Plan for Reforming Beijing University's Engagements and Promotions System (Second Draft for Soliciting Opinions,June 16, 2003)

The higher education bureaus, education departments (bureaus), planning commissions and finance departments (bureaus) of the various provinces, relevant ministries and commissions under the central government and the State Council, and the various institutions of higher education under the Ministries of Education and Finance:

The "Regulations Concerning Provisional Methods of Commissioned Training by Institutions of Higher Education," jointly laid down by the Ministry of Education, the State Planning Commission, and the Ministry of Finance, is now issued for trial implementation. Please review the experience gained in its trial implementation and report in time to the Ministry of Education so as to facilitate its revision in due course.     

Decision: Reform in Adult Education (1987)

Promoting adult education is a human resources development with short cycles and quick effects and that calls for a certain amount of funds and investment. Starting this year, adult education will be included in the state budget for revenues and expenditures as an additional item. When making arrangement for education expenditures, local financial departments should also incorporate funds needed for adult education in their budgets and allow the funds to increase as the economy moves forward and regular revenues grow. Enterprises should disburse funds needed for employee education according to a prescribed ratio. In addition, shortfalls can be made up in the following ways: Expenses for technological training involving the development of new technology or research on new products may be disbursed directly as a part of the production cost; expenses for staff training may be disbursed from the retained percentage of profit, surplus from block-grant expenditures, and after-tax profit; training expenses for projects of technological development, introduction of foreign technology, and technological innovation, or projects of optimizing the service of certain products (including expenses for sending employees abroad for advanced training) may be disbursed from the project funding itself. Funds for staff education in enterprises should be handled and disposed of by its educational division under the supervision of financial departments. If there is surplus in the funding that cannot be spent in the same year, the surplus can be carried over to the next year. For small-sized enterprises that cannot afford to offer staff education on their own and enterprises that do not run staff education programs efficiently, the departments in charge can set up concentrated staff education facilities and support such facilities with funds taken from respective staff education expenditures. When planning for either urban community construction or newly built enterprises in the future, we should, at the same time, plan for the construction of basic facilities for adult education and incorporate such projects in the investment plan for infrastructure investment projects. The various ministries and regions should set up a few key adult education bases that are better equipped and of a higher quality. In the area of peasant education, expenses that involve eliminating illiteracy, training of teachers, compiling of textbooks, exchange of experience, activities, and so forth, should all be disbursed from educational expenditures by education departments at different levels. Funds for county-run peasants' secondary specialized schools and peasants technical schools of different specialties and types should be raised by the county people's governments under unified arrangements and according to their respective financial strengths. The departments concerned, however, should lend the local governments certain financial aid. Funds for peasants' cultural and technical schools run by townships (towns) can be drawn as a certain percentage from the rural education surcharge, pooling funds from the people, collecting tuition fees, or launching work-study programs.     

Plan for Reforming Beijing University's Engagements and Promotions System

1. With regard to the funding channels of vocational secondary schools (including agricultural schools, similarly hereinafter), the provisions contained in documents Guofa, no. 252 (1980) and Jiaozhongzi, no. 006 (1983), issued by the Ministries of Education, Labor, and Personnel and Finance, as well as the State Planning Commission, should continue to be implemented. With regard to the funding for vocational secondary schools run by education departments (including those transformed from former regular secondary schools), there is already a separate heading "vocational education expenditure" under educational expenditure in paragraph 179 of the "Headings of Revenue and Expenditure of the State Budget," and it is stipulated that this fund should be included as expenditure under educational expenditure. That is, both general education expenditures and vocational and technical education expenditures are to be included in the budget set for local educational expenditures for the sake of better coordination. To this end, vocational education expenditures should be included in the budget of local educational expenditures. Capital investment for vocational secondary schools should also be included in that for local educational captial investment, again for better coordination. In setting the estimates for their respective local expenditures, the people's governments at various levels should also give active support to the development of this educational undertaking.     

Provisional Regulations on Recruiting Students for Doctoral Programs

On July 17, 1982, the Ministry of Education issued Provisional Regulations on Enrolling Doctoral Students to the departments and bureaus of higher education in the provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, the admissions committees in institutes of higher learning, the ministries and commissions under the State Council, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese People's Liberation Army, General Political Department, and the Scientific and Technological Commission of the National Defense Council….     

On the Inevitability of the Two-Track Educational System (1979)

… Soon after the founding of the People's Republic, we carried out a step-by-step and judicious reform of the old schools, with emphasis on education serving production and construction, as well as on opening the doors of education to workers and peasants. After 1952, colleges and departments at the tertiary level were reorganized and teaching reformed at all school levels in line with the needs of national construction. After 1957, while summing up the experience and lessons of the First Five-Year Plan and working out a path for China's economic construction, the party's Central Committee and Comrade Mao Zedong, in their concern for the problems of education, proposed a plan for education during the socialist era and conducted a number of reforms of the educational system and structure, as well as experiments to explore new paths for developing education. In September 1958, the party Central Committee and the State Council pointed out in their "Directive Concerning Education Work" that, under the unified objective of cultivating educated working people with socialist awareness, three major categories of schools would exist throughout the country, i.e., full-time schools, part-work/part-study schools, and various types of spare-time schools. The directive emphasized that "rapid universalization of education requires the development of large numbers of spare-time and part-work/part-study schools, since such schools are able to provide all or most of their funding, require little or no assistance from the government, and can obtain teaching staff according to the principle of ‘let those who can, teach.’" In line with this directive, many agricultural secondary schools and part-work/part-study schools were set up throughout the country after 1958. Thus, two educational systems actually emerged in China: the full-time schools, and the part-work/part-study or part-agriculture/part-study schools. The implementation of these two educational systems resulted in greater variety in the types of schools, rapid development of schools at all levels and of all categories, and a new situation in education as a whole.     

What is the evidence on the impact of Pupil Premium funding on school intakes and attainment by age 16 in England?

The use of targeted additional funding for school-age education, intended to improve student attainment, is a widespread phenomenon internationally. It is slightly rarer that the funding is used to improve attainment specifically for the most disadvantaged students – often via trying to attract teachers to poorer areas, or encouraging families to send their children to school. It is even rarer that funding is used to try and reduce the attainment gap between economically disadvantaged students and their peers, and almost unheard for the funding to be intended to change the nature of school intakes by making disadvantaged students more attractive to schools. These last two were the objectives set for Pupil Premium funding to schools in England. The funding started in 2011, for all state-funded schools at the same time, so there is no easy counterfactual to help assess how effective it has been. The funding is a considerable investment every year and it is therefore important to know whether it works as intended. This paper presents a time series analysis of all students at secondary school in England from 2006, well before the funding started, until 2019, the most recent year for which there are attainment figures. It overcomes concerns that the official attainment gap between students labelled disadvantaged and the rest is sensitive to demographic, economic, legal and other concurrent policy changes. It does this by looking at a stable group of long-term disadvantaged students. It is argued that this group would have attracted Pupil Premium funding if it had existed in any year and under any economic conditions. After 2010, these long-term disadvantaged pupils became substantially less clustered in specific schools in their first year and throughout their remaining school life. This improvement cannot be explained by economic or other factors used in this paper, and so it looks as though the Pupil Premium has been effective here. The picture for the attainment gap at age 16 is more mixed. It is partly confused by changes in the grading of assessments in 2014 and again from 2016. The reasons why the improvements are less clear than at primary school are discussed, and they involve the nature of evidence available to secondary schools to help them improve the attainment of their most disadvantaged students.     

Education to Aid the Border Regions

To promote the development of education in Tibet and do a good job of aid-Tibet educational work, the State Education Commission was commissioned by the State Council to convene a conference on aid-Tibet education in Beijing on March 9-11, 1993. Secretaries-general of people's governments and directors of education commissions of twenty-one provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government, as well as people in charge of educational departments of twenty-five ministries and commissions, participated in the conference. Li Tieying, member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and member of the State Council, attended and spoke at the conference. Also attending and addressing the conference were Deputy Secretary-General Xu Jianzhi of the State Council, Vice Director Wang Mingda of the State Education Commission, and Chairman Jiangcun Lobu and Vice Chairman Laba Pingcuo of the People's Government of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Vice Minister Li an aid-Tibet education coordinating and leading group with the participation of the province's financial departments and education commission and with a deputy leader of the group detailed to take charge of the work; (2) to make a special annual allocation of 1.5 million yuan from the province's finances as supplementary funds for aid-Tibet education; and (3) to designate six schools, including the Yueyang No. 1 Middle School and the Yueyang Normal School, to operate as aid-Tibet education schools. The governments of all other relevant provinces and municipalities are stepping up the implementation of similar measures.     

Policy and Practice of the Decentralization of Basic Education in China: The Shanghai Case

This paper is aimed at exploring distinctive features of the decentralization of basic education in Shanghai by drawing on data from Shanghai Program for International Students Assessment (PISA) 2012. While doing the research for this paper, the author found that from a policy perspective, Shanghai had launched a reform policy aimed at transforming the highly centralized education system. This included a devolution of the decision-making authority to local departments of education and a reduction of control over schools. Private school policies were also initiated with the understanding that private schools ought to enjoy autonomy in almost every aspect of decision-making. From the perspective of practice, decentralization of basic education could be categorized as county-based school decentralization. In such a situation, the county bureaus of education wielded decision-making authority over a number of areas in the public school sector, while gradually devolving some decision-making authority to the public schools themselves; and the private schools enjoyed autonomy within their major decision-making areas. Given both the policy and practice of the decentralization of basic education in Shanghai, some suggestions are provided regarding: (1) how to promote school decentralization, and (2) how to balance it with accountability.     

Report on the National Conference (1986)

Funding for vocational and technical education should be solicited through multiple channels. Besides special state subsidies that are already included in the central and local budgets, all other school sponsoring units should also do their utmost to lend support. In line with growth in the regular revenues, local finance should realize the "double growth" of funding for vocational and technical education as required by the "Decision of the CCP Central Committee on Restructuring Education." Vocational and technical schools in urban and rural areas and also training centers run by labor and service companies¹ must launch work-study programs and, in conjunction with their specialties, operate small-sized factories, farms, stores, or service enterprises. In this way, the students will be enabled to learn, through practice, some vocational or specialized skills, and the income generated can also help improve the school facilities. The state shall adopt necessary policies in support of enterprises run by vocational and technical schools.     

Bringing Cinderella to the ball: constructing a federal system of technical and further education in Australia, 1971–1975

Australian vocational education has a history dating from the late eighteenth century. As Australian colonies and, later, federated states evolved each constructed its own version of vocational education provision. Generally the systems, consisting of community‐based or state‐controlled colleges for the training of operatives, apprenticeships and professional support personnel, were poorly resourced and lacked powerful sponsors to support and promote the education and training of their mostly working‐class students. By the early 1970s Australian governments had developed commissions to supplement the funding of state‐based elementary, secondary and university education systems, even though under the Australian Constitution education remained state‐controlled matter. A reformist federal Labor government at the time consolidated elementary, secondary and university funding but neglected to consider, or even acknowledge, the 400,000 vocational education students not covered by these commissions. Following pressure from vocational education teacher unions, among others, the Labor government established the Australian Committee for Technical and Further Education (ACOTAFE) to address the needs of these students. At ACOTAFE’s first meeting on 25 March 1973, the Minister for Education Kim E. Beazley said, ‘It will be a renaissance in education when technical and further education cease to be Cinderellas in education. It is the role of your committee to bring Cinderella to her rightful role as princess’. ACOTAFE was to be chaired by Myer Kangan from the Department of Labour and National Service. The committee’s published outcomes were referred to evermore as the iconic ‘Kangan Report’ rather than TAFE in Australia: Report on Needs in Technical and Further Education, its formal title. The report gave Australian vocational education a name (TAFE), a philosophy (access to all through lifelong learning) and much needed capital works and infrastructure funding. The paper will outline the circumstances leading to the formation of the committee, its work and its outcomes. Focus will be placed on the influential role of Chairman Kangan in shaping ACOTAFE’s conclusions. A key theme within the paper is the intersection of biography, politics and the economy in shaping policy construction.     

Reform Decisions of 1985: Vocational Education

We should bring into full play the initiative of enterprises and establishments, as well as the relevant departments in developing vocational and technical education. We should encourage individuals, collectives, and other sectors to run schools and urge all units and departments to set up vocational and technical schools on their own or in cooperation with each other or with education departments. In addition to training personnel for their own units or departments, these schools can be entrusted with the task of training personnel for other units and in enrolling self-supporting students.     

NEEDED: COMMUNAL PLANNING AND BETTER FUNDING

That Central agencies for Jewish education throughout North America are in difficulty is now an established fact. The challenges facing these agencies relate principally to the two “f's”: function and financing. As the configuration and power structure of Jewish communities have changed, the traditional activities of bureaus and boards of Jewish education have come under intense scrutiny. At the same time, the geometric escalation of Jewish community demands on decreasing financial resources has made it increasingly difficult for bureaus to secure the funding needed to carry out their full array of programs.     

跨世纪基础教育管理体制改革的思考

我国地方教育行政部门对基础教育各类学校的管理模式基本上是在计划经济体制下形成的,已不能适应基础教育事业发展的需要。各级教育行政部门必须转变职能、简政放权,把学校建成相对独立的办学实体,增强基础教育的生机与活力。     

Secondary modern schools: are their pupils disadvantaged?

There are still 10 English local educational authorities (LEAs) that are wholly selective and a further 10 with some grammar and secondary modern schools. This article examines the academic performance of pupils in secondary modern schools and the funding of these schools using national data sets matching pupils' performance at Key Stage 2 and General Certificate of Education (GCSE) as well as data on funding from Section 52 statements. Students in secondary modern schools gained one less grade on average than equivalent students in comprehensive schools while grammar school pupils obtained five grades more. After taking account of the cost factors and grant entitlements that influence funding per pupil, secondary modern schools in the years 2000/01–2002/03 were funded around £80 less per pupil while grammar school pupils received over £100 more per pupil compared to comprehensive schools. Secondary modern schools were more likely to be in financial deficit than comprehensive and particularly grammar schools. Thus, students are academically disadvantaged by attending secondary modern schools, which in most selective LEAs do not receive sufficient additional funding to offset the depressing effects on attainment of the increased social segregation arising from a selective system.     

加强公共艺术教育 完善中职课程结构

当前中职学校公共艺术教育的边缘化现状令人堪忧,中职学校重专业教育而轻艺术教育是违背素质教育的做法。其实,公共艺术教育的作用与意义是显而易见的,不但不妨碍各专业课的教学,反而有助于单一、枯燥的专业课的学习。公共艺术教育课程的设置以音乐、美术欣赏课为主,基础绘画技巧、乐理知识、观摩活动等为辅。要加强中等职业学校公共艺术教育、完善中职课程结构。学校培育创新人才,必须进一步深化艺术教育,严肃认真地组织实施《中等职业学校公共艺术课程教学大纲》,切实满足学生日益增长的精神文化需求。     

Universities and Teacher Education

There have been momentous changes in the organisation and funding of initial teacher training which threaten the traditional role of universities. However, the critics of these changes fail to see that the changes reflect radical developments in higher education more generally as a result of widening participation, greater accountability and more diverse missions. This makes it necessary for each higher education institution to ask what its distinctive contribution could be to the various partnerships – in the case of educational studies, to the partnership with schools.     

德国成人教育的特点及启示

德国是世界上成人教育发展较为成熟的国家之一。德国成人教育的主要特点是：从国家、企业到个人都十分重视成人教育，终身教育成为社会风尚；国家、政党、企业界、教会等参与办成人教育，办学主体和投资主体多元化；形式多样，专业、课程丰富多彩，能够满足大众的多种教育需求；注重依法管理和发展成人教育。但是，德国成人教育也存在公平性不够等问题。     

Reform Decisions of 1985: Basic Education

The power for the administration of elementary education belongs to local authorities. Except for major policies and principles and general plans that are to be determined by the central authorities, all other responsibilities and powers are to be delegated to local authorities for drawing up and implementing specific policies, rules and regulations, and plans, as well as for guiding, administering, and monitoring the work of the schools. The authorities of the provinces will define the functions and powers for administrative departments at the provincial, municipal (prefectural), county, and township levels. In addition to state appropriations, all local authorities are required to allocate a proper percentage of their respective funds for educational purposes so as to promote education in all places. Most of township revenues should be used for education. The local authorities may levy an extra tax for education, which shall be used exclusively to improve teaching facilities for elementary education. They should encourage state-owned enterprises, public organizations, and individuals to run schools and provide them with guidance. Also, they can encourage units, collective undertakings, and individuals to make financial donations to help develop education, but of their own accord, not by exaction. To ease the schools' economic burdens, fees charged to schools by various quarters must be strictly controlled.     

加强宏观调控规范微观管理突破中职招生瓶颈——中职招生体制改革的几点思考

近年来,由于生源的减少,中职招生变得愈发困难.为了打破这一困境,各级政府和教育主管部门应加强宏观调控,各级各类中职学校应强化微观管理,提高办学质量,增强中职教育的吸引力,突破中职招生瓶颈,促进中职教育良性、健康发展.     

我国义务教育教师绩效工资实施的现状研究——基于对25个省77个县279所学校的调查

我国义务教育教师绩效工资制度自2009年1月1日起在全国范围内实施。通过对25个省77个县的教育局领导和279所学校的校长进行访谈得出,一些县区尚未完全实行绩效工资制度;教育局局长和校长都愿意实施绩效工资制度,但更多地将其与涨工资等同了起来;在绩效工资的来源方面,教师反对从现行工资中拿出一部分作为绩效工资;评价教师绩效的指标目前还没有一个统一的标准。在我国义务教育教师绩效工资实施的过程中,义务教育教师绩效工资的内涵要体现素质教育的宗旨,绩效工资要引导教师健康发展,考核指标要有可操作性,考核方案应能体现公平性和按劳分配的原则。