Proposal by the State Education Commission and Ministry of Finance on Some Questions Concerning Structural Reform for the Management of Basic Rural Education (1987)

… Currently, reform of the structure for managing basic education in the countryside is still surrounded by a number of problems, the chief manifestations of which are as follows. The thinking that "education must serve socialist construction and socialist construction must depend on education" has not yet been firmly established. The separation of education from construction of the Four Modernizations has not yet been reversed. Some comrades fail to understand clearly the significance of reform and see it as "the state shedding a burden and the local authorities assuming a burden." Others fear that the reform will follow the same disastrous Cultural Revolution road of "school management by the poor and lower middle peasants." In some localities, dominant thinking is insufficiently clear and reform is seen simply as a measure taken to solve the problem of school funding or as a simple devolution of school management powers to lower levels. Delimitation of the responsibilities and powers in the management of basic education is insufficiently rational in some localities. The channels for raising school operating funds are still impeded and the extra requisitions to fund rural education have not been put into effect. These problems are to varying degrees affecting the progress of reforming the management structure for basic education in the rural areas and efforts must be made to solve them as soon as possible.