Two Decades of Basic Education in Rural China

76 4 Nine Year Compulsory Education ...

to a slippage of age in grade. Most village schools are incomplete primary schools
with only two or three grades, and little or no systematic monitoring of progress,
and no clear criteria for promotion from grade to grade. Educational quality can
be very low and teaching irregular so that children have difficulties in keeping
up with learning. This is especially true if children transfer to other schools with
higher grades, they may be asked to repeat a year to reach the same level as chil-
dren already in these higher quality complete schools.
The curriculum followed in Zhaojue is essentially the same as that in other
parts of China. The timing of lessons is adjusted to suit local circumstances. A
typical timetable for a grade 5 class is a shown in Table 4.1 In the morning, there
are 30 min for reading. At noon, 40 min is allowed for exercise or Ashiqie (a folk
dance activity). Where videos and TVs are available, lessons that have been pre-
pared by master teachers and distributed to schools are played to children, espe-
cially for English language lessons and sometimes for science where teachers are
often unavailable or untrained. At the end of the school day, students clean the
classroom and school compound. The time to travel between home and school for
non-residential students averages 1–2 h each way as most children walk to school,
often over mountain paths. Schools generally do not provide lunch for non-resi-
dential students, though some do for payment.
As in the other case studies comparable data on achievement over time is not
available. County level tests are administered and give some indication of per-
formance. Children in Zhaojue at primary level appear to perform better in math-
ematics than in Chinese as might be expected since Chinese is not the mother
tongue of most children. Zhaojue appears to perform around the average for
Liangshan Prefecture, with variations around the average in different grades.

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Fig. 4.4 Age and grade in Zhaojue