Reporter/Du Wei
On July 24, the "double reduction" policy landed, and the intensity was unprecedented. After the rectification of off-campus training, the long-elusive proposition of equalization of educational resources has also surfaced again. In recent years, the development of basic education in China has been accompanied by the pinch of public schools, the expansion of private education, and the continuous growth of off-campus training institutions.
How will the "double reduction" policy affect China's compulsory education, and where will private education go? On these issues, China News Weekly interviewed Yang Dongping, chairman of the 21st Century Education Research Institute and member of the National Education Advisory Committee.
Yang Dongping. Figure/New
School choice stems from uneven educational resources
China News Weekly: How do you evaluate off-campus training institutions, and is there a need for them to exist? Can the regulation and rectification of the education and training industry alleviate the anxiety of parents?
Yang Dongping: The development of off-campus training institutions in the mainland to today has far exceeded the original appearance of training institutions, which is not found in other countries and regions in the world. In recent years, due to the blessing of capital, the strength of domestic off-campus training institutions has surpassed that of many schools themselves, and the volume has become larger and larger, frantically pursuing profits. Educational activities that were originally derived from school education eventually rebelled against and kidnapped school education. The Government will have to be very determined to change this situation.
But normal extracurricular training has always been necessary, which includes two functions: one is to make up for the difference, and the other is to accompany. Many parents send their children to off-campus training institutions, not expecting him to learn anything, but just hoping that someone will accompany him to write his homework and pick him up when the parents leave work. In Taiwan, making up for errands, also known as remedial education, is an act of the government. The teacher first identifies how many latecomers in each class need to make up lessons. Two to three afternoons a week, the school will arrange for special teachers to tutor these students in addition to the daily teaching teachers. There is also a special education expenditure for the remuneration paid to teachers.
After the training institutions have been eliminated, will the anxiety of parents be eliminated? In fact, parents' anxiety is caused by school choice, and training institutions only amplify anxiety. As long as school choice exists, parents' anxieties cannot be solved. After the governance of off-campus training institutions, the problem returns to the public schools themselves. Whether or not we can achieve balanced development and fair enrollment of schools in the compulsory education stage is the key, and parents are still anxious if they cannot do it.
In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, there are no so-called famous schools in the compulsory education stage, which is required by compulsory education. Compulsory education itself means education without discrimination. Without the need for school choice, there is no extracurricular training. The balance of public schools is the first to solve all problems, and the imbalance of public resources is the crux of all the crux of China's education development.
China News Weekly: For many years, what is the crux of the difficulty of achieving equalization of educational resources in China?
Yang Dongping: Since the 1950s, China has implemented a key school system, and the public school system has formed a number of key schools. These key schools became illegal after the promulgation of the Compulsory Education Law in 1986, but the key schools in disguise have always existed, and in a sense, are still growing. From the perspective of the local government, it is also hoped that there will be a few decent schools that can be handed.
In another dimension, some children with family backgrounds attend such key schools, which is essentially a privileged education. There is a hierarchical school system in China, and the family background of students is very related to the school level. Interest classes are willing to maintain this system.
China News Weekly: What is the way and path to achieve the equalization of educational resources in the compulsory education stage?
Yang Dongping: The first is to enroll in the nearest school, which is definitely the most critical measure to balance student resources. In recent years, the order of the early years of the small ascension has been greatly improved, but the problem of school choice has not been completely solved.
I think that in the compulsory education stage, enrollment should be more open and transparent to ensure fairness and justice. As long as there is a trick, it is actually a blasphemy against compulsory education.
In addition to the source of students, there is also the problem of funding. In terms of public education allocations, every school enjoys an average student allocation, which is equal. But in fact, each school can also receive a part of the appropriation called special construction funds, the source of funding can be the Ministry of Education, or the urban areas. The amount of special funds is often very large, even far exceeding the average student allocation. In the allocation of education funds, we still have great injustices. In the United States and South Korea, if you want to apply for funding to start an innovative school, one principle is that the funding will be prioritized for rural areas and weak schools. In line with the concept of educational equity, resources should be skewed towards the weakest schools. In China, many times it is the resources that are inclined to key schools, and the icing on the cake will make key schools bigger and bigger.
Due to the tilt of funds, key schools can get more educational resources, can hire more special teachers, excellent teachers, and the treatment of teachers is much higher than that of ordinary school teachers. This brings us to the next problem, which is the obstacle to teacher mobility.
Private education should return to education itself
China News Weekly: Private education is also an important part of the national education system, how to evaluate the role and role played by private education in the past 40 years?
Yang Dongping: At the beginning of the development of private education, China positioned it as picking up the slack and filling in the gaps, that is, using social resources to expand educational resources and make up for the shortage of public education resources. Today, this task has been accomplished in large cities and developed coastal areas, where the role of private education has changed, and some private schools and public schools compete for students, resulting in a split in the basic education system. Some public schools have become spare tires for private schools, which is certainly unreasonable.
Among the private schools, there is a type of school called "public participation in the people", which refers to the private school run by the public school. Such a school is inherently illegal. Its operation mode is that public schools make profits through private schools, cross-district enrollment, and hold branches throughout the country, which is the relationship between Hengshui Middle School and Hengshui No. 1 Middle School, and the super middle school model created by Hengshui Middle School. This is also a direction for the country's current rectification.
On August 26, at taiping road primary school in Haidian District, Beijing, teachers sorted out and distributed the new semester's teaching materials. Photo/Xinhua
China News Weekly: Recently, education departments in many places issued a document to control the proportion of local private compulsory education within 5%. The newly promulgated "Regulations on the Implementation of the Civil Promotion Law" also stipulates that private high schools should mainly enroll students within the scope of the school, and can enroll students across regions if they meet the relevant regulations of the education administrative departments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government. What do you think about that?
Yang Dongping: First of all, let's talk about the 5% provision, which is equivalent to "slimming down" private education. We can compare and look at the proportion of private compulsory education in European countries, usually 3% to 7%, and Japan is 2%. Moreover, the scale of foreign private schools is very small, and they will not rely on capital support like domestic private schools, pursue large volumes for the purpose of listing, and form a competitive relationship with public schools. What it offers is a diverse and differentiated option.
However, it is unclear where the basis for the 5 per cent of the multi-site formulation came from. If the same ratio is set everywhere, it will certainly be simple and crude. Because the differences between places are very large, some places are the influx of foreign population, such as Dongguan, the volume of private education is very large, and in some places there are no private schools in the countryside, so the determination of the specific proportion of each place should grasp a general principle, but at the same time there is flexibility, and all localities can adjust according to the actual situation and have autonomy, rather than one-size-fits-all, directly shut down private schools.
As for the provisions on cross-district enrollment of private high schools in the Regulations on the Implementation of Civil Promotion, it is equivalent to making a certain compromise. But overall, the brutal inter-district enrollment process, as brutal as in the past, will be curbed, and such a shift will require a process. It is difficult to say how a super middle school like Hengshui Middle School will develop in the future, after all, it has become a brand in Hebei. My hope is that Hengshui Middle School and Hengshui No. 1 Middle School will gradually normalize and become two independent schools, cutting off the chain of binding enrollment and controlling the enrollment scale.
China News Weekly: Where will the future of private education in China go? You have also mentioned the education of large people, how to understand this concept and how to achieve it?
Yang Dongping: China's private education must get rid of the direction of capitalization and return to the essence of student-oriented education. But it's very difficult for us to achieve that. The threshold for running schools in our country is too high, and on the whole, the right to hold education in China has not been opened, which also makes it difficult for educators to run schools. Not long ago, I visited a private school, there are only about 200 students, which belongs to a small-scale school, but to meet the conditions for running a school and obtain a school qualification, it is necessary to invest 60 million yuan. In Denmark, any parent can run a school or kindergarten. The country's inclusive kindergartens are family-based and community-based, and can be legalized and financed by the government for more than 70% of the cost of running schools as long as they have enrolled 18 students and continued to run schools for more than a year. This is called sovereignty over the people and open education, which is also the essence of large private education. If China can allow parents and communities to organize small-scale schools independently, the diversification and innovative performance of Chinese education will be partially and effectively solved.
Judging from the experience of foreign basic education reform, another important reform is the institutional reform of public schools, which promotes them to become innovative schools. Just like the reform of charter schools in the United States, the reform of Korean innovative schools, and the taiwan experimental schools in Taiwan, the school's public nature is unchanged, and the Education Bureau and the school sign a contract to set certain reform goals and inspection periods. The school has the autonomy to run the school, do innovative experiments, and the Education Bureau evaluates it year by year to achieve the goal of continuing to run the school, otherwise the autonomy of running the school is taken back. The reform of the public school system has not yet been initiated Chinese mainland, but this is a trend that helps public schools to form their own vitality and diversity.
Skilled personnel should be cultivated at least in higher positions, not in middle jobs
China News Weekly: In the past two years, the examination has also aroused public discussion. The admission rate of the middle school entrance examination in many places is around 50%, which is called a lifetime examination. At the same time, at the national policy level, there are provisions on the general job ratio that is roughly equivalent, which is considered to be a 1:1 diversion of ordinary high school and middle vocational school for students at the high school level.
Yang Dongping: At different stages of development of education, the proportion of high levels of education is not the same. Before the 1990s, in most rural areas, the proportion of ordinary high schools was very low. A county is an ordinary high school, and only about 1/3 of the students can go to the general high school. By 2019, nationwide, the general job ratio at the high school level is roughly 6:4. However, the regions are different, with some northern provinces having a higher proportion of general high, more than 60%, and the southeast coastal areas being about 50%.
The reason for the difference may lie in the level of local economic development and the demand and absorption capacity of the market and industry for skilled talents. Therefore, the general job ratio is not simply a plan, the premise of requiring 1:1 is to see whether there are corresponding educational resources and jobs. Imposing a universal job ratio would further exacerbate the educational panic unless vocational education is done very well and has great appeal. Even if vocational education is developing well, it is not appropriate to use the general job ratio to regulate. Abroad, this proportion is naturally formed.
In the past two years, the number of secondary vocational enrollment has increased, in large part because of the opening of a 3+2 channel for secondary vocational education to college, that is to say, the increase in the number of applicants is for further education, not for employment. This also deviates from the original intention of guiding students to choose more vocational education.
At present, the level of secondary vocational education is very poor, and students cannot learn anything. From the perspective of industrial upgrading and development, middle vocational students are not in line with the demand, so the requirements for ordinary labor in the future should be high school graduation, including more skilled talents, which should be cultivated at the stage of higher occupation, rather than in the middle vocational.
As far as vocational education is concerned, a very basic premise must be run by enterprises and industries, rather than the education bureau, which can only run ordinary schools. Because the cost of running a vocational school is about three times that of a normal school. In the vast rural areas of central and western China, there is not enough education funds to run good vocational schools.
Local government educational behavior and evaluation are difficult to change in the short term
China News Weekly: Recently, people are still discussing whether high schools should be included in compulsory education, or the implementation of 10-year compulsory education.
Yang Dongping: This still involves the issue of education funding. The common understanding in the field of education is that if one year of compulsory education is to be extended, the first thing that should be extended is pre-school, that is, the first year of school is free, which is also a common practice throughout the world. Because the importance of preschool education and its overall social benefits are much higher than high school education.
China News Weekly: What do you think are the key points and key points of the next step of education reform, and what are the elements of the education ecology that need to be changed urgently?
Yang Dongping: China's education reform has two basic demands, the first is to solve the current hot and difficult points, the publicity of compulsory education, and the competition for small ascension and junior high school. Second, it is more important to innovate in education for the future. But at this stage, the first issue should be addressed first and limited targets should be set.
The first is the primary and kindergarten stages, and the issue of lower and upper secondary education should be placed second. Primary school teaching, in particular, involves the behaviour of millions of schools and teachers. The amount of homework is difficult to change by simply issuing documents, and the educational behavior and educational evaluation of local governments and schools are also difficult to change in a short period of time. Now many places are still grasping school rankings and promotion rates. Before this round of "double subtraction" policy, the last additional question in many primary school mathematics tests in Shanghai was the Olympic number question, and such an examination evaluation was to put pressure on parents to take their children to participate in off-campus training and learn ahead.
At this stage, in theory, there is no selective examination at the beginning of the small ascension, but the junior high school is still engaged in some tricks, so it is necessary to control the irregular behavior of the public junior high school. As far as high school education is concerned, in theory, with the decline in the birthrate of China and the increasing popularity of higher education, going to university is no longer a problem and can liberate most students.