Two Decades of Basic Education in Rural China

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The approach stressed expanding rural preschool educational resources through
different channels including enlarging and rebuilding kindergartens, taking full
advantage of surplus schoolyards and teachers; and continuing to work to improve
the outcomes of compulsory education and improve the quality of provision in dif-
ficult locations.

8.4.2.1 School Merger Process

The Report of Development State of Chinese Educational Corse published by the
MoE in the beginning of 2005 revealed that 31,700 primary schools and 973 sec-
ondary schools has been closed or merged in the year of 2004 alone. In 2000, the
total number of primary schools and teaching points in the counties were 694,000.
It reduced to 336,200 by 2009, a 52 % reduction (Table 8.2).
In response to the national strategy on school layout adjustment, local govern-
ments and educational administrations also formulated their own school layout
adjustment plans in relation to adjustment of administrative area of rural areas,
school age population and integrating resources.

8.4.2.2 Tongzhou, Beijing

Beijing started school mapping and relocation from 1999 against a background
of decreasing of primary students from 1997 and junior secondary students from

2004. To accommodate to this change, the Beijing Education Committee estimated
      that the number of primary schools would fall from 2511 to 1900 between 1997
      and 2005, the number of secondary schools would fall from 730 to 470 between
      1997 and 2005. After the reforms, all the primary class scale will have a minimum
      size of 20 students in each class. The policy drivers for the Beijing government
      were resource allocation and quality improvement. The General Office of Beijing
      government affirmed and supported Beijing Education Committee’s policy and

Table 8.2 Number of county primary schools and teaching points (Wu and Shi 2011 )
2000 2009 No. reduced % reduced
Total no. of primary schools in the
county

521,400 263,900 257,500 49.4

County town primary schools

(20 % of the total)

81,200 27,900 51,500 63.4

Rural primary schools (80 % of the

total)

440,200 234,200 206,000 46.8

Total number of teaching points 172,600 72,300 103,000 58.1

County town teaching points

(13.76 % of the total)

15,100 1300 13,800 91.39

Rural teaching points (86.24 %) 157,500 71,000 86,500 54.92

8.4 School Location Layout in Rural Areas: Policy ...