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2020 is the final year of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (the 13th FYP) period (2016-2020). On December 1, the Ministry of Education (MOE) held the first press conference as part of its 2020 concluding series to review the country’s educational achievements during this period. Attendees to the event included Liu Changya, Director-General of the MOE’s Department for Development Planning, Ren Youqun, Director-General of the MOE’s Department of Teacher Education, Liu Jing, Deputy Director-General of the MOE’s Department of Finance, and Gao Runsheng, Senior Counsel at the MOE’s Department of Science and Technology. MOE spokesperson Xu Mei served as moderator at the conference.
Liu Changya said that China’s education sector had achieved all the major goals set out in the 13th FYP. Remarkable progress had been made in the following areas:
Greater Access to Education
According to Liu Changya, during the 13th FYP period, China reached or surpassed the level of middle and high income countries in terms of access to education.
Specifically, in 2019, the gross enrollment rate at pre-school, senior high and higher education level reached 83.4%, 89.5% and 51.6%, respectively. The ratio of enrollment to graduation from the nine-years of compulsory education reached 94.8%. Currently, China’s working population has received an average education spanning 10.7 years, and more than 50.9% of new entrants into the workforce have higher education qualifications with 13.7 years of education on average.
According to Liu Jing, during the 13th FYP period, China’s government expenditure on education saw a steady growth, exceeding 4 trillion RMB for the first time in 2019, and remaining above 4% of GDP for eight consecutive years since 2012. Total spending on education reached 5 trillion RMB for the first time in 2019. Liu Jing pointed out that this was a remarkable feat since it was achieved under the backdrop of an economic downturn, and this reflected China’s firm resolution to give top priority to education.
Across all levels of education, the biggest proportion of government expenditure on education was spent on basic education. Spending on preschool education saw the fastest growth, increasing from less than 4% of the total government expenditure on education in 2015 to 5% in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 15.4%. More than 80% of transfers from the central government to local governments used for education purposes were spent on the less-developed central and western parts of China. 62% of the expenditure was spent on salaries for teachers and school staff, up 5 percentage points from 2019, which showed that priority of schools was shifting from building physical environment to improving human resource.
Greater Equity in Education
According to Liu Changya, from 2016 to 2020, one of China’s top priorities in education was poverty alleviation through education. During this period, the number of registered drop-out students from compulsory education fell from 200,000 to near zero. 525,000 students from rural and poor areas were admitted to top universities in China. 391 million economically disadvantaged students received financial aid totaling 773.9 billion RMB. More than 37 million students at the compulsory education level from over 130,000 schools in 1,634 counties benefited from a government-funded nutrition improvement plan.
At the preschool level, 76% of kindergartens in China charged relatively low government-mandated fees. At the compulsory education level, 95.3% of China’s county-level areas in 23 provinces have achieved balanced development, according to the results of an assessment carried out by the MOE in 2019. Policies were also put into place to ensure that students were admitted to primary and junior high schools in their home districts without the need to take any examination, and that the public and private schools in the compulsory education system should start their enrollment processes at the same time.
In terms of teaching force capacity building, Ren Youqun reported that the number of teachers increased from 15.39 million at the end of 2015 to 17.32 million in 2020. Policies have been implemented to ensure that the salaries of teachers working in compulsory education are no lower than the salaries of local public servants. The retention rate and teaching quality of rural teachers have seen remarkable improvements. 725 extremely poor counties in 22 provinces in the central and western parts of China provided allowances to local teachers.
Other incentives were also introduced. A series of prizes and awards were presented to people who made distinguished contributions to the education sector. 20 provinces have put forward policies to alleviate the workload of primary and secondary schools teachers.
Gao Runsheng pointed out that information technology was an important measure to promote educational equity, and the past five years had seen remarkable progress in education informatization.
According to Gao, the percentage of primary and junior high schools connected to internet increased from 69.3% in 2015 to 99.7%, and the internet bandwidth of 98.7% schools reached 100M, up from 12.8% in 2015. A project was launched to ensure all rural education establishments are accessible to digital education resources. 203 national-level databases for vocational education recourses and 1,291 national-level high quality online courses were created.
Gao said, modern educational technologies effectively supported online learning for nearly 300 million students and teachers in China during the outbreak of COVID-19. The general public now had a completely new insight into information technology’s role in education, and this would greatly shape the future of China’s reforms in IT-based teaching and learning.
Education for country development
Liu Changya said, during the 13th FYP period education resources were more evenly and efficiently distributed, and a number of important education projects were implemented to boost local economy.
At the higher education level, 70% of the new higher educational institutions were established in the central and western parts of China where resources for higher education were relatively scarce.
At the vocational education level, more than 800 enterprises dedicated to industry-education integration and more than 1,400 vocational education groups were established. From 2018 to now, a number of new vocational and technical universities were built. The MOE also encouraged the transformation of independent education institutions into vocational and technical universities. In 2019, enrollments at higher vocational education institutions grew by 1.16 million. Every year, about 10 million vocational school graduates enter into the workforce.
The MOE and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly implemented a program to promote innovation-based entrepreneurship education in 200 universities. China College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition were held for five consecutive years since 2016, participated by 15 million contestants and 3.7 million teams.
Policies were implemented to promote primary-level employment, i.e. encouraging graduates to seek jobs in rural areas, primary-level organizations in cities, county-level or lower government bodies, small and medium-sized enterprises and others. 59% of graduates in 2019 were employed in central and western parts of China, and 69% employed at prefecture-level cities or lower. From 2016 to 2020, the cumulative number of university and college graduates was 40.88 million, and the initial employment rate remained above 77% for several consecutive years.
The higher education sector was playing a bigger role in stepping up social development through innovations. Statistics show that Chinese higher education institutions conducted more than 60% of basic research and major research projects of the country, won more than 60% of the three most important categories of national-level awards for science, undertook more than 80% of research projects funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China, and completed a great number of academic researches with global influence.
China’s education was also more open to the world. During the 13th FYP period, China signed 19 cooperation agreements on education with 14 international organizations such as UNESCO, concluded agreements on qualifications and academic degrees mutual recognition with higher education institutions in 25 Belt and Road (B&R) countries, and created 2,331 Chinese-foreign joint education institutions and programs.
Comprehensive education reforms
In the past five years, China has strived to strengthen rule of law in the education sector, implement the principle of “delegating power, streamlining administration and optimizing government services”, and reform the examination and enrollment system.
During this period, China revised the Law on the Promotion of Privately-run Education Institutions, the Regulations on Education for Persons with Disabilities and 9 other education laws and regulations.
The government cancelled 12 ministry-level administrative approval items, and cancelled all non-administrative approval items and related intermediary services. 31 universities enjoyed decision-making authority in establish or adjust postgraduate or doctoral programs. Efforts have been made to decentralize the power to confer academic titles to faculty, approve foreign affairs, and conduct scientific research.
Reforms were also advanced in China’s examination and enrollment system, including the National College Entrance Examination reforms, and examination and enrollment at the levels of higher vocational education, postgraduate and doctoral education.
Liu Changya concluded that 2020 was the year to make blueprints for the 14th Five-Year Plan. Building on the successful stories and experience gained in the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China will further conduct educational reform, hoping to achieve educational modernization by 2035.