Revision of education law imminent

Guo Zi, China Daily, Asia News Network, Beijing

Voices on revising the current Law of Compulsory Education were loud in the just concluded first session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC).

The issue lies in how to ensure compulsory education's proper funding, which does not look good and will need a concerted effort to achieve the required improvements.

Altogether 376 deputies added their names to motion No 1,000, which urges revision of the Law of Compulsory Education, making it the most strongly endorsed at the just concluded NPC session.

The deputies have reason to expect a positive outcome to their appeal. In an interview with China Daily on the eve of the legislative body's annual session, Liu Bin, a member of the NPC's Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee, expressed hope that the law's revision would be on the legislative agenda of the 10th NPC.

By 2002, 90 percent of the Chinese population had been covered by the nine-year compulsory education scheme, a result of enforcement of the law on compulsory education in July 1986.

However, there are still some 450 counties which remain uncovered, mostly in the outlying and underdeveloped western regions, the traditional homelands of many of China's ethnic groups.

Nine-year compulsory education means that education at elementary and junior high school level is free from tuition fees, although students are required to pay for textbooks and the upkeep of their schools.

Recent years have also witnessed a widening gap in the development of compulsory education in different regions of the country.

The 17-year-old law is now in need of revision to adapt to the new and changing situation. Compulsory education should expand in a balanced manner, deputies urged.

When the law was first drafted in 1986, it did not clarify the responsibilities of different levels of government in the funding of compulsory deduction. Towns and villages then became the major financial resources of rural education.

Yet since China adopted the system of tax division in 1994, the revenue of local government has decreased, while that of central government has increased considerably to more than half the country's total revenue.

The revised compulsory education law should explicitly state the liability of government at all levels in guaranteeing adequate funding for education, said the deputies in their motion.

The revised version should also show more concern for "disadvantaged groups" within society, by reducing charges for students in rural areas, providing complete free education for those from needy families, and establishing a system to ensure that children of rural migrant workers face no obstacles in entering urban schools, they noted.

The existing disparities are glaring. Take a school in the well-developed coastal region which may have color televisions, slide projectors, desktop and laptop computers and Internet connection in classrooms. Contrast that to some schools in rural areas which are likely to be housed in dilapidated buildings, with nothing more than a blackboard and chalk by way of teaching materials in each classroom.

Many children are forced to drop out of school with one of the major reasons being the difficulties their impoverished families face in trying to pay for books and fees.

Many other problems exist in compulsory education, such as the defaulting on teachers pay and difficulties the children of migrating rural people experience when trying to enroll in urban schools.

Inappropriate distribution of government funding is cited as a major factor behind regional imbalance in the development of compulsory education.

Compulsory education in rural China is funded by local county, township and village government, leading to sharp differences in school budgets dependent on locally taxed incomes. Since last March, a special surcharge on rural education was abolished as part of the tax-for-fee reform. This move was aimed at easing the financial burden on farmers, but at the same time has weakened the funding of compulsory education funding in rural areas.

The State Council issued a circular on rural compulsory education last May, making county-level government the responsible party for levying for compulsory education and providing explicit accounts concerning investment and management of those moneys.

According to the circular, the financial burden on township government, those formerly responsible for the funds, will be lifted; the central government will provide macro instructions and make transfer payments to poverty-stricken areas, while the role of provincial and municipal government is mainly to arrange resources and make transfer payments.

Yet can county-level government meet the heavy burden of compulsory education?

Facing a financial deficit, some county governments cannot make ends meet, let alone increase investment in education.

A distorted phenomenon then emerged with government at the higher-level, which controls the largest funds, being relieved of the burden of funding compulsory education, while county-level government, which has poor financial resources, has to carry the lion's share.

And look at the big picture of China's education budgets. Government funding accounts for only 50 to 60 percent of the total for compulsory education, with the balance raised by donation and surcharge. While more than 70 percent of the funding for higher education comes from the government.

It seems that these poverty-stricken areas will have to depend on the transfer of payments from government at higher-levels.

Yet the transfer payment for compulsory education by central government only accounts for around 1 percent of the country's total expenditure on compulsory education, which falls far short of its needs.

Insufficient funding has long bedeviled the country's education sector. China is still striving towards the goal of expanding its expenditure on education to 4 percent of the gross domestic products, while the world average is 4.8 percent.

Structural and regional imbalance of the limited input has made it even harder for the country's compulsory education system.

Central government should thus shoulder more of the responsibility of financing compulsory education and take prompt measures to reallocate the resources in a fair and balanced manner.