Inside the Modern Dragon
China: A 21st Century Engine of Change
"Education Systems Compared: The U.S. and Chinese Public Schools”
By Patricia Mohr @
IV. Systemic Inequities
Due to the uneven financing, neither China nor the United States provides adequate and equitable access to public schools. In both cases, inequities reflect broader socioeconomic disparities.
In China, the fault line falls along geographical lines. Urban schools along the East Coast and in the Eastern Inland areas generally provide higher quality services to students while rural schools, particularly in the Central and Western regions, struggle just to provide basic services. As a result, many schools raise needed revenue by charging students tuition or fees for books, food, uniforms and housing. These fees force rural families to devote as much as a quarter of their annual income for education. However, some suggest that the current situation is better than it was during the 1990s, when educational expenses were especially high for families due to the government’s decrease in spending.
What is strikingly clear is that the urban-rural divide in China’s educational system mirrors the country’s economic gap between urban industrial- and service-based workers and rural agrarian workers. Best-selling author Ted Fishman described the situation as a longstanding pattern stemming from central government public policies. He likens the historic pattern to South African apartheid, American Jim Crow laws, and European exploitation of minorities in ghettos. In a similar vein, the U.S. system of relying on local property taxes to finance schools produces an uneven funding pattern, which solidifies existing geographic income disparities. Though public schools in the United States do not charge tuition, the quality of teaching and service varies greatly from district to district and from state to state. The sharpest gaps lie between suburban and urban schools and between white and ethnic students.
Both countries are trying to address systemic inequities. With the 2001 passage of NCLB, U.S. politicians introduced a range of reforms meant to close the achievement gap between white and minority students. While the effect of that law is debatable, some studies suggest that the achievement gap is narrowing as educational outcomes improve for all races of students. Other studies indicate that persistent problems of parity remain within the U.S. education system. For example, a 2009 report published by the Educational Testing Service said minority and low-income students are less likely than their white peers to be taught by teachers certified in the subjects they teach.
As for China, government officials emphasize their efforts over the past two decades to address educational inequalities. The 1986 Compulsory Education Law mandated that all children would be required to attend nine years of schooling beginning at age 7. This schooling was to be free of tuition charges and fees for all children. The law was “compulsory” in that all local governments would be responsible for (1) providing education services to all school-age children and adolescents; and for (2) admonishing or criticizing parents and guardians who do not send their children to school.
The law produced positive results. The nationwide dropout rate fell from a high of 13.16 percent in 1990 to 2.68 percent in 2000, and the average number of years children spent in school increased from 6.25 years to 7.6 years. The law also had a tangible impact on learning outcomes. Specifically, the youth literacy rate increased to 99.3 in 2007 from 94.3 percent in 2000 while the adult literacy rate jumped to 93.3 percent from 77.8 percent in the same period. The high literacy rate in comparison to other developing countries gave China a “crucial advantage in attracting foreign investment in manufacturing.”
Source: UNESCO
V. Gender Parity
China has also made significant advances in providing services on an equitable basis to males and females. China’s gender parity index (GPI) for primary and secondary education in 2006 was 0.999—a near perfect GPI score. That compares with a U.S. GPI score of 1.001. Looking at the index for post-secondary schooling, it becomes clear that China provides services on a more gender-equal basis than in the United States, where males are less likely than females to enroll in tertiary schools. (See Chart 3.)
Source: UNESCO
In spite of these improvements, China’s 1986 law fell short of its promise to provide free education. Many rural schools still lacked the necessary public funding to operate without charging fees. Where illiteracy remained, it remained in the less-developed western and central regions. Moreover, in addition to the lack of resources, rural schools tended to have a higher student-teacher ratio and poorer quality of teachers than urban schools.
By the mid-2000s, the central government started prioritizing equity in education for the first time in the country’s modern history. While China’s previous five-year national plans had focused on the objective of “building a well-off society,” the 11th Five-Year plan emphasized the pursuit of a harmonious society that invests in its people. The new emphasis stemmed from leaders’ concerns that rapid development would lead to disparities between rich and poor citizens, East and West regions, and urban and rural communities. Leaders hoped to spread development gain, in part, by investing more central funds in rural education.
VI. Growing Federal Roles
Following the Chinese government’s 2005 announcement of its 11th Five-Year Plan, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to completely eliminate school fees and tuition charges in rural communities. In his 2006 report on governmental spending to the National People's Congress, Wen said the central government provided subsidies to the Western region to support compulsory education and to repair and rebuild school buildings. Furthermore, he added that the central and local governments would increase spending to reduce the annual financial burden of education by 140 yuan per student and on junior middle school students by 180 yuan. Overall government spending on education increased for 2006 by 19.6 percent over the previous year while central government spending increased by 41.7 percent over the previous year.
Wen said the new mechanism for incorporating rural compulsory education into the public finance system shows that China is making “profound changes” to its system of delivering public goods to rural areas.” The official news reports of his announcement suggested the government reforms would have a significant impact on rural education. One report said the new financing method would guarantee that students in rural areas would have access to free, compulsory education, thus relieving as many as 150 million households from school fees and tuition. The true impact of these reforms, however, remains to be seen due to the ongoing charges of school fees on rural families.
VII. Size and Scope of Schooling
Perhaps China’s greatest challenge is serving such a large population with limited resources. According to UNESCO figures for 2008, China’s 1.3 billion inhabitants include more than 400 million school-aged youth. In effect, says Chen Xiaoya, China’s vice minister for Basic Education at the Chinese Ministry of Education, China educates “20 percent of the world’s students with only 2 percent of the world’s educational resources.” Rural students make up most of the student population. Although estimates vary, they suggest that rural students account for somewhere between 67 percent to 80 percent of the school-age population. By comparison, the U.S. school-aged population is just shy of 100 million.
Table 6. School Age Population China United States Source: UNESCO. Data pulled April 20, 2009. |
The difference in size of the population might help explain the difference between the countries’ compulsory education requirements. The Chinese government requires nine years of primary and secondary education, while the U.S. government recommends 12 years of schooling. It is important to point out, however, that the actual difference in the number of years students attend primary and secondary school is not large. On average, Chinese students spend 10.09 years attending primary and secondary school, while U.S. students spend 11.51 years in school.
The reason for the small difference is that U.S. high schools have a dropout rate that hovers near 10 percent. Although that number has decreased over time, minority students are far more likely than white students to drop out of school. It is also significant from a comparative perspective is that the average number of years in school increased for Chinese students but decreased for U.S. students. When one includes tertiary schooling, however, the averages for both countries increased.
Table 6. School-life expectancy: Primary to Secondary
Source: UNESCO Table 7. School-life expectancy, total (including tertiary)
Source: UNESCO |
The increase in tertiary schooling reflects the fact that education is viewed in both countries and around the world as an essential tool for preparing workforces for higher-paying and higher-valued jobs. By 2004, China eclipsed the United States as the country that enrolls and graduates the highest number of tertiary students. The fact that many of those graduates majored in science and engineering caused a major stir among U.S. researchers, whom view those fields as being essential to future economic growth.
Table 9. Tertiary Graduates (in millions)
Source: UNESCO |
Incidentally, private schools make up more than a tenth of China’s tertiary school market as well as a significant portion of other levels of schooling. Although beyond the scope of this paper, private schools in both countries are testing grounds for new innovations in education. Further examination is needed to determine how private educators are facilitating the policy goal of investing in human capital.
VIII. Conclusion: Many Commonalities
In conclusion, it appears that the U.S. and Chinese school systems have more in common than meets the eye. It is interesting that the federal governments of both countries are stepping up efforts to invest in schools and expanding their authority to determine what educational outcomes their countries need. This subject could be further examined to illustrate how countries’ top leaders are incorporating education into their economic development plans. Further research could also explore ways schools are preparing students for the knowledge-based economy.
Still no discussion about policy goals is complete until one can assess the outcomes of those goals. Unfortunately, it is difficult to compare the educational outcomes between Chinese and U.S. schools because Mainland China does not participate in the two primary international tests measuring student knowledge—the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS). It would be helpful to have statistical data from the PISA and TIMSS in assessing the relative strengths of the educational systems. This would facilitate research on science and mathematical teaching methods—an area of particular interest for policymakers in both countries. U.S. and Chinese education leaders could learn from each other’s experiences, especially in regards to financing education and in establishing policy goals that meet 21st Century workforce needs.
About this Project
This is a web-based journalism project about modern China—a country undergoing massive industrialization and technological change. [Read more...]
