Is education in China free?
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In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011. However, there remains an inequality in education spending. In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204. Free compulsory education in China consists of primary school and junior secondary school between the ages of 6 and 15. In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education. By 2007, there were 396,567 primary schools, 94,116 secondary schools, and 2,236 higher education institutions in China.
China
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Education in China is a state-run system of public education run by the Ministry of Education. All citizens must attend school for at least nine years, known as the nine-year compulsory education, which is funded by the government. Compulsory education includes six years of primary education, starting at age six or seven, and three years of junior secondary education (junior middle school) for ages 12 to 15. Some provinces may have five years of primary school but four years for junior middle school. After junior middle school, there are three years of senior middle school, which then completes the secondary education.
Education in China
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Tuition-free primary education is, despite compulsory education laws, still a target rather than a realized goal throughout China. As many families have difficulty paying school fees, some children are forced to leave school earlier than the nine-year goal.
Education in China
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CORE was a consortium of universities that began with 26 IET Educational Foundation member universities and 44 China Radio and TV Universities, with a total enrollment of 5 million students. It aimed to provide Chinese universities with free and easy access to global open educational resources and provides the framework for Chinese-speaking universities to participate in the shared, global network of advanced courseware with MIT and other leading universities.
China Open Resources for Education
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As a further example of the government's commitment to nine-year compulsory education, in January 1986 the State Council drafted a bill passed at the Fourteenth Session of the Standing Committee of the Sixth National People's Congress that made it illegal for any organization or individual to employ youths before they had completed their nine years of schooling. The bill also authorized free education and subsidies for students whose families had financial difficulties.
Education in China
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In 1986, the Compulsory Education Law mandated that every child is given the right to nine years of free public education: six years of elementary school and three years of secondary school.
Disability in China
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Under the Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education, primary schools were to be tuition-free and reasonably located for the convenience of children attending them; students would attend primary schools in their neighborhoods or villages. Parents paid a small fee per term for books and other expenses such as transportation, food, and heating. Previously, fees were not considered a deterrent to attendance. Under the education reform, students from poor families received stipends, and state enterprises, institutions, and other sectors of society were encouraged to establish their own schools. A major concern was that scarce resources be conserved without causing enrollment to fall and without weakening of the better schools. In particular, local governments were told not to pursue middle-school education blindly while primary school education was still developing, or to wrest money, teaching staff, and materials from primary schools.
Education in China
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China could not afford a heavy investment, either ideologically or financially, in the education of a few students. Since 1978 China's leaders have modified the policy of concentrating education resources at the university level, which, although designed to facilitate modernization, conflicted directly with the party's principles. The policies that produced an educated elite also siphoned off resources that might have been used to accomplish the compulsory nine-year education more speedily and to equalize educational opportunities in the city and the countryside. The policy of key schools has been modified over the years. Nevertheless, China's leaders believe an educated elite is necessary to reach modernization goals. Corruption has been increasingly problematic for rural schools. Because the educational funding is distributed from the top down, each layer of bureaucracy has tended to siphon off more than its share of funding, leaving too little for the bottom rural level.
Education in China
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December 1, 1927, Republic Daily published, Chinese rural education movement spot which is edited by Tao Xingzhi and translated by Zhang Zonglin. This is a report sent by the Chinese representative to the World Education Conference in Canada. The editorial emphasizes that rural education in China is a major event for one-fifth of the world's population, but the situation of rural education in China is not satisfactory. To this end, China Education Improvement Society has formulated a plan to transform rural education in China, ready to be phased in three stages. The report elaborates on the details of this plan and introduces the situation of carrying out rural education campaigns in Xiaozhuang, Nanjing.
Chinese Education Improving Institute
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Few educational institutions serve special needs students. As of 2008, 1640 institutions specifically serve disabled people, with forty-six thousand teaching staff spread across those institutions.
In China, students with disabilities are usually separated from typical classrooms and placed in schools dedicated to special education. The first school dedicated to students with disabilities in China was established in 1987 in the city of Beijing. Currently this school has 60 staff members who teach more than 200 children in 17 classrooms. The school provides professional development and resource centers and an intensive diagnostic and training center for 3- and 4-year-olds with autism, as well as special education classes for school-age children". The school is described as being very academic however the students are involved in active activities and plenty of one on one time with their instructors. The school also recruits students from all around China due to the scarcity of special education schools across the country. Segregation in education is what is typically seen within special education in China, however China has begun to adopt the idea of classroom inclusion which has proven to be beneficial in other nations who have adopted the method. Although this strategy is fairly new in China it has already shown positive results “Between 1987 and 1996, the school entrance rate of students with disabilities rose from 6% to 60%, and a large majority of these students were in general education classrooms.” Meaning students with special needs are being placed in typical classrooms with specialized instruction being given to students who have varying needs.
Special education in China
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During the process of securing an Olympics bid from the International Olympics Committee (IOC), China promised to improve its human rights record. Wang Wei, head of the bid committee was quoted saying, "We are confident that the Games coming to China not only promote our economy but also enhance all social conditions, including education, health and human rights." However, China largely failed to improve its human rights abuses and major news sources around the world criticised both the Chinese government for failing to fulfil its promise and the IOC for not being more discerning in its choice for the 2008 Olympics. Activists argued that China’s human rights violations were incompatible with the spirit of the Olympic Games.
Free Tibet
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Senior secondary education often refers to three years of high school (or called senior middle school) education, as from grade 10 to grade 12. Normally, students who have finished six years of primary education will continue three more years of academic study in middle schools as regulated by the Compulsory education law at the age of twelve. This, however, is not compulsory for senior secondary education, where junior graduates may choose to continue a three-year academic education in academic high schools, which will eventually lead to university, or to switch to a vocational course in vocational high schools.
Education in China
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In the drive to spread vocational and technical education, regular secondary-school enrollments fell. By 1986 universal secondary education was part of the nine-year compulsory education law that made primary education (six years) and junior-middle-school education (three years) mandatory. The desire to consolidate existing schools and to improve the quality of key middle schools was, however, under the education reform, more important than expanding enrollment.
Education in China