Can Xiao Li's parents afford to send her to school?

The first nine years of education in China are compulsory and, provided the student attends her local school, tuition is free. However, a number of other fees are levied: notably, a management fee (zafei), usually around CNY 15 (USD 2) per term, and a text book fee, (shufei) which ranges from around CNY 120 per term to CNY 60 in schools which use cheaper editions of national curriculum texts. (All schools buy textbooks through the monopoly Xinhua bookstore supplier, which has an outlet in most townships; the bookshop may pay a commission, in the region of 5%, back to the school).

Some rural schools, particularly boarding schools in remote areas where daily travel is difficult, also charge a water and electricity fee(shuidianfei), typically around CNY 5 per term. Schools in poor counties, with least support from cash strapped local governments, are more likely to make this charge.

In urban areas, parents may wish to send their children to schools with good reputations outside the neighbourhoods where they officially reside under the hukou ('household registration') system. This is possible - at a price. Schools are allowed to accept children from outside their official catchment areas and may charge them tuition fees (xuefei). The maximum permissible fee is decided by the local education authority. For a primary school in a provincial capital, the maximum tuition fee is typically several hundred yuan per term. However, schools with high demand from outside their official catchment area may also charge students a one-off matriculation fee. Particularly popular schools may even introduce informal 'donation fees' (zanzhu fei). Places in the most sought after senior high schools may have a donation price tag as high as CNY 20-30,000 (USD 2,400 - 3,600).

This market driven semi-privatisation of urban education, whilst increasing choice for those who can afford to choose, inevitably triggers a familiar cycle of unequal access and quality. The 'good' schools get better, as they can afford better facilities and equipment, along with bonus payments to attract talented teachers. The poorer schools struggle to maintain standards as they become sinks for less privileged children.

If, like the overwhelming majority of Chinese children, Xiao Li is born in a rural area, the first question will not be whether her parents can afford to choose a school for her, but whether they can afford the termly CNY 80 (USD 10) or so that it will cost for her to attend the nearest school. Clearly this is a major burden on rural incomes.

According to official statistics, 98% of Chinese children now enrol in primary education. This figure should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt. There is no doubt that
enrolment in China is very high. But international NGOs working in the sector frequently report rates closer to 50% in the areas where they work, especially for girl children. World Vision, for example, reports that in one area of Guangxi Zhuang where it started an integrated community development programme in 1994, the initial enrolment rate was 45%; and the same year, when it started a project in Tongxin County, Ningxia, its base line surveys showed a total enrolment rate in one township of 23%. A mere 1.3% of girls had enrolled.

The trouble with targets is that people will want to report that they have been met, which makes it hard to measure progress accurately'

These may be extreme cases, since NGOs explicitly set out to find and work with the 'poorest of the poor'. But even allowing for disaggregation - the fact that the national average is bumped up by near universalisation in the more prosperous east coast -- it is hard to see how the 98% national figure can be consistent with much lower rates in the poorest areas (notably, remote areas of Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Tibet, Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan). Moreover, official figures suggest that only 55.25% of disabled children enrol. Given that a 1987 Disabled Person's Federation survey considered 10% of the population to be at least partially disabled (international norms generally suggest a figure closer to 5%), the percentage of children excluded from primary school enrolment because of disability must be significant. Finally, the official figures presumably exclude unofficial children - the by definition unknown numbers whose births have not been registered. Altogether, therefore, it is hard to regard the 98% figure as a robust indicator.

Enrolment rates are in fact a poor guide to the effective delivery of basic education, since a significant number of those who enrol may later drop out for financial or other reasons. A better indicator is the proportion of children who complete the early years of schooling, although this is much harder to calculate because of movement between schools. Here, official figures show a current completion rate (against the number of initial enrolments) of 90.5% for the first five years of primary school, and 87.5% for the subsequent four years of junior high . In both cases, but most notably in primary schools, the completion rate is reported as steadily improving (from 71.4% for primary and 82.7% for junior high in 1990).

An important but relatively unresearched question is why children drop out. Inability to pay fees is generally the presumed culprit, and undoubtedly an important if not paramount consideration. But the contribution of other social or cultural factors, including perhaps disillusionment with the relevance or quality of formal education, has not, as far as we can see, been systematically studied.

The relative prominence given to enrolment rates needs to be understood in terms of a government predilection for targets that is not just the leftover of a command economy and 'production quota' approach, but has undoubtedly been exacerbated by a touch of millennium fever. There appears to be a real desire to enter the new century unencumbered by some of the social ills of the past. But the problem with targets in China is that people will naturally want to report that they have been met, making it difficult to measure progress accurately.

In 1995 government set a target of achieving 99% enrolment rates for primary schools and 85% for junior high schools by 2000. Current targets are to 'basically universalise' nine year compulsory education among the 85% of the population living in the highly and moderately economically developed areas by 2000. By the end of 1998, nine provinces and municipalities were deemed to have achieved the criteria for basic universalisation (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Gangs, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Liaoning, Jilin and Fujian). But in an equal number of provinces universalisation was less than 50%; in Tibet it was less than 20%. For the poorest provinces, universalisation targets are more modest. But even in the highly and moderately developed areas there may be significant numbers who fall through the net. Recent research into the distribution of poverty suggests that, in addition to the general picture of remote, upland areas lagging behind in per capita income, pockets of poverty remain even in the generally prosperous areas.

To return to Xiao Li. Let us suppose that she is among the vast majority of Chinese children who enrol and stay in school. If she lives in a poor, rural area, what are the main educational problems or barriers that she will face?

If she is among China's 8% ethnic minority population and speaks Chinese only as a second language -- probably, when she starts school, hardly at all -- this will likely prove to be a significant disadvantage. In rural areas of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Xinjiang, primary teaching is usually delivered in local languages (Tibetan and Uighur). This may make the first years of schooling easier for the child, but it can effectively bar her from progressing far up the educational ladder, as good Mandarin will be necessary to gain access to secondary education and beyond.

Autonomous regions, provinces and counties, are entitled to offer schooling in minority languages, but very many prefer to use Mandarin as the language of instruction. Children have a great facility for learning second languages, and a substantial body of expert opinion argues that it is best for them to do so as early as possible. The sooner ethnic minority children become proficient in Mandarin, the easier will be their later educational progress, and the better able they will be to function and compete in the majority culture and marketplace. On this view, far from being an instrument of cultural subjugation, schooling in Mandarin for minority children is, at least potentially, an instrument of empowerment.

But the problem is that Mandarin is not generally introduced to minority children as a second language. Unless individual teachers make supererogatory efforts on their own initiative, no allowance is made for second language learners and the national curriculum is not varied to meet their special needs. Rather, they have to pick up Mandarin as they go along, learning to write Chinese characters alongside and at the same rate as native speakers, with little or no help in interpretation into their own language. All but the brightest will be hard put to keep pace with their Han fellow students.

A much wider question is whether, and to what extent, the national curriculum may itself disadvantage rural learners.

For primary schools, the national curriculum details syllabuses for the following compulsory subjects: Chinese (usually ten classroom hours per week); mathematics (two hours); science, music, arts and ethics (sixiang pinde) (one or two hours each). The remaining five or so classroom hours are devoted to optional subjects. Foreign languages, notably English, are popular options in urban schools, whereas rural teachers are very seldom able to teach these. (For rural children this may be another long term disadvantage, as English is an important academic subject at higher levels). Some areas offer 'local studies' (xiangtu jiaocai), comprising a blend of local history, geography and social studies, for the optional classes.

Chinese, as the central pillar of instruction, embraces historical and moral texts as well as materials sketching out civic and social structures. Here, it may be that rural children in remote areas are disadvantaged by the narrow boundaries of rural life. Their teachers, much less themselves, are likely to have relatively little first hand experience of the wider world, so the material in the texts cannot always be set in the context of real life worldly wisdom.

The curriculum is devised by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with educational research institutes and provincial level curriculum research associations. In theory, consultations through provincial and county level seminars and workshops allow for rural experience to be reflected in the final syllabuses, but the process is largely driven by urban policy makers and likely to reflect urban bias and perspectives.

A more unambiguous constraint on the educational advancement of children from poor, rural areas is the disparity in the qualifications and quality of teachers.

Generally, urban primary school teachers will have completed junior high school and then a two year course at 'Normal School' (shifan xuexiao). Junior high school teachers will have completed senior high school and a two or three year College (dazhuan) course. High school teachers will have graduated from university.

In rural schools, official state school teachers (gong ban jiaoshi) will usually also have graduated from Normal School (very often located in the nearest county town), and will receive a salary of around CNY 400 - 500 per month. However, rural schools in remote areas also frequently depend upon less qualified 'community' and 'substitute' teachers (minban jiaoshi and daike jiaoshi).

Minban teachers are the educational counterpart of 'barefoot doctors': villagers identified as suitable by the community and the township authorities. Usually they are junior high school graduates with little or no further training. They receive a stipend of CNY 60 - 120 per month (regional variation appears to be considerable) from the local education authorities, and also farm their own plot of land. In some cases, the community itself may pay a small part of, or a supplement to, the official stipend.

The minban system was developed during the rural commune period to extend the reach of basic education in poor areas, and many more minban posts were also established in the 1980s.

From the 1990s central government began to phase out the minban system, initially by requiring no new posts to be created and then by encouraging training programmes to upgrade minban teachers to official status. In 1995 a target was set: to completely phase out the minban system by, yes, the year 2000.

The upgrading process of min zhuan gong (turning minban into bangong) generally entails a two-year training course which uses distance education, week-end workshops and summer schools at training institutions. A significant problem is that teachers may not be able to afford contributions to travel and other associated costs, and have at the same time to cope with their teaching responsibilities and farm work. Nonetheless, incentives to participate include the fact that on successful completion the teacher will start on the bangong teacher pay scale, and will be entitled to retirement pensions and other benefits. In addition, s/he will benefit from the much greater social status accorded to government cadres (ganbu -- a term that encompasses professional ranking civil servants). The upgraded teacher will, however, lose entitlement to land.

Considerable progress has apparently been made, even if the 2000 target may not be within reach. From 1994 to 1998 minban teacher numbers dropped from nearly two million to around 800,000. In some poor provinces, relatively few minban teachers remain, although other areas continue to rely significantly dependent on them. According to government figures, in six provinces more than 20% of primary posts are still minban: 31.33% in Tibet, 24.16% in Shanxi; 20.65% in Jianxi; 27.76% in Shandong, 25.56%, in Henan, and 27.46% in Hubei.

But if you squeeze the toothpaste tube in one place, it invariably bulges somewhere else. As the numbers of minban teachers have declined, the numbers of lowly paid and lowly qualified daike ('substitute') teachers have grown. Like the minban teachers, these are identified by communities where official bangong teachers are lacking. There appear to be no formal qualification requirements: graduation from junior high seems typical but not necessary. Reports on pay and conditions vary. According to one source, daike teachers in Hebei receive CNY 5 per day that they work, with no holiday pay or other benefits. But in other areas it seems that daike teachers are rather better paid than minban teachers, earning between CNY 100 and CNY 200, with variable proportions of their wage covered by school management fees and the local education authorities.

According to the May, 1999 National Report for EFA 2000 Assessment in the PRC, prepared by the UNESCO China National Commission, there were 841,900 daike teachers in the country by 1998, representing 12.7% of all full time teachers. In Guangxi Zhuang the proportion of daike teachers is particularly high, at 39.2%. Altogether, the report calculates that nationally the proportion of 'non-public' teachers - ie, poorly qualified minban and daike teachers added together -- declined from 39.4% in 1994 to 24.7% in 1998. Whilst minban posts declined from 32.4% to 13.8%, daike posts rose from 10.4% to 12.7%.

The EFA report attributes the daike phenomenon to provinces 'defying state regulations'. In other words, this is not official government policy, but a way in which poor areas try to accommodate the policy of 'shutting the door' on minban teachers while still recruiting teachers at wage levels they can afford. Yet this seems, nonetheless, not to be merely a matter of finding a new name for an old category: there are some differences. Unlike the minban teachers, daike teachers do not have land in the community and do not necessarily come from the area where they teach. Perhaps more significantly, there is a clear understanding that the posts are in principle temporary -- a holding operation until sufficient trained teachers, and sufficient resources to pay them, can be found. This, for the 'defiant' provinces, may be the only sensible option that they can afford.

For, as the EFA report acknowledges, the basic and simple fact underlying the minban/daike system is that 'local financial resources are not adequate to pay the salaries of normally recruited public-paid teachers'. The main financial burden of public provision falls on provincial and county governments, and poorer areas can, for the present, only afford poorer services. Which is not good news for Xiao Li. Given that 24.7% of teachers nationwide are 'non-public', and given that in richer areas there are very few teachers in this category, (none at all, for example, in Shanghai), it is likely that in Xiao Li's poor, remote, rural school the teacher(s) will still be poorly qualified and poorly trained.

Central government recently pledged progressively to increase educational funding over the next three years until it accounts for 4% of gross domestic product. (In 1992 it was only 1.5%, according to the 1997 World Development Indicators report published by the World Bank, although this excluded spending on specialised secondary, technical and vocational schools). But carrying this policy through will depend upon the cooperation of -- in some cases, cash-strapped - provinces.

The June 1999 Communist Party Central Committee and State Council resolution outlining the policy expressed the expectation that provincial governments should increase expenditure 'in accordance with their own financial situations'. For the poorest provinces and counties, even 4% of the low, local gross product may not suffice to finance universal coverage of trained teachers; and some areas may not, in any case, be able to divert that much to education. Without substantial redistribution of resources to poorer areas, regional disparity in educational opportunity and quality, seem unlikely to dissolve in the near future.

Let us suppose that Xiao Li nonetheless manages to complete her primary education satisfactorily. In the 1980s, annual examinations were quite stringent, and significant numbers of children were required to repeat grades, but recent policy has been to cut the number of 'repeaters' and in most cases upwards progress is relatively smooth. Government is required to provide junior high school places for all primary graduates, so entrance examinations are not selective. However, in remote areas attendance at junior high will often mean boarding, either weekly or termly, at quite distant schools. This involves added travel and maintenance costs, as well as the loss of the child's labour at home; the family, besides, may not want to be separated from Xiao Li.

Let us again suppose that Xiao Li overcomes these difficulties and successfully completes junior high. She now confronts a major crossroads, or, perhaps, a glass ceiling.

She may return home to rural life. Or she may apply for a fee-paying place in a Vocational School (zhigao) where she may learn a trade such as hairdressing or clothes making, or in a Secondary Professional School (zhongzhuan), which provides technical training in higher status occupations such as bank-ing or primary teaching. Courses in both kinds of institution last from 2-3 years.

The high flying option of progression to senior high school involves a number of significant barriers. Entrance exams are selective and the pass mark is related to the number of available places. Rural catchment areas are large, and the number of high schools relatively small, so Xiao Li will have to perform better than an urban child to obtain a senior high school place. If she gets a place her family will have, minimally, to pay tuition fees and book fees for four years, as well as covering maintenance and travel expenses. Buying into a 'good' high school outside the catchment area through payment of 'donation fees' is only likely to be an option for families of extremely successful, rural entrepreneurs with stakes in large 'township and village enterprises'.

This September sees the launch of a national pilot scheme to provide low interest loans to the families of high school students, to cover fees and living expenses. Loans will be made available through the banking system and will have to be repaid within four years of graduation. According to the Ministry of Education, special funds will be set aside for families which are unable to provide loan collateral, but details of the exact amount and availability of loans have not yet been made clear. The scheme will initially be test driven in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shenyang, Xi'an and Nanjing.

In the long term, some system of this kind may improve access to high schools for poorer children, but for children in poor areas of western China this remains a somewhat distant prospect.

If it is at all within their means to send her to high school, Xiao Li's family may still be deterred by the extremely high costs of later failure. The investment will certainly be considerable, and so is the risk. If she drops out after this stage, without making it on to university, an urban job and residency permit, she may well find it hard to find her place again in the rural community -- ending up overqualified for farm work but with few opportunities to make use of her high educational attainment.

Let us again suspend disbelief and suppose that Xiao Li makes it into and through senior high school. She will then be able to apply for a place in university,

medical school or college. Places are offered on the basis of performance in national entrance examinations, with higher marks required for admission to the more prestigious institutions or those outside a student's home province. Around fifty 'key universities' - roughly, China's equivalent of Ivy League colleges -- enjoy special status and access to central funding support.

Xiao Li will have to perform better than an urban child to obtain a senior high school place.

Tertiary education institutions have been phasing in tuition fees over the last few years, and by next year fees will be universal. More prestigious institutions charge more.

Once in university, drop-out rates are low, and most entrants graduate successfully. On graduation, job opportunities are now mainly found through the free market - the former system of state allocation to work units has been largely dismantled in all but a few specialised, technical fields.

But for university graduates from rural areas, job choice will be largely driven by residency requirements. Graduation alone does not entitle a person to acquire an urban hukou. Nor can the urban hukou be arranged for 'rural' employees by private sector companies. (In fact in theory they are not entitled to employ people without an urban hukou). Urban residency rights can be granted, however, by state owned enterprises (SOEs). But with the state sector shrinking, there are fewer jobs on offer. As graduation looms, therefore, university students from rural areas are to be found scrambling for SOE jobs. (Not necessarily jobs for life; they may move on after a few years, once they have obtained their hukou). In Yunnan, the student body popularly likens this frenzied activity of rural students to 'ants in a heated pot' (reguo shang de mayi)

How likely is it that Xiao Li, coming from a poor, remote, ethnic minority village, can make it all the way up the ladder to university? According to the Ministry of Education, 6.83% of students enrolled in higher education institutions are from ethnic minorities. This, at face value, is quite an impressive figure, approximating to the minority proportion of the population as a whole.

In June of this year, as part of the Communist Party Central Committee and State Council resolution already referred to, a general commitment was made to increase the proportion of university entrants from the present level of 9% of the relevant age group to 15% by the year 2010. It will be interesting to see, over the next decade, how the proportion of ethnic minority students keeps pace with this planned expansion.

The current figures on minority representation are not further broken down to show what proportion of minority students come from, respective-ly, rural and urban areas. It is therefore hard to assess how many of the poorest and least privileged really enjoy access to the country's highest teaching institutions. From personal encounters we know that at least some do. But what we can say with some certainty is that if Xiao Li makes it she will very likely be a per-son of unusual determination and talents.

---

About the article: Quoted official statistics come mainly from two sources: the (draft) National Report for Education For All 2000 Assessment in the People's Republic of China, as prepared by China's UNESCO National Commission and submitted to an EFA 2000 Assessment Sub-regional Workshop in Bangkok in May, 1999; and a Chinese Ministry of Education website (www.moe.edu.cn; data is in both Chinese and English) which includes more than eighty pages of statistical information. (Another MoE website, in Chinese language only, can be found at www.k12.com.cn) The figures from areas in which World Vision works are drawn from the World Vision International - China Programme 1998 Annual Report.