"Comments" Super Middle School illegal enrollment was suspended for one year, is it really a heavy blow to governance?

The author | 21st Century Education Research Institute Xiong Bingqi

Recently, the Education Bureau of Taocheng District of Hengshui City issued an announcement that Taocheng Middle School (Junior High School) illegally enrolled students and ordered the 2022-2023 school year to stop enrollment at the junior high school stage for one year.

Some people say that this is the real governance of the education department, and this so-called "largest in the country" junior high school has suffered heavy "losses" as a result.

However, further investigation by the media found that there are still parents who buy houses near this junior high school, and some school teachers said that there is nothing to lose when the school has stopped recruiting for one year, because this year's "multi-recruit" students are equivalent to "recruiting" next year's students.

It can be seen that only the penalty of suspension of enrollment for one year for illegal enrollment has not been "really moved".

The real "hard fist" treatment of "moving the real character" is to dismiss all students who have enrolled students in violation of the law, and to include the enrollment of private junior high schools in the unified enrollment of "XiaoshengChu", strictly in accordance with the rated enrollment plan. Further, the scale of private schools should be strictly controlled within the standards for the scale of running schools stipulated by the state and localities.

Some self-media have calculated an account for this suspension of recruitment, and the annual tuition fee of each student is 32,000 yuan, and 5,000 students is 160 million yuan. This will have a great impact on the running of schools.

According to reports, the school enrolled about 5,000 students on the first day of the New Year, about 6,000 last year, and increased to more than 9,000 this year. The enrollment scale approved by the education department is about 5,000 people.

If you only stop enrollment for one year next year, you may continue to expand enrollment in violation of the law the following year, and you will not really take the suspension of enrollment seriously.

Only to make a suspension of recruitment penalties, but not to withdraw illegal enrollment students, the education department has its own "bitterness" - because this will be opposed by parents, but also questioned to affect the school-age students to receive compulsory education.

Schools that enroll students in violation of the law have taken this aim at this point, carried out super-large-scale enrollment, and mobilized the parents of students who could not successfully register their student status to "pressure" the Ministry of Education to register for student status. This is the use of illegal enrollment to "kidnap" the education authorities.

The fundamental reason for this situation is that the local education authorities did not strictly implement the enrollment regulations during the enrollment period, supervise the enrollment behavior of private schools, resulting in early enrollment and super-large-scale enrollment of private schools, and then rectify after the recruited students have enrolled, which is actually to condone this kind of illegal enrollment.

The existence of super-large-scale junior high schools reflects that the local education department has not governed education according to law. The "Basic Standards for Running Compulsory Education Schools in Hebei Province (Trial)" issued in 2011 stipulates that the scale of junior high schools is generally controlled at 12-30 teaching classes; the class size of junior high schools generally does not exceed 50 people. In other words, the maximum size of a junior high school is 1500 people. In 2017, the Ministry of Education issued the "Measures for the Supervision and Evaluation of the High-quality and Balanced Development of Compulsory Education at the County Level", which stipulates that the scale of primary and junior high schools shall not exceed 2,000 people, and the scale of compulsory education in nine-year consistent schools and twelve-year consistent schools shall not exceed 2,500 people. This supervision and evaluation method of the Ministry of Education also fully takes into account the actual situation of various localities and appropriately "relaxes" the standards.

A junior high school recruits 5,000 students per year and 15,000 students in three years, which is 10 times the scale of junior high schools in Hebei Province! Allowing such a large-scale junior high school to exist has not achieved the goal of governing education according to law. The reason behind this is that local governments have not fulfilled their responsibility for compulsory education investment, and at the same time have the pursuit of building academic achievements, and conniving at the super-large scale of private schools to enroll students in advance and across regions. It not only reduces the government's investment responsibility for private education, but also develops the "education economy" and creates academic achievements.

This year, the State Office of the CPC Central Committee issued the "Opinions on Regulating the Development of Private Compulsory Education", clarifying that the state holds compulsory education, ensuring the public welfare attributes of compulsory education, running a strong public compulsory education, promoting the full implementation of the party's education policy in private compulsory education schools, strengthening standardized management and standardizing school-running behavior in accordance with the law, and building a good educational ecology. The opinion proposes that the proportion of students in private compulsory education should be controlled within 5%.

All localities should strictly implement the opinions, implement the main responsibility of the government for the development of compulsory education, and standardize the operation of private compulsory education schools, no longer have super-large-scale schools, and control the scale of all private primary schools and junior high schools below 2,000 people. Like hengshui, this junior high school, the annual enrollment scale must be reduced from 5,000 people to about 10%, which is to implement the state's regulations and fully govern education according to law.