China has no 3 separated tracks of schools like Germany, Chinese elementary and secondary education is a unified comprehensive system in a sequential phased manner, and it consists of primary school (Grade 1 to 5/6), junior high school (Grade 6/7 to 9) and senior high school (Grade 10 to 12), and all of them are whole-day schools. The education in primary school and junior high school together is called 9-year compulsory education that is guaranteed by “Compulsory Education Law of the People’s Republic of China” since 1986. It’s local government that decides to have 5-year primary school plus 4-year junior high school or 6-year plus 3-year. 5+4 or 6+3 is just the different division of school years, and it doesn’t differentiate much the knowledge in the same school year, or influence the system of knowledge that children must learn during the whole period of compulsory education. All the senior high schools in China are three-year whole-day schools.
In 1985, ‘The Decision of Chinese Communist Party Central Committee on the Reform of the Education System’ was enacted to set up the basic education management system, which is a system of multi-level management and local responsibility in the compulsory education, e.g. the Central Committee is only responsible for the basic education’s laws, policies, guidelines, and overall development planning, etc., and, the local governments have the administrative authority on the formulation and implementation of basic education’s specific policy, system, plan, and also on school management and inspection (Peng & Yao, 2014; Jin & Peng, 2016). However, that decision has transferred the responsibility of the compulsory education fund investment from the budget of the nation to the shoulder of local governments in counties and even villages, which not only increases the financial burden of rural areas, but also results in the lag-behind of education in rural areas and enlarges the gap between the cities and the rural areas (Peng & Yao, 2014).
The unbalanced development of education in China is actually a historical topic. As early as the beginning of the New China, in 1953 the State Council passed a resolution
‘The State Council’s Instructions on the Rectification and Improvement of Primary Education’, and made it clear that the focus of education development should be on the cities, which was confirmed again by the document issued in 1992 by the general office of the State Education Commission, as a result, the national fund investment and outstanding teacher resource mainly went to the cities, and the gap of compulsory education status between cities and the rural areas became larger and larger (Peng &
Yao, 2014).
In 2001 the county-based financial system started to be built up, which moved the educational investment burden from towns and villages to the counties, and changed the investment pattern of rural areas’ compulsory education that relied on the poor farmers’
educational fundraising and surcharges for a long time (Fan & Zhu, 2010). However, it didn’t make the situation better, for many counties are also very poor and have no ability to cover the input of basic education on their own, so, throughout the country the per-capita education investment is significantly different from city to countryside and from area to area.
In December 2005, the State Council started to bring the rural area’s compulsory education into the public financial security system with the fund investment from both
central and local governments, and the share proportions of central and local governments are different, e.g. 8:2 in the western region, 6:4 in the central region, and in the east China the local governments still play the main role and the central government only symbolically gives a little incentive support (Fan & Zhu, 2010). At the same time, the State Council also decided that, from 2006 on, the tuition and other fees at the stage of compulsory education in the western region would be eliminated, and in 2007 the middle and east areas of China also started to provide free compulsory education for children, but the public financial investment on education is still below the world average level (Fan & Zhu, 2010).
Chinese children also go to school at the age of 6 years old, and then after the primary school with an unselective examination they can directly go on with the study in junior high school, unless some children really need one year repeat in the primary school.
The compulsory education law of 1986 has stated that the local government should ensure that children go to the neighborhood school of their residence (Gai, 2013).
Therefore, in principle, Chinese parents are not allowed to breach the law to choose schools where they want to send their children, but they try all the ways to send their children to the top/key junior or senior high schools, because of the reality that schools are different in educational resources, and in those key schools there are the best teaching conditions, equipments and the best teachers.
The “key school” has to be traced back to 1959 when China expressly started to give priority to the development of some top/key primary and secondary schools in the cities, in order to provide the country construction more talents in a faster way with limited resources in all, and also to set up some good examples for other schools to follow, which had been confirmed many times in the various documents issued by the Ministry of Education till 1990s, but the result was most of the national and local educational resources went to those top schools, and the gap on the teaching conditions and teaching quality among schools and areas was further enlarged significantly (Peng &
Yao, 2014).
For example, in 1978, the Ministry of Education issued “the trial project on the implementation of a number of key primary and secondary schools” to declare that every level of governments and educational administrative departments should support the key schools in policy, finance and teachers, so that those school can get the
privilege in fund investment, faculty team and student enrollment (Jin & Peng, 2016).
However, in 1995, the State Education Commission decided to remove the “top/key”
from the school names, and the newly revised law on compulsory education of 2006 further declares that schools should not be named distinctively as key school and average school, but in fact till now they still exist especially at the stage of senior high school (Gai, 2013; Peng & Yao, 2014).
Because of the great imbalance of basic education development among different areas and unequal distribution of educational resources among schools, many rich and powerful parents would like to use their power or relationship to open the ‘back door’, or pay a big amount of school-choosing fee, or pay a lot more money for an apartment in the community of the key school to move their residence registration there, so that their children can go to that ‘good’ school (Gai, 2013). In recent years, the school-choosing phenomenon has become a social problem that cannot be ignored and has aroused extensive concern of the society in China, which has extended from big cities to small ones, and from senior high school to primary school even kindergarten (Gai, 2013).
Frankly speaking, besides the objective factors, the school-choosing problem has also been caused by the demand on the high-quality educational recourse among Chinese parents who believe good primary and secondary education is the only way leading to the higher education, for which they would like to pay any high price in exchange of the chance for their children to have the high-quality education (Gai, 2013). As a result, in the real estate market of some Chinese big cities in particular, there are some super expensive apartments near the top schools, which are called as ‘high-priced school district housing’, but fall short of demand in fact.
The students in junior high school have 2 big examinations, one is called graduation examination (Chinese name is Huikao), which is done in the last second school year, Grade 8, and the other is entrance examination for senior high school, which is also called Zhongkao, the final examination in the last year of junior high school, Grade 9.
The Huikao is much easier to pass than Zhongkao, but without passing the Huikao, students cannot go to senior high school even though they could pass Zhongkao. The Zhongkao is competitive, because it decides what kind of school the students can go further, the top/key senior high school, or the average/normal senior high school, or
vocational/technical school, it’s said that only a minority of students can continue the study in senior high school to prepare for higher education.
Similar to the junior high school, in senior high school, students also have 2 big examinations, graduation exam (Huikao), and the national college entrance examination (Gaokao). The Gaokao is just not an examination, but plays a so vital role that it has to be underlined here. Officially Gaokao was restored in 1977 just after the end of the 10-year devastating Cultural Revolution, and has been regarded as the most important examination in the whole education system of China. During the past about 40 years, there were more than 30 times of reforms or changes on the Gaokao’ system, which, however, haven’t changed the situation that the Gaokao score is still the only admission standard of the university, the only one exam decides the whole life of students (Zhang
& Huang, 2018).
In the study of Zhang and Huang (2018), they argue that the Gaokao is not only a tool of talent selection, but also a buffer to narrow the social class gap and reduce social conflicts, in some sense, Gaokao does help in the upward mobility of some social lower class, which, however, makes the Gaokao reforms wander all the time between the fairness and scientific nature, and never find a way out, for example, the policy makers and researchers stress the scientific nature of the Gaokao reform, but the social public and media highlight the opportunity equity that’s especially supported by the social lower class who believes the score is much more impartial than the quality, and also looks at the Gaokao as the only way to change the fates of their children.
Therefore, for the children from lower class, high Gaokao score means their success in the education competition with a big chance to get themselves a favorable position in the field of education, for which, however, they have to pay a big and inhumane price with the poor educational resources of rural areas to compete with those children surrounded by very rich resources in the cities (Zhang & Huang, 2018). It’s believed that Gaokao is a high-stake competition, which is not only related to the student’s personal destiny or future, but also closely connected with the performance of teacher, school and local educational administrative department and the matriculate quality of university as well, every party involved wants the maximum of interest and benefits, so that Gaokao is actually a very utilitarian test with highly anticipated concern from the whole society (Yuan, 2018).
Due to the increasingly fierce social competition and a huge population in China, the Gaokao becomes a single log bridge that millions of students want to cross at the same time, which gives students and teachers big pressure and pushes school education into
‘military training’ losing the values school should have (Huang & Wu, 2018). There is a score of Gaokao as a minimum passing score, but considering the big differences on teaching conditions and student quality in different areas, the passing score of Gaokao is also different from province to province, in order to make the exam relatively fair and equal, and then those students in the poor rural areas can also have the opportunity to be admitted to the college (Yuan, 2018).
Normally in China the Normal universities are committed to educating students to be teachers in the future, but the students there can also choose jobs in other fields after graduation. The Normal universities have the same 4-year scholastic year system as other comprehensive universities for example. Most of the Normal universities provide students one-semester educational internship in the last second semester, the 7th semester, in the partnership schools of primary and secondary education, but some universities do it in the 6th semester, so that in the last academic year the students can prepare for the entrance examination of Master’s programs, and have more time to finish the thesis and look for other jobs instead of being teachers.
The university is in charge of contacting with and sending the students to the partnership schools for the internship and arranging supervisors from the university to work with tutoring teacher from the partnership schools to supervise and evaluate the internship. The university has to pay partnership schools for the involvement in the internship, and the schools are provided by the local educational administrative departments who, however, don’t provide financial support. After graduation, the students who want to become teachers must take part in the teacher qualification examination to get the teacher certificate, and then they can decide which cities they want to stay and apply for the cities’ teacher recruitment examination.
The teacher recruitment examination is organized by the province-level educational administrative departments, but the cities can choose to participate or have their own examination. The students, who have Bachelor’s degree or above graduating from other universities, not the Normal universities, can also get the teacher certificate if they pass
the teacher qualification examination, and then with the certificate, they can also apply for the teacher recruitment examination to be teachers.
Of course, the students graduating from the Normal universities have more advantages in the exams, for they are prepared with special courses, skill training and internship in teaching. But as long as students pass the teacher recruitment examination that mainly includes theory test and skill interview, they can become teachers whose salaries are not lower than the average salary of local civil servants, which has been guaranteed by the teachers’ law of the People’s Republic of China (Fan & Zhu, 2010).