An overview of the book (69 English words):

This book makes a cross-national, cross-regional descriptive and evaluative study of the historical development, regulations and legislative systems, and implementation mechanism of different educational laws. Countries covered include United Kingdom, France, the former Soviet Union, Russia, United States of America, Japan, South Korea, India, Mainland China,  Philippines and Thailand. It aims to speed up and foster the development of educational legislation in Mainland China through comparative lessons learned from other countries.
 
Abstract (385 English words, cited from the book, pp. 5-6)

The choice of a market economy and its development presents increasingly higher demands for the qualities of the work force. Our success in setting up a new educational system that could meet the requirements of a market economy, in increasing our educational input, in providing guarantee for the rights of citizen to have access to education and in producing sufficient number of highly qualified professions of all kinds will have direct and important implications for fully tapping our economic potential.

The development of an educational system will be long-term and complicated. Its success will depend, to some extent, on whether education could be brought on a legal track. It is therefore imperative that a series of educational laws and regulations be worked out so as to gradually achieve the target of educational administration by law in China.

However, due to our poor experiences in the field of education legislation, there is an urgent need for us to carry out a complete and in-depth study of foreign laws. It is against this background that a group of experts on comparative educational research were organized by the Department of Policy and Regulation of State Education Commission to produce a series of research reports on educational laws of foreign countries, such as US, UK, France, Russia, India, South Korea, Thailand, etc. This book, a collection of these reports, also represents the accomplishment of a sub-programme of the Theory and Practice of Chinese Education Legislation, one of the key programmes of National Social Science Programmes for the period of 1991-1995. This book tells us a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of educational legislation of the countries, especially those successful and unsuccessful ideas and practices in the field. From the comparative study, we can have a clear and wide vision about our education legislation, and also provide some practical experience for other countries. The comparative study will have mutual benefits!

We have every reason to believe that the publication of the book will be very helpful to strengthen and quicken the process of educational legislation in China, and to open a totally new field for the study of foreign countries? educational and legal systems. Due to the limitations of time and data, some faults or inaccurate materials may have crept in. Any comments or suggestions for the improvement of this book would be greatly welcomed.

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