrial cooperation organizations, and establish the interest guarantee mechanism; (4) Actively promote the development of science and technology intermediaries and venture capital institutions, and establish peripheral development mechanisms. To sum up, around the economic foundation of China’s private higher education policy, introduction to the background and development course of the education policy, save mode, achievement and experience, problems and Suggestions, private colleges to achieving better yourself, its education policy should follow the actual social and economic development, education policy and economic influence each other to promote each other. Adhering to the priority development of education, ensuring educational input is the foundation and allocating educational resources is the key. Strive to provide a good environment for the conversion of scientific research results. At present, digitalization, networking and intelligentization have increasingly become the main trend of global manufacturing industry. In order to adapt to the new situation of global development, China’s private colleges and universities should take advantage of this trend to create a road of specialty, specialization and quality education, and strive to become the “Ivy League” of Chinese education (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006).

5.8 The Social Background of “Private Education Promotion Law” The development of private higher education policy in China is deeply influenced and restricted by the reform of economic system, political system, scientific and technological system and educational system. With the development of ownership structure from public ownership to multiple ownership and the transformation of economic system from planned economy to market economy, the social environment conditions have been created for the policy reform of private higher education. The democratization and legalization of political restructuring has provided an institutional guarantee for citizens’ participation in political life and social management. In particular, the achievements of the reform of the education system have greatly promoted the diversification of educational services and given citizens more rights to run schools and participate in educational management democratically. It has become a realistic requirement for people to have high-quality educational choices. It is based on the development of market economy that the popularization and marketization of higher education are promoted, the types of higher education are constantly updated, and the rapid development of private higher education makes the policy requirements for the legal status and legitimacy of private higher education inevitable. Institutional environment is a part of the social environment for the survival and development of private colleges and universities, which mainly refers to the general

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term of the system to coordinate the interests and contradictions in the development of private colleges and universities and ensure the development of private colleges and universities. The higher education in China has been operating under the “planning system” for a long time, and the administrative power of the government dominates the development of higher education. The institutional environment of the development of higher education is the result of “uniformity” and government intervention. Under this system, private colleges and universities can not get the right of development, and they have been subjected to more restrictions and discrimination since their birth. With the social transformation and the gradual establishment of the market economy system in China, the government gradually “decentralizes” the “integrated” control of the society, and the private higher education obtains the opportunity of development. However, due to the lack of institutional environment to promote the development of private colleges and universities, private colleges and universities generally have low social credibility and low public recognition. As a part of education, private higher education has the dual characteristics of public welfare and profit-making, and its development needs the policy support and intervention of the government to make up for the deficiency of market mechanism and guide the standard development of private higher education. Policy guidance and system support are the institutional capital of the development of private higher education. Only by constantly optimizing the institutional environment and standardizing the conduct of running schools can private higher education achieve a benign development. From the above analysis, the development of private higher education is the driving force for the policy evolution of private higher education, and the social development level and educational system environment are the guarantee for the policy reform of private higher education. The Private Education Promotion Law further legitimizes private higher education. Legitimacy is a necessary condition for the development of private higher education. “We find that as long as a stable legal status is obtained, even if it is only a dependent status to supplement the deficiencies, the development and growth of private higher education will be greatly promoted in a certain period of time. Once the legal status is restricted and affected by other factors with the change of times, the development will be frustrated.” At the beginning of China’s reform and opening up, private higher education held a negative attitude, thinking that private higher education was “superfluous”, private higher education was almost ignored, and its development was slow. In 1982 the constitution has admitted the legal status of private higher education, private higher education as a “part” of the education career, “private education promotion law” further regulation “private schools and public schools have the equal legal status”, “national security in private schools, principals, teachers, and by the sponsor(s) the legitimate rights and interests of educate”, “private schools to enjoy the preferential tax policies stipulated by the state”, and “private education promotion law implementing regulations” the implementation of the administrative regulations, such as the legitimacy of private higher education in China has gradually established. The legislative purpose of the Private Education Promotion Law is to encourage, support and promote the development of private higher education. The Promotion

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Law stipulates that the “property rights of legal persons” belong to the school, and that “a privately-run school shall enjoy the property rights of legal persons to the assets, state-owned assets, donated property and the accumulation of school running by the sponsor”. “During the existence of a privately-run school, all assets shall be managed and used by the privately-run school according to law, and no organization or individual shall encroach upon them.” At the same time, it also stipulates that when a privately-run school terminates, “the property of a privately-run school shall be paid off in the following order: (1) the educates’ tuition, miscellaneous fees and other expenses shall be refunded; (2) salaries of faculty and staff and social insurance fees payable; (3) repayment of other debts. The remaining property of a privately-run school after paying off the above-mentioned debts shall be disposed of in accordance with the provisions of relevant laws and administrative regulations.” Due to the legitimacy and social recognition of privately-run colleges and universities, the government began to adopt policy support and incentive support policy pilot. If Guangdong Province has taken out a sum of money from local finance to support the private colleges and universities, the private colleges and universities are no longer superfluous existence outside the system. Institutional obstacles to the development of private higher education. In the past two years since the implementation of the Law on the Promotion of Private Education, the status of private higher education has been fundamentally improved. However, the development of private colleges and universities is still staggering, institutional constraints can be seen everywhere, some people figuratively said that private colleges and universities are “dancing with shackles”. So, what are the institutional obstacles to the development of private higher education? First of all, the policy of “national recognition of academic qualifications” restricts the development of private higher education. According to China’s current academic degree law, China implements the national degree, all degrees are awarded by the state, educational institutions have no right to award degrees. According to this, China’s private colleges and universities are divided into “diploma education” and “non-diploma education”. Most of the private colleges and universities offer nondiploma education, and only a few of them are qualified for diploma education. The policy design of national degree has restrained the autonomy of running a school of private colleges and universities. The private colleges and universities with academic qualifications have to accept the strict control of the national education policy and lack the policy environment and conditions for independent development. Most of the private colleges and universities that carry out non-diploma education have no qualifications for degree recognition and application, low social recognition and little attraction, and serious difficulties in enrollment. The vicious circle of low level and low quality makes them at the edge and vulnerable position of the higher education system. Secondly, the implementation rules of private higher education policy are not in place. The promulgation of the Private Education Promotion Law and its implementation regulations undoubtedly provides the legal basis and policy support for the development of private higher education, but the principal provisions must be

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guaranteed by the specific implementation rules. Due to the lack of supporting implementation rules, the phenomenon of non-compliance with laws in running schools of private higher education is still serious. For example, the Law on the Promotion of Private Education clearly stipulates that private colleges and universities have the same legal status as public colleges and universities, and that teachers and students in private colleges and universities enjoy the same rights and interests as teachers and students in public colleges and universities. However, it is difficult to achieve this in practice. The state aid system is only implemented in public colleges and universities, excluding private colleges and universities. However, the rights and interests of private colleges and universities are still ignored or difficult to be implemented. How to effectively implement the policies will become the focus of the development of private higher education policies in the future. Thirdly, the lack of national investment system leads to the lack of fund guarantee for the development of private education. As a part of China’s higher education, private colleges and universities have contributed to the development of higher education and talent training and should be supported and funded by national policies. However, because we do not fully understand the public attribute of private higher education and the important role of private higher education, we ignore the development of private higher education and evade the responsibility of the state for the development of private higher education intentionally or unintentionally. As a result, private colleges and universities are not only unable to get investment from the state, but also difficult to get donations from the society. The lack of funds has become the bottleneck for the development of private colleges and universities. For the private education itself, because of the lack of clear definition of the property right of the private higher education, the interests of the private higher education investors cannot be guaranteed, which seriously restricts the improvement of the running conditions of the private higher education and the reinvestment of funds, thus affecting the overall running level of the private higher education. All these problems need to be solved as soon as possible (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006).

5.9 Problems Existing in China’s Private Higher Education Policies Although in recent years, the state has issued and repaired the relevant laws and regulations on the private higher education, which makes the private higher education get certain support in the policy, but there are still some problems in the policy environment, which affect the development of the private higher education. Finance is of great importance to the development of a school. Due to the influence of China’s socialist market economic system, private higher education in China has received less donations from enterprises and individuals, while private colleges and universities cannot get the financial support from the government. Therefore,

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many private colleges and universities have many problems in the process of running schools due to the fund operation, and even lead to the direct closure. Whether the nature of private higher education in China is profit-making or notfor-profit has always been controversial. The Education Law of the People’s Republic of China clearly stipulates: “No organization or individual may run a school or other institution of education for profit.” That is to say, the state stipulates that the nature of private higher education is non-profit, but China cannot make the private higher education run well under the condition of non-profit, no matter from the political system or the actual situation of economic development. As for this issue, there is no clear stipulation in national laws and regulations so far. Such ambiguity and uncertainty can be said to seriously affect the enthusiasm of enterprises, social organizations and citizens to invest in private colleges and universities. In recent years, due to the country for private colleges teaching position is not clear, make our country private colleges appear convergence phenomenon is serious, especially in terms of curriculum, many private colleges into the pursuit of economic efficiency, lower cost of liberal arts and professional in the near future employment of higher professional, lead to the unreasonable specialties, which affects its development. Private colleges teachers can’t enjoy a career and public colleges and universities teachers as compiled and endowment insurance policy guarantee, to attend endowment insurance, enterprise only in the aspect of determining reasonable and effective way, wages are far less public higher teacher, therefore many teachers don’t want to teach at private colleges for life, lead to private colleges can’t form their own teachers, and hire more teachers in universities to work part-time, such not only influenced the construction of teachers team of private colleges, also make the teaching quality can’t get good protection, thus seriously reduces the image and status of the private colleges in the folk, Many parents and students are unwilling to choose private colleges and universities in the college entrance examination, which restricts the development of private higher education to a great extent. The root cause of the above-mentioned problems in China’s private higher education policy is the unequal status of private higher education and public higher education in practice. It can be seen from the policy environment of private higher education in our country, although the country has been on the policy to support the development of private higher education, but in the early days of practice, countries are not specific to private higher education policies, the detailed rules for the implementation of for a long time, countries to the importance of private higher education is lower than the public higher education. This leads to the idea that private higher education is inferior to public higher education, so that private higher education does not enjoy the same status and treatment as public higher education in fact, so there are many obvious loopholes in the policy. The state should vigorously set up special supervision departments for private higher education to manage and supervise the private higher education, which can not only reflect the importance the state attaches to the development of private higher education, but also better supervise the private higher education from a macro perspective, find out problems in time, put forward countermeasures and solve problems. In addition, some laws and regulations of the state also need supervision from

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regulatory authorities in the process of implementation. For example, we will implement some preferential tax policies to prevent some policies from being distorted in the process of implementation and make concerted efforts to ensure the success of private higher education. At present, although the state has allowed private colleges and universities to obtain appropriate profits in the process of running schools, there are still strict regulations on the fund operation of private colleges and universities. In order to make private colleges and universities run better in the process of fund operation, the state should support the multi-channel investment in the process of running a school. First, the state can provide financial support for private colleges and universities by providing teaching equipment. Secondly, the combination of schools and enterprises is encouraged, which not only solves the funding problem of colleges and universities to a large extent, but also enables enterprises to participate in the courses of private colleges and universities. At the same time, students at private colleges and universities enter enterprises for internship and employment, so as to improve their practical ability and promote the employment rate of graduates of private colleges and universities. Finally, bank loans can be used as collateral for private college loans and repayment can be made regularly. The state should establish the corresponding fair competition mechanism for the unfair phenomenon between private and public universities in the treatment process. First of all, teachers should be treated equally with teachers of public colleges and universities in professional title evaluation, salary treatment, pension insurance and other aspects. Preferential policies should be implemented to encourage fresh graduates to teach in private colleges and universities, so that private colleges and universities can quickly establish their own full-time teacher team. In addition, private colleges students should enjoy student loans and scholarships, under the same condition, for those poor families but eager to school children have more choice, also make the non-governmental university enrollment expansion, to a certain extent, promote its with universities in fair competition, with a more comprehensive, faster and higher quality of development (Du, 2005; Gao, 2004; Lu & Li, 2020; Shen & Yan, 2006; Wen, 2005; Yan, 2008; Yan & Lin, 2012; Zhang, 2006).

References Du, G. (2005). Research on the development course of private higher education in China. International Journal of Private Education, 200(4), 11–19. Gao, W. (2004). The competitive advantage and developing strategy of private higher education. Heilongjiang Higher Education Research, 20(7), 19–24. Lu, W., & Li, T. (2020). Going out of the misunderstanding of institutional absorption: Path transformation to enhance the profession attraction of non-for-profit private colleges and universities. China Higher Education Research, 20(10), 28–32. Shen, Z., & Yan, F. (2006). The influence of social stratification on the stratification of higher education: An empirical analysis of the family background of private university students in Xi’an. Peking University Education Review, 2006(4), 23–29.

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Wen, W. (2005). Education research and experiment on the legitimacy changes of private higher education in China after 1976. Journal of Education and Social Development, 20(3), 19–23. Yan, F. (2008). Can private higher education in China meet the demand of public interest. Education Review., 20(2), 19–23. Yan, F., & Lin, J. (2012). Commercial civil society: A perspective on the characteristics of private higher education in China. Education Research, 20(4), 23–29. Zhang, M. (2006). Exploration of organizational culture of China’s private colleges and universities. Research on Educational Development, 20(3B), 12–19.