Gradual breakthrough in education reform with the process of urbanization

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Editor’s note: 2018 marks 40 years of China’s reform and opening-up, during which the country has witnessed a giant leap in education. Wang Yan, a senior specialist at the National Institute of Educational Sciences, assesses the phenomenal progress in a five-part series. Below is the second part.

Economic growth in China is accompanied by the process of urbanization when the layout, size, and structure of cities, towns, and rural communities begin to change.

In this process, large numbers of schools are established, merged and closed. As a result, the layout and structure of schools changes gradually, as well as the approaches and strategies for educational governance.

Over the past four decades, the mega-cities, big cities, and medium-cities, have all increased with the expanding boundaries of the cities, and many original suburban areas and rural areas are merged into cities.

Migrant workers flood into the cities, and the rural population, as well as school children in rural areas, has declined. This has changed the layout of schools in rural and urban areas.

China's urbanization has made rural workers flood into cities./ VCG Photo

Typically, the number of schools in urban areas has increased substantially. For example, Zhengzhou the capital city of Henan province with 10 million residents, has witnessed the establishment of 30 new schools each year.

Meanwhile, rural-urban migration has left fewer students and smaller schools in rural areas behind, making survival for some of those schools hard.

For example, a township high school may have only 200 teachers and students, while a village-based school may have only one principal, one teacher, and several students. Some rural schools even have to be closed.

All these factors have to be taken into account when local governments make plans for educational reform and school development.

The percentage of migrant children of the total enrollment has kept on rising. In some cities, the number of migrant children account for 50 percent of a school's annual intake.

With around 300 students in 1991, the Zhucun Primary School in Xuancheng, Anhui Province now has only 1 student left. June 22, 2018./ VCG Photo

Compared with increasing access, it is even more challenging to share the limited quality of educational resources among a larger pool of students and schools in cities.

Traditionally, the urban residential registration (or hukou) is a precondition for enrolling in public schools. Now, many places have removed restrictive hukou regulations and have given migrant children the same entitlement as urban residents.

Another experiment aimed for better equality is the mobility of quality educational resources within a region. This will see a certain proportion of teachers rotate among different schools.

There are also pilot “school districts”, i.e. one high-performing school is designated as the leading school to guide the administration and teaching skills of schools in the same neighborhood.

As recruitment of teachers is often restricted by the quota, many schools do not have a sufficient number of teachers. So some educational bureaus allow schools to hire new teachers on a contract basis to fill up the gap.

Staff from Longhui Human Resources and Social Security Bureau in Shaoyang, Hunan Province are identifying personal information of those who have applied for jobs as teachers./ VCG Photo

In some cities, education departments have also established partnerships with other departments to resolve various resources issues.

For example, in Wuhan, the government once signed a contract with a public bus company to arrange transportation for students from areas with fewer schools to areas with more schools.

These reforms have resolved some of the problems of education development in the process of urbanization. However, the concentration of quality education resources in mega-cities and average cities is still making more people leave the rural areas.

In order to make a more balanced development in education, the government has established more schools in small cities, townships, and rural communities, so that students there can enjoy the same educational opportunities.

Yet the whole issue is linked with the overall improvement of infrastructure and the environment in rural areas. Balanced rural and urban developments will inevitably be achieved through a holistic scheme with a perspective of sustainable development.