This book explores the overall landscape of compulsory education policy development in China from multiple perspectives to uncover the stages, features, problems and suggestions in Chinese compulsory education system, locally, nationally and internationally. In addition, this book also presents specific historical educational policy shifts for policymakers and stakeholders to investigate the compulsory education strategy over the long term. Specifically, the Chinese compulsory education policy landscape involves investigating changes to the legal environment, management policies, as well as practices for teachers and curriculum and teaching materials. These discussions contribute to the readers’ comprehensive and systematic understanding of compulsory education policy development in contemporary China.

School Choice in China explores the major characteristics of schooling options in China, highlighting how largely middle-class parents exploit their cultural, economic and social capital for their children's admission into choice schools. It highlights how payments such as choice fees, donations, prize-winning certificates and awards, as well as the use of guanxi, result in Chinese school choice as a parent-driven, bottom-up movement. The author also explores how schools and local governments cash in on the school choice fever in order to obtain significant economic returns, leading to policies that accommodate the needs of mostly middle-class families. He argues that although this system seems to create winners among the parties involved, it exacerbates the educational inequality that already exists in Chinese society. Chapters include: Positional competition for cultural capital Exploitation of social capital Economics of school choice Class reproduction through parental choice This book is not simply a detailed analysis of Chinese school choice practices, but also a study of the competitive middle class search for advantage for their children. As such it will be beneficial to undergraduates, postgraduates, education professionals, policy makers, and anyone with an interest in education, sociology, social policy, and the rise and future of China.

This open access handbook brings together the latest research from a wide range of internationally influential scholars to analyze educational policy research from international, historical and interdisciplinary perspectives. By effectively breaking through the boundaries between countries and disciplines, it presents new theories, techniques and methods for contemporary education policy, and illustrates the educational policies and educational reform practices that various countries have introduced to meet the challenges of continuous change. This volume focuses on policies and changes in schools and classrooms. The studies on school changes present the differences in the policies and challenges of K-12 schools and universities in different countries and regions, and in connection with the contradictions and conflicts between tradition and modernization, as well as the changing roles of various stakeholders, especially that of teachers. In terms of curriculum and instruction, many countries have undertaken experiments and introduced changes based on two major themes: “what to teach” and “how to teach”. International education assessments represented by PISA not only promote the improvement and extensive application of educational assessment and testing techniques, but have also had far-reaching impacts on education policies and education reforms in many countries. Focusing on the changes in educational policies at the micro level, this volume comprehensively reveals the complex interactions between school organizations, teachers, curricula, teaching and learning, evaluation and other elements within the education system, as well as the latest related reforms worldwide.

Originally published in 1985. China is currently making a massive effort to educate its workforce in a formal and structured system. A good deal has been written about China’s attempts, since 1949, to eradicate illiteracy and to universalise primary and secondary school education but the subject of this book is an educational system established to meet the needs of those already employed whether in government, industry or agriculture. Two study teams, sponsored by the lnternational Council for Adult Education, visited China in 1981 to explore this educational phenomenon. Their findings, updated by subsequent ICAE visits and enriched by further reading, form the basis of this book. This is the story of the Chinese experience of developing adult education. It will be valuable to those involved in extending education in the industrialised world who are pursuing modernisation goals for people long excluded from the formal education system.

This book explores how to shape a high-quality education system in contemporary China’s education policy system. The high-quality education system includes several dimensions, such as teacher ethics, school–family cooperative system, teacher promotion, the balanced compulsory education system, the integrated rural and urban education, pre-schoolings, special education system, diversified high school system, vocational education, world-class universities, minority group education, private education, off-campus training, and online education system.

Contributed papers presented earlier at a conference.

This book concentrates exploring the landscape of private education in contemporary China, including pre-schools, compulsory education, high schools, and higher education. Both the developmental opportunities, problems, and strategies in regard to shaping the promotion of China’s private education are examined in this book. The intended readers are scholars and researchers who are interested and work in research of the private education in Chinese context.