Popularize high school education and press the ＂fast forward button＂
When the bell rings in 2020, we stop to look back at the second decade of the 21st century, and October 18th, 2017 is bound to make many Chinese unforgettable.
On this day, General Secretary of the Supreme Leader once again made it clear in the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China that it is necessary to "popularize high school education and strive to make every child enjoy a fair and quality education".
This means that in order to build a powerful country of human resources, China has decisively pressed the "fast forward button" to popularize high school education. From "basically popularizing high school education" to "popularizing high school education", the welfare imagination behind different expressions is that a junior high school graduate who wanted to go to high school in a poor and old area in the past, but the conditions are not allowed, can go to high school or even university as he wishes in the future, just like his peers in big cities.
(1)
From "basic popularization" to "popularization", behind the different expressions, it is not only a strategic confirmation for the development of high school education from the height of the strategy of building a country with talents, but also a timely switch in the pace of high school education development. This means that China has pressed the "fast forward button" to popularize high school education.
In fact, from the 12th Five-Year Plan for the Development of National Education in 2012 that "the gross enrollment rate of senior high school education will reach 87%" to "the gross enrollment rate of all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) will reach 90% in 2020, and senior high school education will be popularized nationwide", its significance is not only revised upward by 3 percentage points, but its greatest value lies in that it not only positively responds to the people’s growing needs for a better life and unbalanced development.
Tan Songhua, member of the National Education Advisory Committee and executive vice president of the China Education Association, remembers that when studying and formulating the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010-2020), experts and scholars had two different views on the choice of educational development path after the goal of universal compulsory education in China was realized: one tended to popularize preschool education, and the other tended to popularize high school education so that more people could receive education for a longer period of time.
This debate came to an end in April this year with the publication of the "Plan for the Popularization of High School Education (2017-2020)" and the convening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
According to the goal put forward in the Plan for Popularizing High School Education (2017-2020), by 2020, high school education will be popularized throughout the country, and the gross enrollment rate of all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) will reach over 90%, so as to meet the needs of junior high school graduates to receive good high school education.
This is also a new start for China education in the new era after the completion of the "Nine-Year Plan" in 2011! This means that China will reach the level of moderately developed countries in the index of high school education popularization rate, and it will also bring about a far-reaching and transformative impact on the educational development structure, the improvement of labor quality, and the alleviation of structural contradictions in labor supply. With the emergence of "labor shortage" and "mechanic shortage" in China’s domestic labor market in recent years, on the one hand, it shows that the era of unlimited supply of cheap labor is gone forever, on the other hand, it shows that the current human capital situation is not enough to meet the needs of the advancing industrial transformation and upgrading, and the labor supply problem will gradually become an important bottleneck restricting sustainable development.
"Popularizing high school education will not only provide a strong impetus for China to solve the imbalance between economic growth and social development and improve the level of labor force in the future, but also lay the foundation for China to alleviate the problem of labor income differentiation and imbalance between 2025 and 2030." Ross Gao, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Studies at Stanford University in the United States, believes that the experience of Germany, Japan and other developed countries or successful transitional developing countries after World War II shows that industrial transformation and upgrading must be based on high-quality and highly skilled talents, especially the establishment of a labor force and talent reserve system that has at least received high school education.
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The difficulty in popularizing high school education is not to raise the gross enrollment rate of the whole country from 87.5% to 90%, but how to attack from the "bottom" and firmly hold the "bottom" of high school education in poverty-stricken areas, ethnic minority areas, remote areas and old revolutionary areas in the central and western regions.
In the next three years, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region will add 310,000 ordinary high school degrees and 100,000 full-time students in secondary vocational schools. This is a heavy burden for an underdeveloped ethnic area like Guangxi, where the overall scale of high school education is small, the investment is not guaranteed and the conditions for running schools are weak.
From 2016, the gross enrollment rate of senior high school education in China reached 87.5%, which is only one step away from the recognized universal standard of 90% of the gross enrollment rate of senior high school. However, even in the developed areas in the east, there are also outstanding problems and weak links, such as the uncoordinated development of ordinary high school education and secondary vocational education, and the high proportion of large classes in ordinary high schools.
From 87.5% to 90%, this is neither a simple mathematical calculation nor a "relay race" in which the whole country moves 2.5 percentage points, but a nationwide action in quick march.
As far as Guangxi is concerned, an unavoidable reality facing the popularization of high school education is that these areas have concentrated limited human, financial and material resources on the nine-year compulsory education as a social public product because of their thin "family background", which has led to the malnutrition of high school education, especially ordinary high school education for a long time in the past.
Take Guangxi as an example. Although great changes have taken place in education in recent years, the gap is not small compared with the national average: there is insufficient degree in ordinary high schools, with a large class size of 50.6%; The development of general education is not harmonious, and the ratio of general education to general education is 7 ∶ 3; The funding guarantee mechanism is not perfect, and the debt balance of ordinary high schools is 2 billion yuan; The total number of teachers is insufficient, and the number of teachers is about 13,000 … This incomplete "gene" not only inhibits the normal growth and development of high school education to a great extent, but also may cause acquired deformity.
"At present, the gross enrollment rate of high school education in most provinces in China has reached more than 90%, with the highest in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Zhejiang, reaching more than 95%. Nine provinces have gross enrollment rates below 90%, mainly in the central and western regions, and three of them are below 85%, belonging to western minority areas." Lv Yugang, director of the First Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education, said that the imbalance between regions is a major problem facing education; Poverty-stricken areas in the central and western regions are the biggest shortcomings in popularizing high school education. The following work should be aimed at poverty-stricken areas, ethnic minority areas, remote areas and old revolutionary areas in the central and western regions to support the bottom of high school education.
Where is the "bottom" of high school education? How?
In fact, ensuring basics, filling shortcomings and promoting fairness are the policy foothold and starting point for formulating the "attack plan". It identifies the poverty-stricken areas in the central and western regions, ethnic minority areas, remote areas and old revolutionary base areas as the "bottom" of high school education. Three groups of people, including students with financial difficulties, disabled students and migrant children of migrant workers, are regarded as an important embodiment of promoting educational equity; The high proportion of large classes in ordinary senior high schools, the continuous decline in the enrollment ratio of vocational education and the difficulty in school operation are identified as three prominent problems that seriously affect the popularization level and healthy and sustainable development of high school education.
Looking at nine provinces with a gross enrollment rate below 90% in ordinary senior high schools, we can easily find that the fundamental thing is to solve the problems of "being educated" and "being affordable" in these areas from the system. In other words, the state and local governments should support these areas to expand educational resources and improve school conditions by implementing a number of major engineering projects according to local conditions, and implement the policy of exempting tuition and miscellaneous fees for students with financial difficulties in high schools, and improve the national financial aid standard for secondary vocational education, so as to get an affordable bottom line for students with financial difficulties in families.
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At present, many parts of the country are actively trying to bring high school education into free education, but popularizing high school education is not the same as compulsory education, and it may not be as compulsory as compulsory education in the short term.
In recent years, including ningshan county, a poverty-stricken county in Shaanxi Province, many parts of the country have actively tried to extend compulsory education to preschool and ordinary high schools in light of local conditions. Its goals are almost all based on benefiting people’s livelihood, improving the average years of education of the local labor force and adapting to the practical needs of industrial structure transformation and upgrading, trying to regard high school education as an "upgraded version" of universal education in various places.
Behind the exploration of these places, it also records the trajectory of the adjustment and sliding of national policies around high school education in the past 20 years.
According to the 1998 Action Plan for Revitalizing Education for the 21st Century, "by 2010, on the basis of fully realizing the goal of’ two basics’, senior high school education will be gradually popularized in cities and economically developed areas, and the number of years of education for the whole population will reach the advanced level of developing countries", In 1999, "the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China the State Council’s Decision on Deepening Education Reform and Promoting Quality Education in an All-round Way" and the Tenth Five-Year Plan in 2001 once again emphasized that "high school education should be popularized step by step in cities and economically developed areas", and in 2006, the Eleventh Five-Year Plan added "promoting the coordinated development of vocational education and ordinary high school education and improving the level and quality of running schools", until the outline of the national education plan in 2010 and the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee.
According to statistics, school-age children in poor rural areas of China account for 45% to 50% of the school-age children in China, among which more than 80 million children are between the ages of 6 and 15. These children will be the backbone of China’s social labor force in the future. The education they can get today will directly determine the supply quality of China’s labor force in the future, and even determine the quality and level of China’s economic development in the future.
However, in reality, a major strategic issue that China will face when popularizing senior high school education is how to scientifically evaluate the role of secondary vocational education in connecting with industrial upgrading and talent demand structure reform, and make overall plans to determine a scientific general-to-vocational ratio, according to the current and future social development needs of China.
Although the "Attack Plan" pays special attention to this, it proposes to coordinate the development of ordinary high school education and secondary vocational education, optimize the educational structure of high school stage, increase the enrollment ratio of secondary vocational education, and make the enrollment scale of general vocational education roughly equal. However, a "long-standing problem" that cannot be avoided by popularizing high school education in China is the cognitive deviation of society towards secondary vocational education, which leads to the poor attraction of some secondary vocational schools and the backward development of secondary vocational education in some areas.
In 2017, the calendar has turned to the end. With regard to these unresolved questions, we hope that the grassroots innovation in the new year and the educators in China will continue to seek. (Reporter Ke Jin)