CHINA, NATIONAL, SOCIETY, EDITORIAL: Education Westward
By Li Mu (Lianne)
For the country's 160 million rural students receiving their 9-year compulsory education, nothing would induce more bitter happiness than the central government's recent promise of financing incidental school fees within two years. For over twenty years, poor families and deficient-budget county governments have been paying for the tuition-free compulsory education out of their mean pockets, with the students suffering the lack of teachers and poor educational environments.
"The state's policy of dealing with compulsory education in rural areas is like bidding a horse run while forbidding it to eat any grass," commented a recent visitor to an on-line education forum. Since 1985, a decision to reform the education system by the central government has laden responsibility for basic education upon the local counties. The law merely defined free compulsory education as the provision of tuition and stipend by the central government, leaving to the local governments, which turn in most of their tax revenues to the state, a cumbersome burden on their tight budgets.
To help the local governments finance two thirds of the nation's primary and junior high schools, the law on implementing compulsory education passed in 1990 further allowed schools to collect incidental fees, which later became one of the major expenditures of peasants' yearly income. A conservative estimation noted that different incidental fees and funds collected from peasants across the country during the past decade amounts to at least 150 billion RMB.
Surging national complaints drew the government's attention to eliminating "exactions of fees," but without success. At a NPC meeting on March 5th, Premier Wen Jiabao promised that the state will finance incidental fees and provide free textbooks and boarding stipends for all rural students by 2007. But the ministry of finance was even more ambitious. Minister Jin Renqin told the public on November 16th that the government should provide for all rural students within the next year, 3 years ahead of the agenda of the ministry of education.
"The statement articulates the government's preparation to take on a burden of at least 20 billion RMB on its yearly revenue," says Zhang Yulin, a professor of sociology at Nanjing University. Yet the effort should have been made 5 years ago. According to the Outline of the Reform and Development of Education in China issued in 1993, the government should invest more than 4% of the GNP in education by the end of 20th century, yet that goal hasn't been met.
But even if all the rural students are spared any payment for school, they are still far from being better educated. Implementing free compulsory education is not a simple matter of providing subsidies for books and boarding. Over 70% of the rural education budget consists of teacher's wages unsupported by the state. Although the law granted them the same benefits as civil servants, many teachers receive low wages or have payments in arrears. In some poverty-stricken areas, they are not even treated as teachers.
The public schools in these areas rely on low-paid unqualified probation teachers for education because of the lack of standard teachers and the budget for standard wages in counties. In some of the poorest areas, probation teachers are paid 40 RMB monthly. With the wage of a standard teacher, 20 probation teachers can be hired, the local authority explains, as it is impossible for them to hire standard teachers out of their deficient budget when no help from the state is forthcoming.
According to statistics, there are over 32 thousand probation teachers educating a million students in villages across Gansu Province alone. They have no benefits aside from their monthly salary averaging 200 RMB. Across the nation, the number of probation teachers is estimated at over 500 thousand, educating at least 10 million rural students.
Many of these teachers are far behind the requirements of competence. Most of them are without a college degree and any training in teaching, but are required to teach classes that can be as large as 200 students because of the unavailability of teachers. In the end, the students have to pay their youth to the failures of education.
Education theories say that education involves community, family and school. In the west, rural students find themselves born in inadequately cultured families and communities without libraries, museums, laboratories and intellectual influences, and the only hope they can cling to is the education provided by public schools. And it's in such public schools that they find it impossible to compete with urban students who enjoy better facilities and faculties in the east.
It has been a long ignored fact that the education problem in rural areas of the west lies not only with the students, but also with the teachers. Aside from the failure of providing them standard wages and promotions that strangle their enthusiasm, there are no training programs to boost their teaching skills, which drags the development of education years behind that of the east.
In his address to the fifth high-level group meeting on EFA UNESCO, Premier Wen Jiabao stated that China is concerned about setting up a system that provides better training and benefits to teachers. He also promised that the central government would ensure the financing of their wages.
The west is waiting for the realization of these promises.
For the country's 160 million rural students receiving their 9-year compulsory education, nothing would induce more bitter happiness than the central government's recent promise of financing incidental school fees within two years. For over twenty years, poor families and deficient-budget county governments have been paying for the tuition-free compulsory education out of their mean pockets, with the students suffering the lack of teachers and poor educational environments.
"The state's policy of dealing with compulsory education in rural areas is like bidding a horse run while forbidding it to eat any grass," commented a recent visitor to an on-line education forum. Since 1985, a decision to reform the education system by the central government has laden responsibility for basic education upon the local counties. The law merely defined free compulsory education as the provision of tuition and stipend by the central government, leaving to the local governments, which turn in most of their tax revenues to the state, a cumbersome burden on their tight budgets.
To help the local governments finance two thirds of the nation's primary and junior high schools, the law on implementing compulsory education passed in 1990 further allowed schools to collect incidental fees, which later became one of the major expenditures of peasants' yearly income. A conservative estimation noted that different incidental fees and funds collected from peasants across the country during the past decade amounts to at least 150 billion RMB.
Surging national complaints drew the government's attention to eliminating "exactions of fees," but without success. At a NPC meeting on March 5th, Premier Wen Jiabao promised that the state will finance incidental fees and provide free textbooks and boarding stipends for all rural students by 2007. But the ministry of finance was even more ambitious. Minister Jin Renqin told the public on November 16th that the government should provide for all rural students within the next year, 3 years ahead of the agenda of the ministry of education.
"The statement articulates the government's preparation to take on a burden of at least 20 billion RMB on its yearly revenue," says Zhang Yulin, a professor of sociology at Nanjing University. Yet the effort should have been made 5 years ago. According to the Outline of the Reform and Development of Education in China issued in 1993, the government should invest more than 4% of the GNP in education by the end of 20th century, yet that goal hasn't been met.
But even if all the rural students are spared any payment for school, they are still far from being better educated. Implementing free compulsory education is not a simple matter of providing subsidies for books and boarding. Over 70% of the rural education budget consists of teacher's wages unsupported by the state. Although the law granted them the same benefits as civil servants, many teachers receive low wages or have payments in arrears. In some poverty-stricken areas, they are not even treated as teachers.
The public schools in these areas rely on low-paid unqualified probation teachers for education because of the lack of standard teachers and the budget for standard wages in counties. In some of the poorest areas, probation teachers are paid 40 RMB monthly. With the wage of a standard teacher, 20 probation teachers can be hired, the local authority explains, as it is impossible for them to hire standard teachers out of their deficient budget when no help from the state is forthcoming.
According to statistics, there are over 32 thousand probation teachers educating a million students in villages across Gansu Province alone. They have no benefits aside from their monthly salary averaging 200 RMB. Across the nation, the number of probation teachers is estimated at over 500 thousand, educating at least 10 million rural students.
Many of these teachers are far behind the requirements of competence. Most of them are without a college degree and any training in teaching, but are required to teach classes that can be as large as 200 students because of the unavailability of teachers. In the end, the students have to pay their youth to the failures of education.
Education theories say that education involves community, family and school. In the west, rural students find themselves born in inadequately cultured families and communities without libraries, museums, laboratories and intellectual influences, and the only hope they can cling to is the education provided by public schools. And it's in such public schools that they find it impossible to compete with urban students who enjoy better facilities and faculties in the east.
It has been a long ignored fact that the education problem in rural areas of the west lies not only with the students, but also with the teachers. Aside from the failure of providing them standard wages and promotions that strangle their enthusiasm, there are no training programs to boost their teaching skills, which drags the development of education years behind that of the east.
In his address to the fifth high-level group meeting on EFA UNESCO, Premier Wen Jiabao stated that China is concerned about setting up a system that provides better training and benefits to teachers. He also promised that the central government would ensure the financing of their wages.
The west is waiting for the realization of these promises.
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