China defines road map for becoming a learning society by 2020

In 1993, China’s Ministry of Education (MoE) published the “Outline for Education Reform and Development“  in which it announced to increase its annual budget to 4% of GDP by 2000. A glance at The National Bureau of Statistics‘ yearbook of 2001 reveals that China missed this ambitious target by about 30%.

Evidently not satisfied with the overall development of the education sector, China’s leaders sat down once more in 2009 to draft the new “National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020)” proposing to raise the 2012 educational budgetary bars to 4% of GDP, again. With the second and final public review of the education reform already closed and the reform paper being finalised, a closer look into what Chinese leaders aim to achieve with a projected educational budget of roughly 200 billion USD deems appropriate.

Guiding theme of China’s education reform 2010 to 2020 is to build the foundation for a learning society by modernising the current educational system in its entirety. Main goal for a modernised Chinese education system is to be able to surrender globally competitive human resources to the working world. Education reform will be carried out on all levels of education, namely, pre-school, compulsory, high school, vocational, higher, continuing, minority, and special education. The education reform program will be thoroughly overhauling the way education is delivered, examined and administered in China – across all educational levels.

Having learnt from past lessons, the reform agenda 2020 comprises built-in measures aiming to assure a successful and smooth reform implementation. Measures named in the final revision of the education reform paper revolve around cultivating existing and training new teachers, guaranteed funding over the whole term of education reform, the informatisation of the educational system, enforcing education management according to current law, and conducting pilots to test areas of education reform that require fundamental changes. The agenda also stresses the role international educators play during the reform process: not only does China want to further stipulate existing cooperation on higher education level, but it plans to pilot jointly-run schools across educational levels.

As with most official documents in China, clear answers to specific questions, such as to which extend cooperation with international educators will be encouraged and financially supported, are not given in about 80 pages of reform agenda so as to retain flexibility for incremental changes during the process of implementing the reform. However, we have extracted and listed below some of the most striking key words which could help international educators understand the basic concept of China’s education reform 2020 and derive opportunities for their engagement with China’s education sector during the decade ahead.

Reform on all educational levels

Pre-schools

• Guarantee universal access to pre-school education
• Make pre-school education integral part of urban and rural planning
• Encourage social participation and public-private-partnership
• Focus on development of rural pre-school education

Compulsory education

• Consolidate and enhance the level of nine-year compulsory education
• Migrant children’s education to be managed by the city governments and to be operated by full-time public schools ensuring equal access to compulsory education; improve the quality of compulsory education
• Reduce students’ academic burdens

High Schools

• Increase number of high school students
• Improve quality of high school education: conduct curriculum reform; promote research-based study, community service and social practice; develop education quality evaluation system; establish student development guidance system
• Diversify high school education: specialised courses

Vocational education

• Establish modern vocational education system which can adapt to economic changes and restructuring demands
• Quality improvements take priority
• Industry to provide guidance on how to operate schools
• Accelerate the development of vocational education in rural areas
• Improve vocational education: introduction of free secondary vocational education system; improve financial assistance to poor students

Higher education

• Accelerate the development of internationally renowned colleges and universities with a number of universities at or near the world-class level (programs 985 and 211)
• Improve quality of teaching
• Raise level of scientific research
• Further develop higher education for graduates to become more diversified; increase support for higher education in Central and Western regions; encourage the eastern regions to take the lead in the development of higher education

Continuing education

• Accelerate the development of continuing education and establish learning society
• Establish institutional mechanisms for continuing education
• Build a flexible and open system of lifelong education: Schools, research institutions, enterprises equally to participate; community educational institutions and network building; promote distance learning; promote communication among all levels of education

Minority education

• Improve level of education for minorities and in ethnic areas; Both central and local government to increase investment
• Promote bilingual education: local language and Chinese language
• Other provinces to support minorities and ethnic areas

Special education

• Improve overall quality of disabled students; Governments at all levels to include development of special education into economic and social development plan
• Improve special education system
• Improve safeguard mechanisms: the state government to develop basic educational standards for special education schools; local governments to improve standard for each student; increase investment; improve cultivation of teachers teaching disabled students; increase support for poor students; gradually implement free higher school education for disabled students

Thoroughly overhauling the way education is delivered, examined and administered

General education system

• Integrated development; everyone can become a talent; diversified talents; lifelong learning; systematic training
• Combine learning and thinking; Unify knowledge and practice; teach according to individuals’ needs
• Reform of education quality evaluation and personnel evaluation systems focusing on performance including character, knowledge, ability and other factors

Examination and enrolment systems

• Diversify admission systems
• Improve secondary school enrolment and examination system
• Improve higher education examination and enrolment system: introduce entrance examination according to level and broad field of education
• Improve examination information disclosure; strengthen government and community supervision

Building a modern school system

• Separation of government and schools: Establish self-management, democratic supervision and social participation
• Expand schools’ autonomy
• Improve modern university system: deans of colleges and universities to take overall responsibility; strengthen regulations; expand social cooperation; introduce academic program evaluation system
• Improve management system of primary and secondary schools: headmasters to take overall responsibility; expand schools’ autonomy; establish Parent Council
• Encourage cooperation between secondary vocational schools and enterprises

Setting up new schools

• Government to encourage industry to collaborate with public schools
• Support private education: clean up discriminating policies to improve the perception of private schools in public; public finance to provide support
• Government to supervise private schools

Operating existing schools

• Enforce segregation of duties
• Improve planning activities of provincial governments to develop policies suitable for different educational levels
• Reduce unnecessary administrative intervention from governments and move toward providing guidance to and supervision of public education
• Foster external education services to improve professional level of education

Education system internationalisation

• Strengthen international exchange and cooperation
• Introduce high-quality educational resources: Attract international schools, educational and research institutions and enterprises
• Mutual recognition of credits and degrees; exchange of teachers and students; Chinese schools to open overseas schools; improve scholarship mechanism; increase number of foreign students; strengthen cooperation with UNESCO and other international organisations

Measures assuring successful and smooth implementation of education reform

Cultivation of Teachers

• Further cultivation of Qualified Teachers
• Strengthen teachers’ morality
• Improve teachers’ professional level
• Improve teachers’ compensations
• Improve teacher evaluation system

Guaranteed funding

• Government main responsibility with other channels also providing funding
• Increase investment in rural, remote, poor areas and ethnic areas
• Improve the system of state-sponsored policy
• Reinforce funds management

Education informatisation

• Complete construction of digital education system covering both urban and rural areas
• Strengthen development and application of high-quality education resources; strengthen online teaching resources; strengthen application of information technology
• Establish a National Education Management Information System

Enforce education according to the law

• Improve legal system in education
• Enforce school administration according to law
• Promote school management according to the law by continuously improving both teachers’ and students’ law awareness
• Improve supervisory systems and accountability mechanisms: establish independent supervisory institutions; strict implementation of accountability system

Piloting reform activities

• Quality Education Pilot
• Compulsory education reform pilot
• Pilot of Vocational Education Model reform
• Pilot for building life-long education system
• Pilot of teaching graduates toward innovation
• Pilot for examination and enrollment system reform
• Modern university reform pilot
• Pilot for reforming the financing of education in rural areas

For more in-depth or segment-specific research on impacts of China’s education reform agenda 2020, please contact us directly.

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