17equipment and furniture, school buildings, the deployment of teachers, class
size in different grades, the qualifications of teaching staff, and where available,
achievement test performance.
Third, the research explored the mechanisms used to support policy implemen-
tation. This includes investigation of administrative arrangements, the capacity of
the infrastructure to support basic education policy, monitoring and evaluation sys-
tems, school supervision and inspection regimes, in-service support, intervention
programmes, community resource mobilisation, and other incentives to increase
participation.
In each case the intention was to develop a picture of the implementation of
policy grounded in data validated at the local level. At the time this was very unu-
sual in China since most evaluation of progress was based on aggregated statistical
data and self reporting of target meeting. The research explored the reasons for the
varying levels of success in implementation and identified policy initiatives that
were more rather than less promising.
Over the two decades since 1990 China has been transformed. From an econ-
omy much smaller in value than the UK, China is now the second largest economy
in the world. On the three large plains where most of the population live incomes
have risen dramatically and China’s GDP per capita at purchasing power parity
prices has risen from below USD 1000 in the 1980s, to over USD 5000 by 2005
and USD 12,000 at by 2015. Economic growth has been stellar with an average
approaching 10 % a year for twenty years. From an inward looking society with
a closed door, to links to the outside world China has opened its economy to joint
venture companies, energetically acquired new technologies and transformed its
productivity in manufacturing to be the most competitive in the world.
China has managed a transition to mass primary and secondary schooling that
now enrols the great majority of children. Demographic transition has meant that
the population of school age has been falling, allowing more to be invested in edu-
cation per child at the same relative cost when compared to countries with high
population growth. Enrolment rates, which were already high in most areas of
China in 1990, are now near universal levels except in some poorer western prov-
inces and in under developed national minority areas.
Despite the impressive successes there has been growing concern that vertical
and horizontal inequalities have risen, some populations have lagged behind in
terms of participation and attainment, and that quantitative expansion must now be
accompanied by more emphasis on quality improvement and a better matching of
educational investment to the increasingly differentiated learning needs of the next
generation.
In 2009 the research team decided that it would be timely to return to Tongxian,
Ansai and Zhaojue to take stock of the changes that had occurred and re-evalu-
ate the transitions that had taken place. This could then provide an opportunity to
revisit the insights published in Implementing Basic Education in China: Progress
and Prospects in Rich, Poor and National Minority Areas, update data on partici-
pation and policy and practice at the local level, and reflect on the amount and
quality of progress. This then provides a basis for identifying what lessons might
1.1 Introduction