Overview of Education in China

As an ancient civilization with a history of five thousand years, China has had a tradition of valuing education since ancient times. The ancient Confucianism and imperial examination system had a great impact on Chinese education. The modern strategy of revitalizing the country through science and education prioritizes the development of technology and education. Contemporary international exchanges and cooperation have led to a deeper development of Chinese education. Chinese education has not only played an important role in inheriting and developing Chinese culture, but also made tremendous contributions to the development of world civilization.

At present, China's education structure mainly includes preschool education, compulsory education, special education, high school education, higher education, adult training and literacy education, and private education.

Preschool education: refers to the educational process that children aged 3-5 receive in kindergarten.

Compulsory education: Compulsory education, also known as free education, is a compulsory education system consisting of primary and junior high schools. Generally, it lasts for nine years and is mainly based on the "6-3 system" (i.e. six years in primary school and three years in junior high school), with multiple educational systems coexisting.

Special education: China has basically formed a development pattern of special education with special education schools as the backbone, regular school regular classes and special education classes as the main body, and home and family delivery and community education as supplements.

High school education: High school education is an important part of the national education system, including regular high schools, regular vocational schools, adult vocational schools, vocational high schools, and technical schools.

Higher education: Higher education includes both academic and non academic education, generally in the form of full-time and part-time education. In higher education, it is further divided into vocational education, undergraduate education, and graduate education.

Adult education training and literacy education: Adult education is different from regular full-time education, mainly aimed at improving the academic qualifications, professional advancement, and education advancement of in-service employees. Literacy education refers to providing literacy education to people who are illiterate or have low literacy, enabling them to have preliminary reading, writing, and math abilities.

Non-government funded education: Non-government funded education, also known as Private education, is a form of education relative to public education, which refers to social organizations or individuals other than state institutions, using non-state financial funds to organize activities of schools and other educational institutions for the society.

 

2.Development of Education in China

(1)Scale of Non-government funded education

There are a total of 162700 private schools at all levels and types in China, including 734 private universities, 2225 private vocational schools, 2585 private high schools, 4876 private junior high schools, 5859 private primary schools and 146400 private kindergartens.

(2) Scale of higher education

There are a total of 2852 higher education institutions in China, including 2560 ordinary higher education institutions and 292 adult higher education institutions. There are 326700 doctoral students, 1.5847 million master's students, 15.7668 million undergraduate students, 10.4861 million junior college students, and 6.3594 million adult undergraduate and junior college students in higher education.

At present, there are 15.429 million full-time teachers, 260 million students, and 512000 schools in China, with a total investment of 3612.919 billion yuan in national education funds. Among them, there are 2852 higher education institutions with a total enrollment of 36.47 million people; 24900 high school education schools with 40.3769 million enrolled students; 52400 junior high schools with 43.1195 million enrolled students; 190500 primary schools with 96.9218 million students on campus; and 223700 kindergartens, with 42648300 enrolled children.

In terms of investment in education, the national training program has trained 7 million teachers in the past five years, and the national financial education fund is 2.92 trillion yuan. The proportion of compulsory education schools equipped with multimedia classrooms reaches 80% and the proportion of Internet access is as high as 91.45%.

Among the teaching staff of ordinary universities in China, there are 1.573 million full-time teachers, of which 68.4% are graduate degree teachers and 41.9% are senior professional and technical position teachers.

In terms of international academic exchanges, a total of 44200 people were dispatched for collaborative research among Chinese higher education institutions, 37600 people were accepted, and 163900 people attended; Hosted 2291 international academic conferences, exchanged 93500 papers, and made 18700 invited reports.

 

Since 2000, China has successively established eight vice premier level cultural exchange mechanisms with Russia (November 2000), the United States (May 2010), the United Kingdom (April 2012), the European Union (April 2012), France (September 2014), Indonesia (May 2015), South Africa (April 2017) and Germany (May 2017). It covers education, science and technology, culture, health, sports, radio and television, media, film, tourism, women, youth, archives and other fields.

(1) Bidirectional study abroad

From 1978 to 2016, China had 4.5866 million people studying abroad and 2.6511 million people returning home. According to statistics, in 2016, there were 544500 Chinese students studying abroad, 432500 returning to China, 442800 Chinese students studying abroad, and 210000 Chinese students receiving academic education.

(2) Sino-foreign cooperative education

As of February 2017, China has a total of 2522 Sino-foreign cooperative educational institutions and projects, involving 34 countries (Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Russia, etc.), and 1746 Chinese and foreign universities (including 785 Chinese universities and 961 foreign universities).

(3)Confucius Institutes

As of December 2016, China has established 511 Confucius Institutes and 1073 Confucius Classrooms in 140 countries and regions. In 2016, there were 2.1 million students and 46000 full-time and part-time faculty and staff.

The comprehensive improvement of education quality and significant progress in modernization of education are the main goals for the future development of education in China. The main tasks include: enhancing students' sense of social responsibility, innovative and entrepreneurial spirit, and practical ability; Encourage the development of inclusive kindergartens; Promote the balanced development of compulsory education; Popularize high school education; Accelerate the development of modern vocational education; Promote the transformation of qualified undergraduate universities into application-oriented ones; Coordinate and promote the construction of world-class universities and disciplines; Improve the teaching level and innovation ability of teaching staff in universities; Accelerate the construction of a learning oriented society; Make great efforts to promote educational equity.

Parallel measures to achieve the main goals include: strengthening the construction of the teaching staff; Deepen the reform of the examination and enrollment system; Improve the mechanism of education investment; Promote and standardize the development of private education; Promote educational informatization; Strengthen international cooperation and exchange in education, and deepen the reform of innovation and entrepreneurship education.

Note: Quoted from "Understanding China" and "Overview of Education Development in China by the International Cooperation and Exchange Department of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China"