Reform in Chinaþs education started in the late 1970s, prompted by economic reforms and also the almost total destruction of the education during the 10 year Cultural Revolution, ending 1976.
There are basically two general orientations in the reform of education: decentralisation in finance and management and linking education with the market.
Decentralisation is most significant in basic education, which in China often refers to the 6 year primary education and 3 year junior secondary education.
As early as around 1980, the change in the rural economy made it possible for local governments and local communities to support their own schools. This was immediately seen as a favourable move and became government policy. Even before the policy was formalised in 1985, there had been a series of policy changes issued by the central government which allowed more participation by local governments and legitimised donations from farmers and other sectors of the local community.
In 1985, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a Decision on educational reform. One major part of this was to formalise what is known as "management by levels." The essence of the management reform is to devolve the sponsorship (banxue) of schools to lower levels of administration.
"Sponsorship" here refers mainly to the financing of schools, but also carries with it a subtle sense of "ownership." The net result of the reform was to allow villages (cun) to sponsor primary schools, townships (xiang) to sponsor junior secondary schools and the county (xian) to sponsor secondary schools.
This was a drastic change from the situation which prevailed until the early 1980s, where county level if not provincial level authorities had complete control over all the schools in the localities.
It is now possible to appreciate that this was in fact a policy of localisation. It was motivated by the availability of local and non-governmental resources, and it was generally effective.
For in the following decade there was tremendous local enthusiasm for building local schools. Most of these were built with community donations, from farmers or local industries. Local resources also supported salaries of local teachers who are not on the government payroll. About one third of primary school teachers (and 40% of rural primary teachers) are still "community teachers" in this sense. Schools have further supported themselves trhough all kinds of income generating activities.
The localisation policy is also supported by national policies in finance and taxation. Since the 1985 decision, local governments have been required to observe the principle of "two growths": (a) that growth in education expenditures should exceed growth in general revenues and (b) that per-student expenditures should see a positive growth. Although not all provinces and local authorities have been able to follow the principle strictly, the requirements are generally respected.
Meanwhile, there is a national policy of tax exemption for industries and other income generating businesses operated by schools.
Latest figures show that in 1993 local governments contributed around 87% of the total government expenditure on education. Of the total educational expenditure, non-government sources contributed around 40%.
This mobilisation of local resources is one of the underlying factors that explain the rapid expansion of basic education in the past decade. Although 9 year compulsory education is not achieved in all parts of the country, the overall enrolment rate of over 98% at primary level compares favourably with most other countries in the world. The enrolment at junior secondary level stands at around 60-65%, which is a high figure when compared with developing countries with a comparable level of economic development.
Policies of localisation have expectedly brought about regional disparities. All the policies which have successfully brought in local resources have also caused difficulties to regions of economic under-development. Policies of decentralisation have made shcools, primary schools in particular, almost totally reliant on the local economy. Enormous disparity therefore exists among different parts of the country in terms of physical facilities, ability to pay teachers, as well as parentsþ capacity to send children to schools.
It is not surprising that, at one point, almost half of all the provinces jointly proposed a reversal of the decentralisation process, returning control over schools to county level authorities. This reflects the inability of local governments and communities in the less developed regions to support their schools.
The proposal was not welcomed by more economically developed provinces, where reversing decentralisation would mean losing the support of local and non-governmental resources, and would also be against the wishes of local communities, which had enjoyed autonomy over their schools.
The issue of decentralisation has more or less come to an equilibrium. There is no likely major change in the policy in the forseeable future. This means that the expansion of facilities has probably more or less come to its limits.
The small pockets of the population where schooling is a problem are not likely to improve rapidly. Such pockets include the ethnic minority areas, with girls in these areas particularly affected. Meanwhile, the more developed areas may further enrich their school system and achieve higher qualititative goals.
Decentralisation is not limited to basic education. Indeed, it is more successful in technical and vocational education, where the schools that fare best are jointly operated by the education and industrial/commercial sectors.
Decentralisation is also very advanced in higher education in China, to the extent that less than half the expenditures of most tertiary institutions are supported by state allocation. However, technical/vocational training and higher education in China are basically urban phenomena.
Much of the decentralisation process is intetwined with changes in the labour market.
A labour market as such is relatively recent in the contemporary history of China. Under the planned economy, strict manpower planning had eliminated all market elements in the labour structure. Reforms in the economy have led to unplanned manpower needs and to the possibility for work units to employ free manpower, and have also enabled individuals to lead a self-employed life. All these factors have tremendous impacts on education.
The manpower planning in the pre-reform years required a practice of "guaranteed allocation" (baofenpei) of graduates from all levels of the education system. Employment in the economic sense of the term was unknown to youths in China before the reforms. All they knew was fenpei (allocation). But over the last one and a half decades there has been a fundamental struggle to move away from allocation.
The first breakthrough occurred in 1980 when for the first time vocational schools emerged which catered for employment in the tertiary sector of the economy. Such employment opportunities were real jobs, outside of the state plan, and were indeed the very first buds of a labour market.
Similar schools were established for self employment when the latter was no longer seen as capitalist. In the mid 1980s such schools were the most popular, although they were still few in number.
The emerging labour market also had an impact on higher education, but mostly in the form of contract training where the institutions offered training courses in return for a fee. The trainees were, again, manpower beyond the state plan. Income from such courses forms only a small part the institutionsþ incomes, but the institutions were given unprecedented discretion over the use of this earned income. All these practices were endorsed by the 1985 Decision and became part of the reform.
Starting in the second half of the 1980s, the marketised sector of the total labour force began to grow and gain in significance. In the more developed urban centres, infrastructure such as housing and medical facilities for people employed through the jobs market began to become available. The insecurity hat had caused young people to hesitate before taking up free jobs gradually disappeared. Accordinly, non þallocatedþ work has become the more favoured option on graduation.
This has caused structural policy changes in education. The traditional, vocational schools which were meant to supply manpower to specific economic sectors (in the case of specialised schools) or even specific factories or enterprises (in the case of craftsmen schools) have gradually moved away from guaranteed allocation. Such schools are very glad to lose the burden of having to find jobs for each and every graduate, and the new, competitive situation has left them with few alternatives.
Universities are also moving very fast. Many in the late 1980s moved to what is known as "supply-and-demand face-to-face" exercises where graduates and potential employers interact in a kind of "careers fair."
This has now become normal practice in most institutions of higher education. A large percentage of graduates find jobs through such exercises and only the unlucky ones are left for state allocation, which still exists on a much reduced scale, partly to minimise unemployment and partly to cater for special manpower needs. In 1993 it became official government policy to phase out graduate allocation.
The changed employment situation of the graduates has also caused changes in the economics of higher education. With the phasing out of the planned economy and the diminishing role of the state, there is increasing reluctance on the part of the state to continue heavily subsidising of students. Fee charging has become a reality in many of the vocational schools.
However, the greatest impact has come from the announced national policy of phasing in fee paying for all higher education students. The level of fees is still under debate, and those who have already started charging are using different scales; but, before long, free higher education will become history.
The scene changes very rapidly. In matter of a few years, higher education institutions have to face the market on all fronts. The have to face the potential employers as clients, and become competitors in the labour market. They have to compete for students who have now become virtual consumers. Added to that, they have to compete for excellence in the "Project 211" which is a national endeavour to select the 100 best Universities for the 21st century. The last competition also bears resource implications.
Like decentralisation the market influence has allowed the fittest to excel, but has left the poor in difficulties. Regional disparity is again amazing. The labour market which has prevailed over all the coastal provinces is still rather primitive in the inner provinces. Partly, the state enterprises there are less developed and less ready to entertain and autonomous status. Partly the economy is less developed and free job seeking could easily mean massive unemployment. Doing away with "guaranteed allocation" is therefore still viewed with mixed feelings in the western provinces, in the cities, whereas in coastal provinces it is seen as long overdue. Project 211 has aroused enthusiasm only among the few elite institutions. Others worry that once the selection is over those not on the list may become more deprived.
Fee paying in higher education is even more controversial. Education in Chinese communities has ever been the sole means of social mobility. As such it never carried a price tag. Fee paying may deprive those from poor or rural families of higher education opportunities, and hence may change the general aspirations of parents towards education. This may affect the overall parental support of education. Moreover, whilst the proposed fees are generally seen as affordable by parents in the developed regions, they may prove formidable to many in the less developed regions.
The changes in China are dramatic, and education is no exception. The move away from rigidity and inefficiency is welcomed by all, and the general orientation towards decentralisation and flexibility met with few objections. But there are also far reaching ideological implications in the structural and policy changes outlined above. That individuals have value, that they are given a choice, that society rewards excellence and hard work, these are all important messages for younger generations; but Chinaþs educational reform process is also a case study in how efficiency is achieve at the expense of equity, and how excellence dis attained with the creation of disparity.