The People's Republic of China has a nationwide system of public education, which includes primary schools, middle schools (lower and upper), and universities. Nine years of education is technically compulsory for all Chinese students. // Public spending on education in 2005 Public education is education mandated for or offered to the children of the general public by the government, whether national, regional, or local, provided by an institution of civil government, and paid for, in whole or in part, by taxes. ...

Education in China is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. The education system provides free primary education for five years, starting at age seven, followed by five years of secondary education for ages 12 to 17. At this level, there are three years of middle school and two years of high school. The Ministry of Education reported a 99 percent attendance rate for primary school and an 80 percent rate for both primary and middle schools. Since free higher education was abolished in 1985, applicants to colleges and universities competed for scholarships based on academic ability. Private schools have been allowed since the early 1980s. The population has had on average only 6.2 years of schooling, but in 1986 the goal of nine years of compulsory education by 2000 was established. The Peoples Republic of China State Education Commission, headquartered in Beijing, is the PRC agency of the State Council which regulates all aspects of the educational system in mainland China. ... A primary school in Český Těšín, Poland Primary education is the first stage of compulsory education. ... Secondary education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... The University of Cambridge is an institute of higher learning. ... This article is about scholarship (noun) and scholarship as a form of financial aid. ... For the film of this title, see Private School (film). ... This article is about swarms in biology. ...

The United Nations Development Programme reported that in 2003 China had 116,390 kindergartens with 613,000 teachers and 20 million students. At that time, there were 425,846 primary schools with 5.7 million teachers and 116.8 million students. General secondary education had 79,490 institutions, 4.5 million teachers, and 85.8 million students. There also were 3,065 specialized secondary schools with 199,000 teachers and 5 million students. Among these specialized institutions were 6,843 agricultural and vocational schools with 289,000 teachers and 5.2 million students and 1,551 special schools with 30,000 teachers and 365,000 students. The United Nations Development Programe (UNDP), the United Nations global development network, is the largest multilateral source of development assistance in the world. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For university teachers, see professor. ... For other uses, see Student (disambiguation). ... A primary school in Český Těšín, Czech Republic. ... Secondary education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Vocational education prepares learners for certain careers or professions, which are traditionally non-academic and directly related to a trade, occupation or vocation in which the learner participates. ...

In 2003 China supported 1,552 institutions of higher learning (colleges and universities) and their 725,000 professors and 11 million students (see List of universities in the People's Republic of China). While there has been intense competition for admission to China’s colleges and universities among college entrants, Beijing and Tsinghua universities and more than 100 other key universities have been the most sought after. This article is a list of universities in the Peoples Republic of China by province (22), autonomous region (5), municipality (4), and special administrative region (2). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Tsinghua University (THU; Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is a university in Beijing, China. ...

The total literacy rate in China was 90.8% (male 95.1%; female 86.5%), based on 2002 estimates. The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. ...

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Government of the Peoples Republic of China. ... This article is about Communications in mainland China. ... Since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, the goal of health programs has been to provide care to every member of the population and to make maximum use of limited health-care personnel, equipment, and financial resources. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Continuing to occupy more than half of Chinas population, Rural life in the Peoples Republic of China has a varied range in terms of standard of living and living style. ... Sexuality in China has undergone revolutionary changes and this sexual revolution still continues today. ... Social issues in the Peoples Republic of China in the 21st century are varied. ...

History

See also: History of education in China

Since the repudiation of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the development of the education system in China has been geared particularly to the advancement of economic modernization. Among the notable official efforts to improve the system were a 1984 decision to formulate major laws on education in the next several years and a 1985 plan to reform the education system. In unveiling the education reform plan in May 1985, the authorities called for nine years of compulsory education and the establishment of the State Education Commission (created the following month). Official commitment to improved education was nowhere more evident than in the substantial increase in funds for education in the Seventh Five-Year Plan (1986-90), which amounted to 72 percent more than funds allotted to education in the previous plan period (1981-85). In 1986 some 16.8 percent of the state budget was earmarked for education, compared with 10.4 percent in 1984. Since 1949, education has been a focus of controversy in China. As a result of continual intraparty realignments, official policy alternated between ideological imperatives and practical efforts to further national development. But ideology and pragmatism often have been incompatible. The Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Socialist Education Movement (1962-65) sought to end deeply rooted academic elitism, to narrow social and cultural gaps between workers and peasants and between urban and rural populations, and to "rectify" the tendency of scholars and intellectuals disdain manual labor. During the Cultural Revolution, universal education in the interest of fostering social equality was an overriding priority. The Chinese education was accompanied with the birth of Chinese civilization. ... The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [1] in the Peoples Republic of China was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China that manifested into wide-scale social, political, and economic chaos, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the entire country to... Chinese Economic Reform (Simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ) refers to the program of economic changes called Socialism with Chinese characteristics in the mainland of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) that were started in 1978 by pragmatists within the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Deng Xiaoping and are ongoing... Budget generally refers to a list of all planned expenses and revenues. ... Political Ideologies Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box:      An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. ... Pragmatism is a philosophic school that originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Sanders Peirce, who first stated the pragmatic maxim. ... The Great Leap Forward (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social plan used from 1958 to 1960 which aimed to use Chinas vast population to rapidly transform mainland China from a primarily agrarian economy dominated by peasant farmers... The Socialist Education Movement (Simplified Chinese: 社会主义教育运动; Traditional Chinese: 社會主義教育運動; pinyin: ShèhuìzhÇ”yì Jiàoyù Yùndòng, abbreviated 社教运动 or 社教運動), also known as the Four Cleanups Movement (Simplified: 四清运动; Traditional: 四清運動; pinyin: SìqÄ«ng Yùndòng) was the movement launched by Mao Zedong in 1963 in the Peoples Republic... Elitism is the belief or attitude that the people who are considered to be the elite — a selected group of persons with outstanding personal abilities, wealth, specialised training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are the people whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously, or... A scholar is either a student or someone who has achieved a mastery of some academic discipline, perhaps receiving financial support through a scholarship. ... “Literati” redirects here. ... Manual labor is a term used for physical work done with the hands, especially in an unskilled manual job such as fruit and vegetable picking, road building, or any other field where the work may be considered hard or arduous, which has as its objective the production of goods. ... // Public education is education mandated for the children of the general public by the government, whether national, regional, or local, provided by an institution of civil government, and paid for, in whole or in part, by taxes. ... EQUAL is a popular artificial sweetener Equal (sweetener) Equality can mean several things: Mathematical equality Social equality Racial equality Sexual equality Equality of outcome Equality, a town in Illinois See also Equity Egalitarianism Equals sign This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might...

The post-Mao Zedong Chinese Communist Party leadership viewed education as the foundation of the Four Modernizations. In the early 1980s, science and technology education became an important focus of education policy. By 1986 training skilled personnel and expanding scientific and technical knowledge had been assigned the highest priority. Although the humanities were considered important, vocational and technical skills were considered paramount for meeting China's modernization goals. The reorientation of educational priorities paralleled Deng Xiaoping's strategy for economic development. Emphasis also was placed on the further training of the already-educated elite, who would carry on the modernization program in the coming decades. Renewed emphasis on modern science and technology, coupled with the recognition of the relative scientific superiority of the West, led to the adoption, beginning in 1976, of an outward-looking policy that encouraged learning and borrowing from abroad for advanced training in a wide range of scientific fields. Mao redirects here. ... Communist Party of China flag The Communist Party of China (Simplified Chinese: 中国共产党; Traditional Chinese: 中國共産黨; pinyin: Zhōnggu ngchǎndǎng) is the ruling party of the Peoples Republic of China. ... The Four Modernizations (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) were the goals of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... Education policy refers to the collection of rules, both stated and implicit, or the regularities in practice that govern the behavior of persons in schools. ... For other uses, see Humanities (disambiguation). ... Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ... Deng Xiaoping   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Teng Hsiao-ping; August 22, 1904 – February 19, 1997) was a prominent Chinese politician and reformer, and the late leader of the Communist Party of China (CCP). ...

Beginning at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee in December 1978, intellectuals were encouraged to pursue research in support of the Four Modernizations and, as long as they complied with the party's "Four Cardinal Principles" they were given relatively free rein. But when the party and the government determined that the strictures of the four cardinal principles had been stretched beyond tolerable limits, they did not hesitate to restrict intellectual expression. This article is about the concept. ... The Four Cardinal Principles (Chinese: 四項基本原則, pinyin: sì xiàng jīběn yuánzé) were stated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 and are the four issues for which debate was not allowed within the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Literature and the arts also experienced a great revival in the late 1970s and 1980s. Traditional forms flourished once again, and many new kinds of literature and cultural expression were introduced from abroad. Chinese literature spans back thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the matured fictional novel arising in the medieval period to entertain the masses of literate Chinese. ... Chinese Jade ornament with flower design, Jin Dynasty (1115-1234 AD), Shanghai Museum. ...

Education policy

The overthrow of the corrupt and ineffectual Guomindang regime in 1949 ended China's "feudal capitalist" system in which education was effectively closed to workers and peasants in practical terms despite Sun Yat-Sen's support of general education in principle; the inflation-ridden economy of the Guomindang excluded the children of all but an elite from education, and stress on the "classics" and a difficult written tradition compounded this effective exclusion. The Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party of China (Traditional Chinese: 中國國民黨; Simplified Chinese: 中国国民党; pinyin: Zhōngguó Guómíndǎng; Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo Kuo-min-tang; Tongyong Pinyin: Jhongguo Guomindang; literally the National Peoples Party of China... Feudalism comes from the Late Latin word feudum, itself borrowed from a Germanic root *fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which means fief, or land held under certain obligations by feodati. ... In economics, a capitalist is someone who owns capital, presumably within the economic system of capitalism. ... In a detail of Brueghels Land of Cockaigne (1567) a soft-boiled egg has little feet to rush to the luxuriating peasant who catches drops of honey on his tongue, while roast pigs roam wild: in fact, hunger and harsh winters were realities for the average European in the... Sun Yat-sen (November 12, 1866 – March 12, 1925) was a Chinese revolutionary and political leader often referred to as the father of modern China. Sun played an instrumental role in the eventual overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. ...

However (cf. China: A New History, John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, Harvard University Press 2006), the Marxist ideology of the post-1949 government, in reacting to the overly literary and classical tradition of China, overstressed in turn "practical applications" and the superior wisdom of the worker and peasant, whose hand-skill was assumed to be the "base" to the "superstructure" of science and learning in general. This resulted in various experiments in which peasants and industrial workers were made "teachers" overnight but were unable to gain respect or communicate their tacit knowledge. Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Literature is literally an acquaintance with letters as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning an individual written character (letter)). The term has, however, generally come to identify a collection of texts. ... Look up Classical in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ... Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom. ...

The new Communist government created wide access to some form of education for all, except children of people under suspicion for "landlordism" and other bourgeois crimes. The possibility however of re-education and service to the "masses" was held out to bourgeois families as long as they proved their good faith by service to the workers and peasants. A landlord, is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called the tenant. ... Bourgeois at the end of the thirteenth century. ...

This meant that even before the Cultural Revolution, there was a continuum, in China, between the prison, the re-education camp, and the school, a continuum which also exists in the West. Formally speaking, the opportunity was extended to all classes to join China's project on its Leninist terms. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [1] in the Peoples Republic of China was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China that manifested into wide-scale social, political, and economic chaos, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the entire country to... Vladimir Lenin in 1920 Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism; it is a branch of Marxism (and it has been the dominant branch of Marxism in the world since the 1920s). ...

The education provided was practical and made accessible, for example by simplifying many characters for quick learning and by training people in skills they could use, including the basic medical training provided "barefoot doctors", actually paramedics that provided medical care, midwifery and instruction on the evils of footbinding and female infanticide in such rural areas where those practices still existed. Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Barefoot doctors were farmers who got basic medical training and worked in rural villages in China to bring health care to areas where urban-trained doctors would not settle. ... The Star of Life, a globally recognised symbol for emergency medical services A paramedic is a medical professional, usually a member of the emergency medical service, who responds to medical and trauma emergencies in the pre-hospital environment, provides emergency treatment and, when appropriate, transports a patient to definitive care... See also Healing, North East Lincolnshire Healing is the process where the cells in the body regenerate and repair to reduce the size of a damaged or necrotic area. ... // Midwifery is the term traditionally used to describe the art of assisting a woman through childbirth. ... The bound feet of an adult woman Foot binding (纏足, 包腳, 裹小腳, or 紮腳) is an obsolete Chinese custom, practiced for centuries. ... In sociology and biology, infanticide is the practice of intentionally causing the death of an infant of a given species, by members of the same species - often by the mother. ...

Like most serious Communist and socialist governments before and since, the Chinese Communist government provided "the goods" to the bottom of society in good faith and for this reason received broad support before the Cultural Revolution from the people at the bottom. "Old One Hundred Names" was unaware of, and indifferent to, the fate of intellectuals during the Great Leap Forward and the Hundred Flowers epochs of the late 1950s, but seems on balance that for the first time in Chinese history, something was being done for his children's education and welfare, as it was being done contemporaneously in Russia, in the 1960s in Cuba, and continues to be done today in Venezuela. This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ... Socialism is a social and economic system (or the political philosophy advocating such a system) in which the economic means of production are owned and controlled collectively by the people. ... “Literati” redirects here. ... The Great Leap Forward (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social plan used from 1958 to 1960 which aimed to use Chinas vast population to rapidly transform mainland China from a primarily agrarian economy dominated by peasant farmers... The Hundred Flowers Campaign (百花运动) period refers to a brief interlude in the Peoples Republic of China from 1956 to 1957 during which the Communist Party authorities permitted or encouraged a variety of views and solutions. ... China is the worlds oldest continuous major civilization, with written records dating back about 3,500 years and with 5,000 years being commonly used by Chinese as the age of their civilization. ... Welfare has several meanings: Welfare, the good fortune, health, happiness, prosperity, etc. ...

Some of the practices taught were adopted by Westerners without much acknowledgement including the Lamaze method of drug-free childbirth and the training of paramedics: American emergency medicine in particular owes much, not only to military "medevac" procedures refined during the Vietnam War, but a Chinese-influenced break in the hold of the medical profession has over practitioner qualification, which allowed nurses and paramedics to fill in for doctors at straightforward procedures. The Lamaze Technique is a prepared childbirth technique developed in the 1940s by French obstetrician Dr. Fernand Lamaze as an alternative to the use of medical intervention during labor. ... For other uses, see Drug (disambiguation). ... Parturition redirects here. ... Typical view of the defibrillator operator. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... A [PC-12] of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000... This article is about the occupation. ... The Star of Life, a globally recognised symbol for emergency medical services A paramedic is a medical professional, usually a member of the emergency medical service, who responds to medical and trauma emergencies in the pre-hospital environment, provides emergency treatment and, when appropriate, transports a patient to definitive care...

Other practical results of education reform prior to the Cultural Revolution of 1966 included practical instruction in the evils of opium addiction (cf. Opium Regimes, Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, eds., University of California Press, 2000). The Japanese and to an extent the Guomindang had fostered or ignored opium and other forms of addiction as a way of social control whereas the educational system and government of China eradicated opium, in part by education and also by harsh penalties (including death for repeat offenders) which are still in use. This article is about the drug. ... Heroin bottle An addiction is a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences to the individuals health, mental state or social life. ... The Peoples Republic of China currently uses capital punishment for a variety of crimes, ranging from tax evasion, corruption and racketeering to murder. ...

But during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), higher education in particular suffered tremendous losses; the system was almost shut down, and a rising generation of college and graduate students, academics and technicians, professionals and teachers, was lost. The result was a lack of trained talent to meet the needs of society, an irrationally structured higher education system unequal to the needs of the economic and technological boom, and an uneven development in secondary technical and vocational education. In the post-Mao period, China's education policy continued to evolve. The pragmatist leadership, under Deng Xiaoping, recognized that to meet the goals of modernization it was necessary to develop science, technology, and intellectual resources and to raise the population's education level. Demands on education - for new technology, information science, and advanced management expertise - were levied as a result of the reform of the economic structure and the emergence of new economic forms. In particular, China needed an educated labor force to feed and provision its one billion plus population. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [1] in the Peoples Republic of China was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China that manifested into wide-scale social, political, and economic chaos, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the entire country to... The University of Cambridge is an institute of higher learning. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Plato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. ... A technician is generally someone in a technological field who has a relatively practical understanding of the general theoretical principles of that field, e. ... This article is about people called professionals. ... // The rise of Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping By carefully mobilizing his supporters within the Communist Party of China, Deng was able to out maneuver Maos named successor Hua Guofeng – who had previously pardoned him – and oust him from his leadership positions. ... Pragmatism is a philosophic school that originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Sanders Peirce, who first stated the pragmatic maxim. ... Deng Xiaoping   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Teng Hsiao-ping; August 22, 1904 – February 19, 1997) was a prominent Chinese politician and reformer, and the late leader of the Communist Party of China (CCP). ... Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ...

By 1980, achievement was once again accepted as the basis for admission and promotion in education. This fundamental change reflected the critical role of scientific and technical knowledge and professional skills in the Four Modernizations. Also, political activism was no longer regarded as an important measure of individual performance, and even the development of commonly approved political attitudes and political background was secondary to achievement. Education policy promoted expanded enrollments, with the long-term objective of achieving universal primary and secondary education. This policy contrasted with the previous one, which touted increased enrollments for egalitarian reasons. In 1985 the commitment to modernization was reinforced by plans for nine-year compulsory education and for providing good quality higher education. The Four Modernizations (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) were the goals of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. ... Activism, in a general sense, can be described as involvement in action to bring about change, be it social, political, environmental, or other change. ... Egalitarianism is the moral doctrine that equality ought to prevail among some group along some dimension. ...

Deng Xiaoping's far-ranging educational reform policy, which involved all levels of the education system, aimed to narrow the gap between China and other developing countries. Modernizing education was critical to modernizing China. Devolution of educational management from the central to the local level was the means chosen to improve the education system. Centralized authority was not abandoned, however, as evidenced by the creation of the State Education Commission. Academically, the goals of reform were to enhance and universalize elementary and junior middle school education; to increase the number of schools and qualified teachers; and to develop vocational and technical education. A uniform standard for curricula, textbooks, examinations, and teacher qualifications (especially at the middle-school level) was established, and considerable autonomy and variations in and among the autonomous regions, provinces, and special municipalities were allowed. Further, the system of enrollment and job assignment in higher education was changed, and excessive government control over colleges and universities was reduced. Deng Xiaoping   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Teng Hsiao-ping; August 22, 1904 – February 19, 1997) was a prominent Chinese politician and reformer, and the late leader of the Communist Party of China (CCP). ... For a curriculum vitae, see Résumé. In formal education, a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. ...

The education system

To provide for its population, China has a vast and varied school system. There are preschools, kindergartens, schools for the deaf and blind, key schools (similar to college preparatory schools), primary schools, secondary schools (comprising junior and senior middle schools, secondary agricultural and vocational schools, regular secondary schools, secondary teachers' schools, secondary technical schools, and secondary professional schools), and various institutions of higher learning (consisting of regular colleges and universities, professional colleges, and short-term vocational universities). In terms of access to education, China's system represented a pyramid; because of the scarcity of resources allotted to higher education, student numbers decreased sharply at the higher levels. Although there were dramatic advances in primary education after 1949, achievements in secondary and higher education were not as great. The University of Cambridge is an institute of higher learning. ...

Although the government has authority over the education system, the Chinese Communist Party has played a role in managing education since 1949. The party established broad education policies and under Deng Xiaoping, tied improvements in the quality of education to its modernization plan. The party also monitored the government's implementation of its policies at the local level and within educational institutions through its party committees. Party members within educational institutions, who often have a leading management role, are responsible for steering their schools in the direction mandated by party policy. Communist Party of China flag The Communist Party of China (Simplified Chinese: 中国共产党; Traditional Chinese: 中國共産黨; pinyin: Zhōnggu ngchǎndǎng) is the ruling party of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Deng Xiaoping   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Teng Hsiao-ping; August 22, 1904 – February 19, 1997) was a prominent Chinese politician and reformer, and the late leader of the Communist Party of China (CCP). ... Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ...

New directions

The May 1985 National Conference on Education recognized five fundamental areas for reform to be discussed in connection with implementing the party Central Committee's "Draft Decision on Reforming the Education System." The reforms were intended to produce "more able people"; to make the localities responsible for developing "basic education" and systematically implement a nine-year compulsory education program; to improve secondary education develop vocational and technical education; to reform and the graduate-assignment system of institutions of higher education and to expand their management and decision-making powers; and to give administrators the necessary encouragement and authority to ensure smooth progress in educational reform. Look up reform in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Basic education is an essential education. ... Compulsory education is education which children are required by law to receive and governments to provide. ... Secondary education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... A blacksmith is a traditional trade. ...

The National Conference on Education paved the way for reorganization of the Ministry of Education, which occurred in June 1985. Created to coordinate education policy, it also assumed the role previously played by the State Planning Commission and as a State Council commission, the new Ministry had greater status and was in charge of all education organizations except military ones. Although the new Ministy assumed a central role in the administration of education, the reform decentralized much of the power it previously wielded and its constituent offices and bureaus, which had established curriculum and admissions policies in response to the State Planning Commission's requirements. The Peoples Republic of China State Education Commission, headquartered in Beijing, is the PRC agency of the State Council which regulates all aspects of the educational system in mainland China. ... The State Council (国务院, pinyin: Guówùyuàn), which is largely synonymous with the Central Peoples Government (中央人民政府), is the chief administrative authority of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

The Ministry of Education, with its expanded administrative scope and power, was responsible for formulating guiding principles for education, establishing regulations, planning the progress of educational projects, coordinating the educational programs of different departments, and standardization educational reforms. Simplification of administration and delegation of authority were made the bases for improving the education system. This devolution of management to the autonomous regions, provinces, and special municipalities meant local governments had more decision-making power and were able to develop basic education. State-owned enterprises, mass organizations, and individuals were encouraged to pool funds to accomplish education reform. Local authorities used state appropriations and a percentage of local reserve financial resources (basically township financial revenues) to finance educational projects.

Compulsory education law

The Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education (中华人民共和国义务教育法), which took effect July 1, 1986, established requirements and deadlines for attaining universal education tailored to local conditions and guaranteed school-age children the right to receive at least nine years of education (five year primary education and four years secondary education). People's congresses at various local levels were, within certain guidelines and according to local conditions, to decide the steps, methods, and deadlines for implementing nine-year compulsory education in accordance with the guidelines formulated by the central authorities. The program sought to bring rural areas, which had four to six years of compulsory schooling, into line with their urban counterparts. Education departments were exhorted to train millions of skilled workers for all trades and professions and to offer guidelines, curricula, and methods to comply with the reform program and modernization needs. is the 182nd day of the year (183rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ...

Provincial-level authorities were to develop plans, enact decrees and rules, distribute funds to counties, and administer directly a few key secondary schools. County authorities were to distribute funds to each township government, which were to make up for any deficiencies. County authorities were to supervise education and teaching and to manage their own senior middle schools, teachers' schools, teachers' in-service training schools, agricultural vocational schools, and exemplary primary and junior middle schools. The remaining schools were to be managed separately by the county and township authorities. Due to Chinas large population and area, the political divisions of China have consisted of several levels since ancient times. ... Secondary school is a term used to describe an institution where the final stage of compulsory schooling, known as secondary education, takes place. ...

The compulsory education law divided China into three categories: cities and economically developed areas in coastal provinces and a small number of developed areas in the hinterland; towns and villages with medium development; and economically backward areas.

By November 1985 the first category - the larger cities and approximately 20 percent of the counties (mainly in the more developed coastal and southeastern areas of China) had achieved universal 9-year education. By 1990 cities, economically developed areas in coastal provincial-level units, and a small number of developed interior areas (approximately 25 percent of China's population) and areas where junior middle schools were already popularized were targeted to have universal junior-middle-school education. Education planners had envisioned that by the mid-1990s all workers and staff in coastal areas, inland cities, and moderately developed areas (with a combined population of 300 million to 400 million people) would have either compulsory 9-year or vocational education and that 5 percent of the people in these areas would have a college education - building a solid intellectual foundation for China. Further, the planners expected that secondary education and university entrants would also have increased by the year 2000.

The second category targeted under the 9-year compulsory education law consisted of towns and villages with medium-level development (around 50 percent of China's population), where universal education was expected to reach the junior-middle-school level by 1995. Technical and higher education was projected to develop at the same rate. // Public education is education mandated for the children of the general public by the government, whether national, regional, or local, provided by an institution of civil government, and paid for, in whole or in part, by taxes. ...

The third category, economically backward (rural) areas (around 25 percent of China's population) were to popularize basic education without a timetable and at various levels according to local economic development, though the state would try to support educational development. The state also would assist education in minority nationality areas. In the past, rural areas, which lacked a standardized and universal primary education system, had produced generations of illiterates; only 60 percent of their primary school graduates had met established standards. Basic education is an essential education. ...

As a further example of the government's commitment to nine-year compulsory education, in January 1986 the State Council drafted a bill passed at the Fourteenth Session of the Standing Committee of the Sixth National People's Congress that made it illegal for any organization or individual to employ youths before they had completed their nine years of schooling. The bill also authorized free education and subsidies for students whose families had financial difficulties.^[1] A bill is a proposed new law introduced within a legislature that has not been ratified, adopted, or received assent. ...

Key schools

"Key schools," shut down during the Cultural Revolution, reappeared in the late 1970s and, in the early 1980s, became an integral part of the effort to revive the lapsed education system. Because educational resources were scarce, selected ("key") institutions - usually those with records of past educational accomplishment - were given priority in the assignment of teachers, equipment, and funds. They also were allowed to recruit the best students for special training to compete for admission to top schools at the next level. Key schools constituted only a small percentage of all regular senior middle schools and funneled the best students into the best secondary schools, largely on the basis of entrance scores. In 1980 the greatest resources were allocated to the key schools that would produce the greatest number of college entrants.

In early 1987 efforts had begun to develop the key school from a preparatory school into a vehicle for diffusing improved curricula, materials, and teaching practices to local schools. Moreover, the appropriateness of a key school's role in the nine-year basic education plan was questioned by some officials because key schools favored urban areas and the children of more affluent and better educated parents. In 1985 entrance examinations and the key-school system had already been abolished in Changchun, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Xiamen, and other cities, and education departments in Shanghai and Tianjin were moving to establish a student recommendation system and eliminate key schools. In 1986 the Shanghai Educational Bureau abolished the key junior-middle-school system to ensure "an overall level of education." Preparatory school or prep school may refer to: University-preparatory school, in North America, is a private secondary school designed to prepare a student for higher education. ... Changchun (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is the capital and largest city of Jilin province, located at the northeast of the Peoples Republic of China. ... This article is about a city. ... Shenzhen is a sub-provincial city of Guangdong province in southern China. ... A view of the Xiamen University campus Xiamen (Simplified Chinese: 厦门; Traditional Chinese: 廈門; Hanyu Pinyin: ) is a coastal sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian province, Peoples Republic of China. ... For other uses, see Shanghai (disambiguation). ...   (Chinese: ; Pinyin: ; Postal map spelling: Tientsin) is one of the four municipalities of China. ...

Primary education

Primary schools

The development of primary education in so vast a country as China has been a formidable accomplishment. In contrast to the 20 percent enrollment rate before 1949, in 1985 about 96 percent of primary school age children were enrolled in approximately 832,300 primary schools. This enrollment figure compared favorably with the record figures of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when enrollment standards were more egalitarian. In 1985 the World Bank estimated that enrollments in primary schools would decrease from 136 million in 1983 to 95 million in the late 1990s and that the decreased enrollment would reduce the number of teachers needed. Qualified teachers, however, would continue to be in demand. The World Bank logo The World Bank (the Bank) is a part of the World Bank Group (WBG), is a bank that makes loans to developing countries for development programs with the stated goal of reducing poverty. ...

Under the Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education, primary schools were to be tuition-free and reasonably located for the convenience of children attending them; students would attend primary schools in their neighborhoods or villages. Parents paid a small fee per term for books and other expenses such as transportation, food, and heating. Previously, fees were not considered a deterrent to attendance, although some parents felt even these minor costs were more than they could afford. Under the education reform, students from poor families received stipends, and state enterprises, institutions, and other sectors of society were encouraged to establish their own schools. A major concern was that scarce resources be conserved without causing enrollment to fall and without weakening of the better schools. In particular, local governments were told not to pursue middle-school education blindly while primary school education was still developing, or to wrest money, teaching staff, and materials from primary schools.

Children usually entered primary school at seven years of age for six days a week, which after regulatory changes in 1995 and 1997 were changed to five and a half and five days, respectively. The two-semester school year consisted of 9.5 months, and began on September 1st and March 1st, with a summer vacation in July and August and a winter vacation in January and February. Urban primary schools typically divided the school week into twenty-four to twenty-seven classes of forty-five minutes each, but in the rural areas, the norm was half-day schooling, more flexible schedules, and itinerant teachers. Most primary schools had a five-year course, except in such cities as Beijing and Shanghai, and later other major cities, which had reintroduced six-year primary schools and accepted children at six and one-half years rather than seven. Peking redirects here. ... For other uses, see Shanghai (disambiguation). ...

The primary-school curriculum consisted of Chinese, mathematics, physical education, music, drawing, and elementary instruction in nature, history, and geography, combined with practical work experiences around the school compound. A general knowledge of politics and moral training, which stressed love of the motherland, love of the party, and love of the people (and previously love of Chairman Mao), was another part of the curriculum. A foreign language, often English, was introduced in about the third grade. Chinese and mathematics accounted for about 60 percent of the scheduled class time; natural science and social science accounted for about 8 percent. Putonghua (common spoken language) was taught in regular schools and pinyin romanization in lower grades and kindergarten. The Ministry of Education required that all primary schools offer courses on morality and ethics. Beginning in the fourth grade, students usually had to perform productive labor two weeks per semester to relate classwork with production experience in workshops or on farms and relate it to academic study. Most schools had after-hour activities at least one day per week to involve students in recreation and community service. For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... Physical education (PE) is the interdisciplinary study of all area of science relating to the transmission of physical knowledge and skills to an individual or a group, the application of these skills, and their results. ... For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ... For scale drawings or plans, see Plans (drawings). ... “Natural” redirects here. ... This article is about the study of time in human terms. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Michelson–Morley experiment was used to disprove that light propagated through a luminiferous aether. ... The social sciences are groups of academic disciplines that study the human aspects of the world. ... Standard Mandarin refers to the official Chinese spoken language used by the Peoples Republic of China, the Republic of China on Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Morality (from the Latin manner, character, proper behaviour) has three principal meanings. ... For other uses, see Ethics (disambiguation). ...

By 1980 the percentage of students enrolled in primary schools was high, but the schools reported high dropout rates and regional enrollment gaps (most enrollees were concentrated in the cities). Only one in four counties had universal primary education. On the average, 10-percent of the students dropped out between each grade. During the 1979-83 period, the government acknowledged the "9-6-3" rule, that is, that nine of ten children began primary school, six completed it, and three graduated with good performance. This meant that only about 60 percent of primary students actually completed their five year program of study and graduated, and only about 30 percent were regarded as having primary-level competence. Statistics in the mid-1980s showed that more rural girls than boys dropped out of school. Look up dropout in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A kindergarten classroom in Afghanistan. ...

Within the framework of the Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education and the general trend toward vocational and technical skills, attempts were made to accommodate and correct the gap between urban and rural education. Urban and key schools almost invariably operated on a six day full-time schedule to prepare students for further education and high-level jobs. Rural schools generally operated on a flexible schedule geared to the needs of the agricultural seasons and sought to prepare students for adult life and manual labor in lower-skilled jobs. They also offered a more limited curriculum, often only Chinese, mathematics, and morals. To promote attendance and allow the class schedule and academic year to be completed, agricultural seasons were taken into account. School holidays were moved, school days shortened, and full-time, half-time, and spare-time classes offered in the slack agricultural seasons. Sometimes itinerant teachers were hired for mountain villages and served one village in the morning, another village in the afternoon. For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... Morality (from the Latin manner, character, proper behaviour) has three principal meanings. ...

Rural parents were generally well aware that their children had limited opportunities to further their education. Some parents saw little use in having their children attend even primary school, especially after the establishment of the agricultural responsibility system. Under that system, parents preferred that their children work to increase family income - and withdrew them from school - for both long and short periods of time. Contract responsibility system, or household responsibility system or responsibility system was a practice in the Peoples Republic of China, first adopted in agriculture in 1981 and later extended to other sectors of the economy, by which local managers are held responsible for the profits and losses of the enterprise. ...

Preschool education

Preschool education, which began at age three and one-half, was another target of education reform in 1985. Preschool facilities were to be established in buildings made available by public enterprises, production teams, municipal authorities, local groups, and families. The government announced that it depended on individual organizations to sponsor their own preschool education and that preschool education was to become a part of the welfare services of various government organizations, institutes, and state- and collectively operated enterprises. Costs for preschool education varied according to services rendered. Officials also called for more preschool teachers with more appropriate training. Preschool education is the provision of education for children between the ages of 2 and 4, dependent on the jurisdiction. ... A production team (Chinese:生産隊; pinyin:shēng chǎn duì) was formerly the basic accounting and farm production unit in the peoples commune system in Peoples Republic of China from 1958 to 1984. ... As a general term, Municipal government refers to local government operating at the level of a city, town, or village. ...

Special education

The 1985 National Conference on Education also recognized the importance of special education, in the form of programs for gifted children and for slow learners. Gifted children were allowed to skip grades. Slow learners were encouraged to reach minimum standards, although those who did not maintain the pace seldom reached the next stage. For the most part, children with severe learning problems and those with handicaps and psychological needs were the responsibilities of their families. Extra provisions were made for blind and severely hearing-impaired children, although in 1984 special schools enrolled fewer than 2 percent of all eligible children in those categories. The China Welfare Fund, established in 1984, received state funding and had the right to solicit donations within China and from abroad, but special education has remained a low government priority. This article is about educating students with disabilities or behavioral problems. ... Gifted children are those considered by educational systems to have significantly higher than normal levels of one or more forms of intelligence. ...

Secondary education

Middle schools

Secondary education in China has a complicated history. In the early 1960s, education planners followed a policy called "walking on two legs," which established both regular academic schools and separate technical schools for vocational training. The rapid expansion of secondary education during the Cultural Revolution created serious problems; because resources were spread too thinly, educational quality declined. Further, this expansion was limited to regular secondary schools; technical schools were closed during the Cultural Revolution because they were viewed as an attempt to provide inferior education to children of worker and peasant families.

In the late 1970s, government and party representatives criticized what they termed the "unitary" approach of the 1960s, arguing that it ignored the need for two kinds of graduates: those with an academic education (college preparatory) and those with specialized technical education (vocational). Beginning in 1976 with the renewed emphasis on technical training, technical schools reopened, and their enrollments increased.

In the drive to spread vocational and technical education, regular secondary-school enrollments fell. By 1986 universal secondary education was part of the nine year compulsory education law that made primary education (six years) and junior-middle-school education (three years) mandatory. The desire to consolidate existing schools and to improve the quality of key middle schools was, however, under the education reform, more important than expanding enrollment.

Chinese secondary schools are called middle schools and are divided into junior and senior levels. In 1985 more than 104,000 middle schools (both regular and vocational) enrolled about 51 million students. Junior, or lower, middle schools offered a three year course of study, which students began at twelve years of age. Senior, or upper, middle schools offered a two or three year course, which students began at age fifteen.

The regular secondary-school year usually had two semesters, totaling nine months. In some rural areas, schools operated on a shift schedule to accommodate agricultural cycles. The academic curriculum consisted of Chinese, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, foreign language, history, geography, politics, music, fine arts, and physical education. Some middle schools also offered vocational subjects. There were thirty or thirty-one periods a week in addition to self-study and extracurricular activity. Thirty-eight percent of the curriculum at a junior middle school was in Chinese and mathematics, 16 percent in a foreign language. Fifty percent of the teaching at a senior middle school was in natural sciences and mathematics, 30 percent in Chinese and a foreign language. An academic term is the time during which a school, college or university holds classes. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ... For other uses, see Chemistry (disambiguation). ... Biology studies the variety of life (clockwise from top-left) E. coli, tree fern, gazelle, Goliath beetle Biology (from Greek: βίος, bio, life; and λόγος, logos, knowledge), also referred to as the biological sciences, is the study of living organisms utilizing the scientific method. ... This article includes a list of works cited but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... A foreign language is a language not spoken by the indigenous people of a certain place: for example, English is a foreign language in Japan. ... This article is about the study of time in human terms. ... For other uses, see Politics (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ... Fine art refers to arts that are concerned with beauty or which appealed to taste (SOED 1991). ... Physical education (PE) is the interdisciplinary study of all area of science relating to the transmission of physical knowledge and skills to an individual or a group, the application of these skills, and their results. ...

Rural secondary education has undergone several transformations since 1980, when county-level administrative units closed some schools and took over certain schools run by the people's communes. In 1982 the communes were eliminated. In 1985 educational reform legislation officially placed rural secondary schools under local administration. There was a high dropout rate among rural students in general and among secondary students in particular, largely because of parental attitudes. All students, however, especially males, were encouraged to attend secondary school if it would lead to entrance to a college or university (still regarded as prestigious) and escape from village life. Peoples communes (人民公社 Pinyin: renmin gongshe), in the Peoples Republic of China, were formerly the highest of three administrative levels in rural areas in the period from 1958 to 1982-85, when they were replaced by townships. ... Legislation (or statutory law) is law which has been promulgated (or enacted) by a legislature or other governing body. ...

In China a senior-middle-school graduate is considered an educated person, although middle schools are viewed as a training ground for colleges and universities. And, while middle-school students are offered the prospect of higher education, they are also confronted with the fact that university admission is limited. Middle schools are evaluated in terms of their success in sending graduates on for higher education, although efforts persist to educate young people to take a place in society as valued and skilled members of the work force. College admissions or university admission is the process through which students enter post-secondary education at universities and colleges. ...

Vocational and technical schools

Both regular and vocational secondary schools sought to serve modernization needs. A number of technical and "skilled-worker" training schools reopened after the Cultural Revolution, and an effort was made to provide exposure to vocational subjects in general secondary schools (by offering courses in industry, services, business, and agriculture). By 1985 there were almost 3 million vocational and technical students.

Under the educational reform tenets, polytechnic colleges were to give priority to admitting secondary vocational and technical school graduates and providing on-the-job training for qualified workers. Education reformers continued to press for the conversion of about 50 percent of upper secondary education into vocational education, which traditionally had been weak in the rural areas. Regular senior middle schools were to be converted into vocational middle schools, and vocational training classes were to be established in some senior middle schools. Diversion of students from academic to technical education was intended to alleviate skill shortages and to reduce the competition for university enrollment. The term polytechnic, from the Greek πολύ polú meaning many and τεχνικός tekhnikós meaning arts, is commonly used in many countries to describe an institution that delivers technical education, other countries do not use the term and use alternative...

Although enrollment in technical schools of various kinds had not yet increased enough to compensate for decreasing enrollments in regular senior middle schools, the proportion of vocational and technical students to total senior-middle-school students increased from about 5 percent in 1978 to almost 36 percent in 1985, although development was uneven. Further, to encourage greater numbers of junior-middle-school graduates to enter technical schools, vocational and technical school graduates were given priority in job assignments, while other job seekers had to take technical tests.

In 1987 there were four kinds of secondary vocational and technical schools: technical schools that offered a four year, post-junior middle course and two- to three-year post-senior middle training in such fields as commerce, legal work, fine arts, and forestry; workers' training schools that accepted students whose senior-middle-school education consisted of two years of training in such trades as carpentry and welding; vocational technical schools that accepted either junior-or senior-middle-school students for one- to three-year courses in cooking, tailoring, photography, and other services; and agricultural middle schools that offered basic subjects and agricultural science. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Chinese law is one of the oldest legal traditions in the world. ... Fine art is a term used to refer to fields traditionally considered to be artistic. ... A decidous beech forest in Slovenia. ... Cooking is the act of preparing food. ... A tailor is a person whose occupation is to sew clothes custom-fit to individuals, and to repair clothes. ... Photography [fәtɑgrәfi:],[foʊtɑgrәfi:] is the process of recording pictures by means of capturing light on a light-sensitive medium, such as a film or electronic sensor. ... Agricultural science is a broad multidisciplinary field that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic, and social sciences that are used in the practice and understanding of agriculture. ...

These technical schools had several hundred different programs. Their narrow specializations had advantages in that they offered in-depth training , reducing the need for on-the-job training and thereby lowering learning time and costs. Moreover, students were more motivated to study if there were links between training and future jobs. Much of the training could be done at existing enterprises, where staff and equipment was available at little additional cost. Specialization, also spelled Specialisation, is an important way to generate propositional knowledge, by applying general knowledge, such as the theory of gravity, to specific instances, such as when I release this apple, it will fall to the floor. Specialization is the opposite of generalization. ... Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom. ... Look up Enterprise in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

There were some disadvantages to this system, however. Under the Four Modernizations, technically trained generalists were needed more than highly specialized technicians. Also, highly specialized equipment and staff were underused, and there was an overall shortage of specialized facilities to conduct training. In addition, large expenses were incurred in providing the necessary facilities and staff, and the trend in some government technical agencies was toward more general technical and vocational education. The Four Modernizations (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) were the goals of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. ... A technician is generally someone in a technological field who has a relatively practical understanding of the general theoretical principles of that field, e. ...

Further, the dropout rate continued to have a negative effect on the labor pool as upper-secondary-school technical students dropped out and as the percentage of lower-secondary-school graduates entering the labor market without job training increased. Occupational rigidity and the geographic immobility of the population, particularly in rural areas, further limited educational choices. Look up Occupation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Mobility is the ability and willingness to move or change; this can depend on motor skills; mobility aids may be needed such as a walking stick, walker, mobile standing frame, power operated vehicle/scooter, wheelchair or white cane for visual impairment. ...

Although there were 668,000 new polytechnic school enrollments in 1985, the Seventh Five-Year Plan called for annual increases of 2 million mid-level skilled workers and 400,000 senior technicians, indicating that enrollment levels were still far from sufficient. To improve the situation, in July 1986 officials from the State Education Commission, State Planning Commission, and Ministry of Labor and Personnel convened a national conference on developing China's technical and vocational education. It was decided that technical and vocational education in rural areas should accommodate local conditions and be conducted on a short-term basis. Where conditions permitted, emphasis would be placed on organizing technical schools and short-term training classes. To alleviate the shortage of teachers, vocational and technical teachers' colleges were to be reformed and other colleges and universities were to be mobilized for assistance. The State Council decision to improve training for workers who had passed technical examinations (as opposed to unskilled workers) was intended to reinforce the development of vocational and technical schools.

Expanding and improving secondary vocational education has long been an objective of China’s educational reformers, for vocational schools are seen as those which are best place to address (by providing trained workers) the rising needs of the nation’s expanding economy, especially its manufacturing and industrial sectors. Without an educated and trained work force, China cannot have economic, hence social and national, development. Yet, given a finite, and often quite limited, pot of money for secondary schools, an allocation competition/conflict necessarily exists between its two sub-sectors: general education and vocational/technical education. Regardless, an over-enrollment in the latter has been the overall result of the mid-1980s reforms. Yet firms that must seek workers from this graduate pool have remained unimpressed with the quality of recruits and have had to rely on their own job-training programs that provide re-education for their newly hired workers. The public, also, has not been very enthusiastic over vocational secondary education which, unlike general education, does not lead to the possibility of higher education. The public’s perception is that these schools provide little more than a dead end for their children. Also, vocational institutions are more expensive to run than their counterparts in general education, and they have not had sufficient money to modernize their facilities, as China’s modernizing national economy demands. By mid-decade of the 21st Century, therefore, academics and policy-makers alike began to question the wisdom of educational policy that pours funds into vocational schools that do not do their intended function.

Higher education

Background

Higher education reflected the changes in political policies that have occurred in contemporary China. Since 1949 emphasis has continually been placed on political re-education, and in periods of political upheaval, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, ideology has been stressed over professional or technical competence. During the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, tens of thousands of college students joined Red Guard organizations, effectively closing down the higher education system. In general, when universities reopened in the early 1970s, enrollments were reduced from pre-Cultural Revolution levels, and admission was restricted to individuals who had been recommended by their work unit (danwei) possessed good political credentials, and had distinguished themselves in manual labor. In the absence of stringent and reasonably objective entrance examinations, political connections became increasingly important in securing the recommendations and political dossiers necessary to qualify for university admission. As a result, the decline in educational quality was profound. Deng Xiaoping reportedly wrote Mao Zedong in 1975 that university graduates were "not even capable of reading a book" in their own fields when they left the university. University faculty and administrators, moreover, were demoralized by what they faced. The University of Cambridge is an institute of higher learning. ... The Great Leap Forward (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social plan used from 1958 to 1960 which aimed to use Chinas vast population to rapidly transform mainland China from a primarily agrarian economy dominated by peasant farmers... The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [1] in the Peoples Republic of China was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China that manifested into wide-scale social, political, and economic chaos, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the entire country to... The term Red Guards may refer to one of the following. ... A work unit or danwei is the place of employment within the Peoples Republic of China. ... Manual labor is a term used for physical work done with the hands, especially in an unskilled manual job such as fruit and vegetable picking, road building, or any other field where the work may be considered hard or arduous, which has as its objective the production of goods. ... College admissions or university admission is the process through which students enter post-secondary education at universities and colleges. ... Deng Xiaoping   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Teng Hsiao-ping; August 22, 1904 – February 19, 1997) was a prominent Chinese politician and reformer, and the late leader of the Communist Party of China (CCP). ...

Efforts made in 1975 to improve educational quality were unsuccessful. By 1980 it appeared doubtful that the politically oriented admission criteria had accomplished even the purpose of increasing enrollment of worker and peasant children. Successful candidates for university entrance were usually children of cadres and officials who used personal connections that allowed them to "enter through the back door." Students from officials' families would accept the requisite minimum two year work assignment in the countryside, often in a suburban location that allowed them to remain close to their families. Village cadres, anxious to please the parent-official, gladly recommended these youths for university placement after the labor requirement had been met. The child of an official family was then on his or her way to a university without having academic ability, a record of political activism, or a distinguished work record. Rural areas are sparsely settled places away from the influence of large cities and towns. ...

After 1976 steps were taken to improve educational quality by establishing order and stability, and calling for an end to political contention on university campuses, and expanding university enrollments. This pressure to maintain quality and minimize expenditures led to efforts both to run existing institutions more efficiently and to develop other college and university programs. As a result, labor colleges for training agro-technicians and factory-run colleges for providing technical education for workers were established. In addition, eighty-eight institutions and key universities were provided with special funding, top students and faculty members, and other support, and they recruited the most academically qualified students without regard to family background or political activism. suck my doodle ...

Modernization goals in the 1980s

The commitment to the Four Modernizations required great advances in science and technology. Under the modernization program, higher education was to be the cornerstone for training and research. Because modernization depended on a vastly increased and improved capability to train scientists and engineers for needed breakthroughs, the renewed concern for higher education and academic quality - and the central role that the sciences were expected to play in the Four Modernizations - highlighted the need for scientific research and training. This concern can be traced to the critical personnel shortages and qualitative deficiencies in the sciences resulting from the unproductive years of the Cultural Revolution, when higher education was shut down. In response to the need for scientific training, the Sixth Plenum of the Twelfth National Party Congress Central Committee, held in September 1986, adopted a resolution on the guiding principles for building a socialist society that strongly emphasized the importance of education and science. The Four Modernizations (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) were the goals of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ... Training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relates to specific useful skills. ... This article is about the concept. ... This article is about the profession. ... Look up engineer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Breakthrough is the name of an abstract strategy board game. ... Human Resources has at least two meanings depending on context. ... Socialism is a social and economic system (or the political philosophy advocating such a system) in which the economic means of production are owned and controlled collectively by the people. ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ...

Reformers realized, however, that the higher education system was far from meeting modernization goals and that additional changes were needed. The Provisional Regulations Concerning the Management of Institutions of Higher Learning, promulgated by the State Council in 1986, initiated vast changes in administration and adjusted educational opportunity, direction, and content. With the increased independence accorded under the education reform, universities and colleges were able to choose their own teaching plans and curricula; to accept projects from or cooperate with other socialist establishments for scientific research and technical development in setting up "combines" involving teaching, scientific research, and production; to suggest appointments and removals of vice presidents and other staff members; to take charge of the distribution of capital construction investment and funds allocated by the state; and to be responsible for the development of international exchanges by using their own funds. Fixed capital is a concept in economics and accounting, first theoretically analysed in some depth by the economist David Ricardo. ...

The changes also allowed the universities to accept financial aid from work units and decide how this money was to be used without asking for more money from departments in charge of education. Further, higher education institutions and work units could sign contracts for the training of students.

Higher education institutions also were assigned a greater role in running inter-regional and inter-departmental schools. Within their state-approved budgets, universities secured more freedom to allocate funds as they saw fit and to use income from tuition and technical and advisory services for their own development, including collective welfare and bonuses. Look up budget in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Tuition means instruction, teaching or a fee charged for educational instruction especially at a formal institution of learning. ...

There also was a renewed interest in television, radio, and correspondence classes (see distance learning and electronic learning. Some of the courses, particularly in the college-run factories, were serious, full-time enterprises, with a two- to three-year curriculum. Distance Learning is learning carried out apart from the usual classroom setting; in an asynchronous setting. ... Electronic learning or E-learning is a general term used to refer to computer-enhanced learning. ... For a curriculum vitae, see Résumé. In formal education, a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. ...

Entrance examinations and admission criteria

National examinations to select students for higher education (and positions of leadership) were an important part of China's culture, and, traditionally, entrance to a higher education institution was considered prestigious. Although the examination system for admission to colleges and universities has undergone many changes since the Cultural Revolution, it remains the basis for recruiting academically able students. When higher education institutions were reopened in early 1970s, candidates for entrance examinations had to be senior-middle-school graduates or the equivalent, generally below twenty-six years of age. Work experience requirements were eliminated, but workers and staff members needed permission from their enterprises to take the examinations. For contemporary culture after 1949, see Culture of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Each provincial-level unit was assigned a quota of students to be admitted to key universities, a second quota of students for regular universities within that administrative division, and a third quota of students from other provinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities who would be admitted to institutions operated at the provincial level. Provincial-level administrative units selected students with outstanding records to take the examinations. Additionally, preselection examinations were organized by the provinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities for potential students (from three to five times the number of places allotted). These candidates were actively encouraged to take the examination to ensure that a sufficient number of good applicants would be available. Cadres with at least two years of work experience were recruited for selected departments in a small number of universities on an experimental basis. Preferential admission treatment (in spite of lower test scores) was given to minority candidates, students from disadvantaged areas, and those who agreed in advance to work in less developed regions after graduation. Look up quota in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up cadre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

In December 1977, when uniform national examinations were reinstated, 5.7 million students took the examinations, although university placement was available for only the 278,000 applicants with the highest scores. In July 1984, about 1.6 million candidates (30,000 fewer than in 1983) took the entrance examinations for the 430,000 places in China's more than 900 colleges and universities. Of the 1.6 million examinees, more than 1 million took the test for placement in science and engineering colleges; 415,000 for places in liberal arts colleges; 88,000 for placement in foreign language institutions; and 15,000 for placement in sports universities and schools. More than 100,000 of the candidates were from national minority groups. A year later, there were approximately 1.8 million students taking the three day college entrance examination to compete for 560,000 places. Liberal arts candidates were tested on politics, Chinese, mathematics, foreign languages, history, and geography. Science and engineering candidates were tested on politics, Chinese, mathematics, chemistry, and biology. Entrance examinations also were given in 1985 for professional and technical schools, which sought to enroll 550,000 new students. A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ... Engineering is the discipline of acquiring and applying knowledge of design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes. ... In the history of education, the seven liberal arts comprise two groups of studies, the trivium and the quadrivium. ... A foreign language is a language not spoken by the indigenous people of a certain place: for example, English is a foreign language in Japan. ... For other uses, see Politics (disambiguation). ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... A foreign language is a language not spoken by the indigenous people of a certain place: for example, English is a foreign language in Japan. ... This article is about the study of time in human terms. ... For other uses, see Chemistry (disambiguation). ... Biology studies the variety of life (clockwise from top-left) E. coli, tree fern, gazelle, Goliath beetle Biology (from Greek: βίος, bio, life; and λόγος, logos, knowledge), also referred to as the biological sciences, is the study of living organisms utilizing the scientific method. ...

Other innovations in enrollment practices, included allowing colleges and universities to admit students with good academic records but relatively low entrance-examination scores. Some colleges were allowed to try an experimental student recommendation system - fixed at 2 percent of the total enrollment for regular colleges and 5 percent for teachers' colleges - instead of the traditional entrance examination. A minimum national examination score was established for admission to specific departments at specially designated colleges and universities, and the minimum score for admission to other universities was set by provinciallevel authorities. Key universities established separate classes for minorities. When several applicants attained the minimum test score, the school had the option of making a selection, a policy that gave university faculty and administrators a certain amount of discretion but still protected admission according to academic ability. Teachers College (or Teachers College or Teachers College) refers to a normal school, ie. ...

In addition to the written examination, university applicants had to pass a physical examination and a political screening. Less than 2 percent of the students who passed the written test were eliminated for reasons of poor health. The number disqualified for political reasons was known, but publicly the party maintained that the number was very small and that it sought to ensure that only the most able students actually entered colleges and universities.

By 1985 the number of institutions of higher learning had again increased - to slightly more than 1,000. The State Education Commission and the Ministry of Finance issued a joint declaration for nationwide unified enrollment of adult students - not the regular secondary-school graduates but the members of the work force who qualified for admission by taking a test. The State Education Commission established unified questions and time and evaluation criteria for the test and authorized provinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities to administer the test, grade the papers in a uniform manner, and determine the minimum points required for admission. The various schools were to enroll students according to the results. Adult students needed to have the educational equivalent of senior-middle-school graduates, and those applying for release or partial release from work to study were to be under forty years of age. Staff members and workers were to apply to study job-related subjects with review by and approval of their respective work units. If employers paid for the college courses, the workers had to take entrance examinations. In 1985 colleges enrolled 33,000 employees from various enterprises and companies, approximately 6 percent of the total college enrollment. The Ministry of Finance of the Peoples Republic of China (simplified Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is the national executive agency of the Central Peoples Government which administers macroeconomic policies and the national annual budget. ...

In 1985 state quotas for university places were set, allowing both for students sponsored by institutions and for those paying their own expenses. This policy was a change from the previous system in which all students were enrolled according to guidelines established in Beijing. All students except those at teachers' colleges, those who had financial difficulties, and those who were to work under adverse conditions after graduation had to pay for their own tuition, accommodations, and miscellaneous expenses. In accounting, an expense is a general term for an outgoing payment made by a business or individual. ...

Changes in enrollment and assignment policies

The student enrollment and graduate assignment system also was changed to reflect more closely the personnel needs of modernization. By 1986 the state was responsible for drafting the enrollment plan, which took into account future personnel demands, the need to recruit students from outlying regions, and the needs of trades and professions with adverse working conditions. Moreover, a certain number of graduates to be trained for the People's Liberation Army were included in the state enrollment plan. In most cases, enrollment in higher education institutions at the employers' request was extended as a supplement to the state student enrollment plan. Employers were to pay a percentage of training fees, and students were to fulfill contractual obligations to the employers after graduation. The small number of students who attended colleges and universities at their own expense could be enrolled in addition to those in the state plan. Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ... Peoples Liberation Army redirects here. ... A contract is a legally binding exchange of promises or agreement between parties that the law will enforce. ...

Accompanying the changes in enrollment practices were reforms, adopted in 1986, in the faculty appointment system, which ended the "iron rice bowl" employment system and gave colleges and universities freedom to decide what departments, majors, and numbers of teachers they needed. Teachers in institutions of higher learning were hired on a renewable contract basis, usually for two to four years at a time. The teaching positions available on basis were teaching assistant, lecturer, associate professor, and professor. The system was tested in eight major universities in Beijing and Shanghai before it was instituted nationwide at the end of 1985. University presidents headed groups in charge of appointing professors, lecturers, and teaching assistants according to their academic levels and teaching abilities, and a more rational wage system, geared to different job levels, was inaugurated. Universities and colleges with surplus professors and researchers were advised to grant them appropriate academic titles and encourage them to work for their current pay in schools of higher learning where they were needed. The new system was to be extended to schools of all kinds and other education departments within two years. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The Major Championships, often referred to simply as the Majors are the four most prestigious annual tournaments in mens professional golf. ... A teaching assistant (TA) is a junior scholar employed on a temporary contract by a college or university for the purpose of assisting a professor by teaching students in recitation or discussion sessions, holding office hours, grading homework or exams, supervising labs (in science and engineering courses), and sometimes teaching... Lecturer is a term of academic rank. ... A professor is a senior teacher and researcher, usually in a college or university. ... The meaning of the word professor (Latin: [1]) varies. ...

Under the 1985 reforms, all graduates were assigned jobs by the state; a central government placement agency told the schools where to send graduates. By 1985 Tsinghua University and a few other universities were experimenting with a system that allowed graduates to accept job offers or to look for their own positions. For example, of 1,900 Tsinghua University graduates in 1985, 1,200 went on to graduate school, 48 looked for their own jobs, and the remainder were assigned jobs by the school after consultation with the students. The college students and postgraduates scheduled to graduate in 1986 were assigned primarily to work in forestry, education, textiles, and the armaments industry. Graduates still were needed in civil engineering, computer science, and finance. Tsinghua University (THU; Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is a university in Beijing, China. ... Quaternary education or postgraduate education is the fourth-stage educational level which follows the completion of an undergraduate degree at a college or university. ... A decidous beech forest in Slovenia. ... This article is about the type of fabric. ... The bayonet, still used in war as both knife and spearpoint. ... The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Finance studies and addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses, and organizations raise, allocate, and use monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects. ...

Scholarship and loan system

In July 1986 the State Council announced that the stipend system for university and college students would be replaced with a new scholarship and loan system. The new system, to be tested in selected institutions during the 1986-87 academic year, was designed to help students who could not cover their own living expenses but who studied hard, obeyed state laws, and observed discipline codes. Students eligible for financial aid were to apply to the schools and the China Industrial and Commercial Bank for low-interest loans. Three categories of students eligible for aid were established: top students encouraged to attain all-around excellence; students specializing in education, agriculture, forestry, sports, and marine navigation; and students willing to work in poor, remote, and border regions or under harsh conditions, such as in mining and engineering. In addition, free tuition and board were to be offered at teachers' colleges, and the graduates were required to teach at least five years in primary and middle schools. After graduation, a student's loans were to be paid off by his or her employer in a lump sum, and the money was to be repaid to the employer by the student through five years of payroll deductions. A stipend is a form of payment or salary, such as for an internship or apprenticeship. ... For the community in Florida, see University, Florida. ... College (Latin collegium) is a term most often used today to denote an educational institution. ... For other uses, see Discipline (disambiguation). ... Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: , more commonly just 工行 Gōngháng) is the largest of Chinas Big Four state-owned commercial banks, the other 3 banks being the Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, and China Construction Bank, the largest bank... For other senses of this word, see interest (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Loan (disambiguation). ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... A decidous beech forest in Slovenia. ... This article is about determination of position and direction on or above the surface of the earth. ... Chuquicamata, the second largest open pit copper mine in the world, Chile. ... Engineering is the discipline of acquiring and applying knowledge of design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes. ... Lump sum is a one-time payment of money, as opposed to a series of payments. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ...

Study abroad

In addition to loans, another means of raising educational quality, particularly in science, was to send students abroad to study. A large number of Chinese students studied in the Soviet Union before educational links and other cooperative programs with the Soviet Union were severed in the late 1950s (see Sino-Soviet split). In the 1960s and 1970s, China continued to send a small number of students abroad, primarily to European universities. In October 1978 Chinese students began to arrive in the United States; their numbers accelerated after normalization of relations between the two countries in January 1979, a policy consistent with modernization needs. Although figures vary, more than 36,000 students, including 7,000 self-supporting students (those who paid their own way, received scholarships from host institutions, or received help from relatives and "foreign friends"), studied in 14 countries between 1978 and 1984. Of this total, 78 percent were technical personnel sent abroad for advanced study. As of mid-1986 there were 15,000 Chinese scholars and graduates in American universities, compared with the total of 19,000 scholars sent between 1979 and 1983. A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ... The Sino-Soviet split was a major diplomatic conflict between the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), beginning in the late 1950s, reaching a peak in 1969 and continuing in various ways until the late 1980s. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ... This article is about scholarship (noun) and scholarship as a form of financial aid. ... The Some Institutes for Advanced Study (SIAS) consortium organizes nine institutes for advanced study founded on the same principles as the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which is also one of the members. ...

Chinese students sent to the United States generally were not typical undergraduates or graduate students but were mid-career scientists, often thirty-five to forty-five years of age, seeking advanced training in their areas of specialization. Often they were individuals of exceptional ability who occupied responsible positions in Chinese universities and research institutions. Fewer than 15 percent of the earliest arrivals were degree candidates. Nearly all the visiting scholars were in scientific fields. Specialization, also spelled Specialisation, is an important way to generate propositional knowledge, by applying general knowledge, such as the theory of gravity, to specific instances, such as when I release this apple, it will fall to the floor. Specialization is the opposite of generalization. ...

Educational investment

Many of the problems that had hindered higher educational development in the past continued in 1987. Funding remained a major problem because science and technology study and research and study abroad were expensive. Because education was competing with other modernization programs, capital was critically short. Another concern was whether or not the Chinese economy was sufficiently advanced to make efficient use of the highly trained technical personnel it planned to educate. For example, some observers believed that it would be more realistic to train a literate work force of low-level technicians instead of than research scientists. Moreover, it was feared that using an examination to recruit the most able students might advance people who were merely good at taking examinations. Educational reforms also made some people uncomfortable by criticizing the traditional practice of rote memorization and promoting innovative teaching and study methods. This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ... The economies of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau are separate from the rest of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Literacy is the ability to use text to communicate across space and time. ...

The prestige associated with higher education caused a demand for it. But many qualified youths were unable to attend colleges and universities because China could not finance enough university places for them. To help meet the demand and to educate a highly trained, specialized work force, China established alternate forms of higher education - such as spare-time, part-time, and radio and television universities.

China could not afford a heavy investment, either ideologically or financially, in the education of a few students. Since 1978 China's leaders have modified the policy of concentrating education resources at the university level, which, although designed to facilitate modernization, conflicted directly with the party's principles. The policies that produced an educated elite also siphoned off resources that might have been used to accomplish the compulsory nine year education more speedily and to equalize educational opportunities in the city and the countryside. The policy of key schools has been modified over the years. Nevertheless, China's leaders believe an educated elite is necessary to reach modernization goals. Corruption has been increasingly problematic for rural schools. Because the educational funding is distributed from the top down, each layer of bureaucracy has tended to siphon off more than its share of funding, leaving too little for the bottom rural level. Not to be confused with Psiphon. ...

Reform in the 21st Century

Two years before the dawn of the 21st Century the Chinese government proposed an ambitious plan intended to expand university enrollment to ensure a greater output of professional and specialized graduates. An adjunct to the plan aimed to develop an elite of world class universities. Restructuring, through consolidations, mergers and shifts among the authorities which supervise institutions, was aimed at addressing the problems of small size and low efficiency. Higher vocational education was also restructured, and there was a general tendency there to emphasize elite institutions. This rapid expansion of mass higher education has resulted in not only a strain in teaching resources but also in higher unemployment rates among graduates. The creation of private universities, not under governmental control, remains slow and its future uncertain. The restructuring of higher education, in the words of one academic "has created a clearly escalating social stratification pattern among institutions, stratified by geography, source of funding, administrative unit, as well as by functional category (e.g., comprehensive, law, medical, etc.)."^[2] Thus, although recent reform has arguably improved over-all educational quality, they have created new, different issues of equity and efficiency that will need to be addressed as the century proceeds. Look up efficiency in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A blacksmith is a traditional trade. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... social stratification is the division of people of a particular society on the basis if occupation, income, power, prestige, authority, status, dignity, education, class, castle, gender, race and ethnicity In sociology, social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of social classes, castes and strata within a society. ... The Court of Chancery, London, early 19th century This article is about the concept of equity in the jurisprudence of common law countries. ...

In the spring 2007 China will conduct a national evaluation of its universities. The results of this evaluation will be used to support the next major planned policy initiative. The last substantial national evaluation of universities, which was undertaken in 1994, resulted in the 'massification' of higher education as well as a renewed emphasis on elite institutions.^[3] Academics praised the fin du siècle reforms for budging China's higher education from a unified, centralized, closed and static system into one characterized by more diversification, decentralization, openess and dynamism, stimulating the involvement of local governments and other non-state sectors. At the same time they note that this decentralization and marketization has led to further inequality in educational opportunity.^[4] Decentralization is the process of dispersing decision-making closer to the point of service or action. ...

Teachers

Among the most pressing problems facing education reformers was the scarcity of qualified teachers, which has led to a serious stunting of educational development. In 1986 there were about 8 million primary- and middle-school teachers in China, but many lacked professional training. Estimates indicated that in order to meet the goals of the Seventh Five-Year Plan and realize compulsory 9-year education, the system needed 1 million new teachers for primary schools, 750,000 new teachers for junior middle schools, and 300,000 new teachers for senior middle schools. Estimates predict, however, that the demand for teachers will drop in the late 1990s because of an anticipated decrease in primary-school enrollments. For university teachers, see professor. ... Professional development often refers to skills required for maintaining a specific career path or to general skills offered through continuing education, including the more general skills area of personal development. ... A kindergarten classroom in Afghanistan. ...

To cope with the shortage of qualified teachers, the State Education Commission decreed in 1985 that senior-middle-school teachers should be graduates with two years' training in professional institutes and that primary-school teachers should be graduates of secondary schools. To improve teacher quality, the commission established full-time and part-time (the latter preferred because it was less costly) in-service training programs. Primary-school and preschool in-service teacher training programs devoted 84 percent of the time to subject teaching, 6 percent to pedagogy and psychology, and 10 percent to teaching methods. In-service training for primary-school teachers was designed to raise them to a level of approximately two years' postsecondary study, with the goal of qualifying most primary-school teachers by 1990. Secondary-school in-service teacher training was based on a unified model, tailored to meet local conditions, and offered on a spare-time basis. Ninety-five percent of its curricula was devoted to subject teaching, 2 to 3 percent to pedagogy and psychology, and 2 to 3 percent to teaching methods. There was no similar large-scale in-service effort for technical and vocational teachers, most of whom worked for enterprises and local authorities. Pedagogy (IPA: ) , the art or science of being a teacher, generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction[1]. The word comes from the Ancient Greek (paidagōgeō; from (child) and (lead)): literally, to lead the child”. In Ancient Greece, was (usually) a slave who supervised the... Psychological science redirects here. ... A German classroom, circa 1930s. ...

By 1985 there were more than 1,000 teacher training schools - an indispensable tool in the effort to solve the acute shortage of qualified teachers. These schools, however, were unable to supply the number of teachers needed to attain modernization goals through 1990. Although a considerable number of students graduated as qualified teachers from institutions of higher learning, the relatively low social status and salary levels of teachers hampered recruitment, and not all of the graduates of teachers' colleges became teachers. To attract more teachers, China tried to make teaching a more desirable and respected profession. To this end, the government designated September 10 as Teachers' Day, granted teachers pay raises, and made teachers' colleges tuition free. To further arrest the teacher shortage, in 1986 the central government sent teachers to underdeveloped regions to train local schoolteachers. Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ... For other uses, see Higher Learning (disambiguation). ... In some countries, Teachers Days are intended to be special days for the appreciation of teachers. ...

Because urban teachers continued to earn more than their rural counterparts and because academic standards in the countryside had dropped, it remained difficult to recruit teachers for rural areas. Teachers in rural areas also had production responsibilities for their plots of land, which took time from their teaching. Rural primary teachers needed to supplement their pay by farming because most were paid by the relatively poor local communities rather than by the state.

Adult education

Role in modernization

Because only 4 percent of the nation's middle-school graduates are admitted to universities, China has found it necessary to develop other ways of meeting the demand for education. Adult education has become increasingly important in helping China meet its modernization goals. Adult, or "nonformal," education is an alternative form of higher education that encompasses radio, television, and correspondence universities, spare-time and part-time universities, factory-run universities for staff and workers, and county-run universities for peasants, many operating primarily during students' off-work hours. These alternative forms of education are economical. They had seeked to educate both the "delayed generation" - those who lost educational opportunities during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) - and to raise the cultural, scientific, and general education levels of workers on the job. Libraries are useful resources for adult learners. ... Modernization (also Modernisation) is a concept in the sphere of social sciences that refers to process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. ... Correspondence may refer to: In the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, correspondence is the relationship between spiritual and physical realities. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [1] in the Peoples Republic of China was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China that manifested into wide-scale social, political, and economic chaos, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the entire country to...

Forms

Schools have been established by government departments, businesses, trade unions, academic societies, democratic parties, and other organizations. In 1984 about 70 percent of China's factories and enterprises supported their own part-time classes, which often were referred to as workers' colleges. In Beijing alone, more than ninety adult-education schools with night schools enrolled tens of thousands of students. More than 20,000 of these students graduated annually from evening universities, workers' colleges, television universities, and correspondence schools - more than twice the number graduating from regular colleges and universities. The government spent ¥200 (for value of the yuan - see Renminbi) to ¥500 per adult education student and at least ¥1,000 per regular university student. In 1984 approximately 1.3 million students enrolled in television, correspondence, and evening universities, about a 30 percent increase over 1983. It has been suggested that Chinese yuan be merged into this article or section. ... CNY and RMB redirect here. ...

Spare-time education for workers and peasants and literacy classes for the entire adult population were other components of basic education. Spare-time education included a very broad range of educational activities at all levels. Most spare-time schools were sponsored by factories and run for their own workers; they provided fairly elementary education, as well as courses to upgrade technical skills. Most were on-the-job training and retraining courses, a normal part of any industrial system. These schools continually received publicity in the domestic media as a symbol of social justice, but it was unclear whether they received adequate resources to achieve this end. The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. ... Basic education is an essential education. ... Primary or elementary education consist of the first years of formal, structured education that occurs during childhood. ... Popular press redirects here; note that the University of Wisconsin Press publishes under the imprint The Popular Press. Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. ... Social justice refers to the concept of an unjust society that refers to more than just the administration of laws. ...

China's educational television system began in 1960 but was suspended during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. In 1979 the Central Radio and Television University was established in Beijing with branches in twenty-eight provincial-level universities. Many Central Radio and Television University students were recent senior-middle school graduates who scored just below the cut-off point for admission to conventional colleges and universities. Full-time (who take four courses) and part-time students (two courses) had at least two years' work experience, and they return to their jobs after graduation. Spare-time students (one course) studied after work. Students whose work units granted them permission to study in a television university were paid their normal wages; expenses for most of their books and other educational materials were paid for by the state. A typical Central Radio and Television University student spent up to six hours a day over a three-year period watching lectures on videotapes produced by some of the best teachers in China. These lectures were augmented by face-to-face tutoring by local instructors and approximately four hours of homework each evening. The major problem with the system is that there were too few television sets. In 1987 the Central Television and Radio University had its programs produced, transmitted and financed by the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television. The State Education Commission developed its curriculum and distributed its printed support materials. Curriculum included both basic, general-purpose courses in science and technology and more specialized courses. The Central Television and Radio University offered more than 1,000 classes in Beijing and its suburbs and 14 majors in 2- to 3-year courses through 56 working centers. Students who passed final examinations were given certificates entitling them to the same level of remuneration as graduates of regular, full-time colleges and universities. The state gave certain allowances to students awaiting jobs during their training period. Central Radio and Television University was established in Beijing in 1979. ... A wage is a compensation which workers receive in exchange for their labor. ... In education, teachers are those who teach students or pupils, often a course of study, lesson plan, or a practical skill, including learning and thinking skills. ... For the Daft Punk album, see Homework (album). ... The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, or SARFT, (Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) is an executive branch under the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Literacy and language reform

The continuing campaigns to eradicate illiteracy also were a part of basic education. Chinese government statistics indicated that of a total population of nearly 1.1 billion in 1985, about 230 million people were illiterate or semiliterate. The difficulty of mastering written Chinese makes raising the literacy rate particularly difficult. In general, language reform was intended to make written and spoken Chinese easier to learn, which in turn would foster both literacy and linguistic unity and serve as a foundation for a simpler written language. In 1951 the party issued a directive that inaugurated a three-part plan for language reform. The plan sought to establish universal comprehension of a standardized common language, simplify written characters, and introduce, where possible, romanized forms based on the Latin alphabet. In 1956 putonghua was introduced as the language of instruction in schools and in the national broadcast media, and by 1977 it was in use throughout China, particularly in the government and party, and in education. Although in 1987 the government continued to endorse the goal of universalizing putonghua, hundreds of regional and local dialects continued to be spoken, complicating interregional communication. Basic education is an essential education. ... Various styles of Chinese calligraphy. ... The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. ... Spoken Chinese Spoken Chinese comprises many regional variants. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Standard Mandarin refers to the official Chinese spoken language used by the Peoples Republic of China, the Republic of China on Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. ...

A second language reform required the simplification of ideographs because ideographs with fewer strokes are easier to learn. In 1964 the Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written Language released an official list of 2,238 simplified characters most basic to the language. Simplification made literacy easier, although people taught only in simplified characters were cut off from the wealth of Chinese literature written in traditional characters. Any idea of replacing ideographic script with romanized script was soon abandoned, however by government and education leaders. Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Chinese literature spans back thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the matured fictional novel arising in the medieval period to entertain the masses of literate Chinese. ... Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ...

A third area of change involved the proposal to use the pinyin romanization system more widely. Pinyin (first approved by the National People's Congress in 1958) was encouraged primarily to facilitate the spread of putonghua in regions where other dialects and languages are spoken. By the mid-1980s, however, the use of pinyin was not as widespread as the use of putonghua. Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... The Great Hall of the People, where the NPC convenes The National Peoples Congress (全国人民代表大会 in Pinyin: Quánguó Rénmín Dàibiǎo Dàhuì, literally Pan-Nation Congress of the Peoples Representatives), abbreviated PNCOTPR, is the highest...

Retaining literacy was as much a problem as acquiring it, particularly among the rural population. Literacy rates declined between 1966 and 1976. Political disorder may have contributed to the decline, but the basic problem was that the many Chinese ideographs can be mastered only through rote learning and can be often forgotten because of disuse.

See also

• List of universities in the People's Republic of China
• Schools in China
• National College Entrance Examination
• Imperial examination
• Culture of China
• History of science and technology in China
• Scouting in China
• Digital divide in the People's Republic of China
• Special Class for the Gifted Young
• French Baccalaureate, a test students attending a French Lyceum must pass to obtain their high school diplomas
• A-level, a British equivalent to the French Baccalaureate

This article is a list of universities in the Peoples Republic of China by province (22), autonomous region (5), municipality (4), and special administrative region (2). ... The National College Entrance Examination is an academic examination held annually in the mainland of the Peoples Republic of China. ... The Imperial examinations (Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) in Imperial China determined who among the population would be permitted to enter the states bureaucracy. ... For contemporary culture after 1949, see Culture of the Peoples Republic of China. ... The history of science and technology in China is both long and rich with science and technological contribution. ... Since the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) by the Communist Party in 1949 in mainland China, Scouting has officially been banned. ... // The term digital divide refers to the gap between those with regular, effective access to Digital and information technology, and those without this access. ... The Special Class for the Gifted Young of University of Science and Technology of China was established in March 1978. ... Lycée Louis-le-Grand (on the right) in Paris is one of Frances most famous lycées, with a rate of success to baccalauréat usually above 99%. The baccalauréat (IPA: ), often known in France familiarly as the bac, is a academic degree which French students sit... Lycée Français (French lyceum) is the name given to a private school belonging to a network of over 400 schools worldwide. ... An A-level, short for Advanced Level, is a General Certificate of Education usually taken during Further Education and after GCSEs. ...

References

1. ^ Authority bans Shanghai school vaunting traditional Chinese teaching methods, Xinhua. July 27, 2006.
2. ^ Jin Xiao, "China’s Educational Reform in Transition: Is it Transforming?" Chinese University of Hong Kong, unpublished paper, 2007.
3. ^ Rui Yang, "Chapter 8. Toward Massification: Higher Education Development in the People's Republic of China Since 1949," in J.C. Smart (ed.), Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, 2004, Vol. XIX, 311–374. [1]
4. ^ King-lun Ngok & Michael H. Lee, "Localization of Higher Education and Its Social Consequences in Mainland China, 1993-2006". [2]

This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain. [3] Xinhua (Chinese:新华通讯社/新華通訊社, pinyin:xīnhuá tōngxùnshè) is also the short for Xinhua News Agency Xinhua (Chinese:新化县/新化縣, pinyin:xīnhuà xiàn) is a county in Hunan,China, See Xinhua... The Country Studies are works published by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress ( USA), freely available for use by researchers. ... The U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789 by a constitutional convention, sets down the basic framework of American government in its seven articles. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

External links

• Geoff Dyer and Khozem Merchant. Graduate shortage 'may hinder Chinese economy.' October 6, 2005. Financial Times.
• China Luring Scholars to Make Universities Great, The New York Times, October 28, 2005
• M. Agelasto. 2001. University in Turmoil: The Political Economy of Shenzhen University ISBN 962 86141 18 Hong Kong.
• M. Agelasto. 2001. Educational Disengagement: Undermining Academic Quality at a Chinese University ISBN 962 86141 26 Hong Kong.
• M. Agelasto & B. Adamson. 1998. Higher Education in Post-Mao China. ISBN 962 2094503 Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 490 pp.
• Cunzhen Yang & Trevor Gale, "Policy Analysis: On Chinese Higher Education Entry Policy" (2004).
• Rui Yang, "Internationalising Chinese Higher Education: A Case Study of One Major Comprehensive University".
• Yu ZHANG, "Private Education in China: Issues and Prospects" Perspectives, Volume 4, No. 4, Dec. 31, 2003.
• Chan, Lai, "Marketization of higher education in China : implications for national development" dissertation University of Hong Kong, 2001.
• Lai, Fung-yi, "Marketization of higher education : a case study of Guangzhou, China" dissertation University of Hongkong, 2001, re. South China University of Technology.

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