The following document is China’s ten-year (2010-2020) strategy for education reform, issued in July 2010. Although the strategy does not mention emerging technologies explicitly, parts of the document address areas such as international educational exchange and the cultivation of world-class talent that have implications for tech transfer and S&T innovation.
The Chinese source text is available online at: http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2010-07/29/content_1667143.htm
Translator: Etcetera Language Group, Inc
Editor: Ben Murphy, CSET Translation Lead
Table of Contents
PREAMBLE
SECTION I: GENERAL STRATEGY
Chapter 1: Guiding Ideology and Directives of Work
(1) Guiding ideology
(2) Directives of work
Chapter 2: Strategic Goals and Themes
(3) Strategic goals
(4) Strategic themes
SECTION II: DEVELOPMENT MISSIONS
Chapter 3: Preschool Education
(5) Basically universalize preschool education
(6) Define government responsibilities
(7) Strengthen preschool education in rural areas
Chapter 4: Compulsory Education
(8) Consolidate and enhance nine-year compulsory education
(9) Promote balanced development in compulsory education
(10) Lessen schoolwork burdens on primary and middle school students
Chapter 5: High School (高中) Education
(11) Accelerate the popularization of high school education
(12) Comprehensively improve students’ quality in high school
(13) Promote diversification of high schools
Chapter 6: Vocational Education
(14) Intensify efforts in developing vocational education
(15) Mobilize the enthusiasm of industries and enterprises in vocational education
(16) Accelerate vocational education development to meet the needs of rural areas
(17) Enhance the appeal of vocational education
Chapter 7: Higher Education
(18) Raise the quality of higher education
(19) Improve the quality of talent or professional cultivation
(20) Elevate academic research
(21) Strengthen social service capabilities
(22) Optimize a distinctive higher education structure
Chapter 8: Continuing Education
(23) Accelerate the development of continuing education
(24) Establish a sound framework for continuing education
(25) Build a flexible and open system for lifelong education
Chapter 9: Education for Ethnic Minorities
(26) Value and support education for ethnic minorities
(27) Comprehensively improve the development of education of ethnic minorities and in minority-inhabited areas
Chapter 10: Special Education
(28) Care for and support special education
(29) Improve the special education system
(30) Perfect guarantees for special education
SECTION III: EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM REFORMS
Chapter 11: Reform of Cultivation System for Talent
(31) Update concepts of talent or professional cultivation
(32) Innovate cultivation modes for talent
(33) Reform education quality assessments and talent assessment systems
Chapter 12: Reform of Examination and Enrollment Systems
(34) Advance examination and enrollment reform
(35) Improve high school entrance exams (中考) and enrollment
(36) Improve higher education entrance exams (高考) and enrollment
(37) Strengthen information transparency and social supervision
Chapter 13: Building a Modern School System
(38) Further separate government functions from school management and detach school governance from school operations
(39) Extend school decision-making power
(40) Perfect the modern university system with Chinese characteristics
(41) Improve primary and middle school management
Chapter 14: School Management Structural Reform
(42) Deepen school management system reform
(43) Strongly support private education (民办教育)
(44) Manage private education in accordance with the law
Chapter 15: Administration System Reform
(45) Improve education administration systems with strong coordination and well-defined rights and responsibilities
(46) Strengthen provincial government education planning
(47) Change government functions on education
Chapter 16: Furthering Educational Openness
(48) Strengthen international exchanges and collaboration
(49) Introduce quality education resources
(50) Improve the level of exchanges and collaboration
SECTION IV: SAFEGUARDS
Chapter 17: Strengthening Faculty Building
(51) Build high-quality faculty
(52) Strengthen professional ethics among teachers
(53) Improve the professional level of teachers
(54) Improve the status and treatment of teachers
(55) Build a sound faculty administration system
Chapter 18: Guaranteeing Funding and Investment
(56) Increase investments in education
(57) Improve input mechanisms
(58) Strengthen funding management
Chapter 19: Accelerating Informatization (信息化) in Education
(59) Accelerate information infrastructure building in education
(60) Develop and apply quality education resources
(61) Build the state education management information system
Chapter 20: Promoting Rule of Law in Education
(62) Improve educational laws and regulations
(63) Comprehensively advance administration by law
(64) Vigorously promote running schools according to law
(65) Improve superintendence, supervision, and accountability
Chapter 21: Major Projects and Pilot Reform Programs
(66) Major projects to be organized and undertaken
(67) Pilot reform programs to be organized and undertaken
Chapter 22: Strengthening Organization and Leadership
(68) Strengthen and reform leadership over education
(69) Strengthen and improve Party building in the education system
(70) Maintain harmony and stability in the education system
IMPLEMENTATION
In accordance with the strategic arrangement of the 17th Party Congress to “give priority to the development of education and turn China into a human resources superpower [人力资源强国],” this Education Plan Outline is formulated to promote the science-based development of education, to comprehensively improve the refinement of the Chinese people, and to accelerate socialist modernization.
PREAMBLE
A nation’s enduring future hinges on education. Education is the cornerstone of national rejuvenation and social progress and a fundamental way to improve the refinement of citizens and promote their all-round development, bearing the hope of millions of families for a better life. Education must be strengthened if a nation is to prosper. Giving priority to developing education and raising its level of modernization are key to attaining the goal of building a well-off society in an all-round way (全面建设小康社会) and making China a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious modern socialist country.
The Party and the State have long placed a great emphasis upon education. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the entire Party and society, working hard under the leadership of the Party’s three generations of central collective leadership with Comrades Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin as the core, and under the leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary, have paved a road to develop socialist education with Chinese characteristics, established the world’s largest education system, and guaranteed the right to education for billions of Chinese. Education funding has grown by large margins, while schooling conditions have improved dramatically; education reform is deepening steadily, as schooling proficiency constantly improves. Since the beginning of the 21st century, free compulsory education has become the norm in urban and rural areas, while vocational education has developed swiftly. Higher education has reached a new stage of popularization, and rural education has grown in strength. Remarkable progress has also been made in achieving education equity. Education development has vastly enhanced the refinement of the entire nation and has stimulated innovation in science, technology, and cultural prosperity, thereby making irreplaceable and significant contributions to China’s economic growth, social progress, and the betterment of our people’s livelihood. China has realized a transition from a populous power (人口大国) to a human resources power (人力资源大国).
The world today is undergoing great development, profound changes, and major adjustments. The world is becoming multi-polar, economic globalization is developing in depth, science and technology are advancing with each passing day, and competition for talent is becoming increasingly fierce. China is currently at a key stage for reform and development, as all-round progress is being made in economic, political, cultural, and social development as well as in promoting an ecological civilization. With the deepening of industrialization, informatization, urbanization, marketization, and internationalization, the increasing pressures of the population, resources, and the environment, and the accelerated transformation of economic development patterns have all highlighted the importance and urgency of improving the refinement of the Chinese people and cultivating innovative talent. The future development and great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation are predicated on talent and on education.
In the face of unprecedented opportunities and challenges, we must clearly understand that Chinese education still lags behind the requirements of national economic and social development and the people’s demand for a good education. China’s concept of education and our teaching content and methodology are relatively outdated, schoolwork burdens on primary and middle school students are too heavy, and the promotion of quality education has been difficult. Students lack the ability to adapt to society, and we face an acute shortage of innovative, practical and versatile talent. Our education system and mechanisms are imperfect. Schools lack vitality in their operations, and the structure and geographic distribution of education resources are yet to be put on an even keel. Impoverished and ethnic minority autonomous areas are trailing behind in education development, which is also uneven between urban and rural areas and between different regions. Education funding cannot keep up with demand, and education has yet to be accorded the strategic priority it deserves. A good education has become a strong expectation of our people, and deepening education reform has become a common aspiration of our entire society.
The destiny of our nation rests on education. People across the country are duty-bound to rejuvenate education. Education development should always be put in a prioritized position in the agenda of the Party and the State. In line with the requirements to reach out to modernization, the world, and the future, and to meet the demands for building a well-off society in an all-round way and an innovative country, it is imperative that we regard the cultivation of our people as a fundamental mission, draw strength from reform and innovation, improve education equity, carry out quality-oriented education in an all-round way, push forward scientific education development from a new historical starting point, and accelerate our transition from an education power (教育大国) to an education superpower (教育强国), and from a human resources power (人力资源大国) to a human resources superpower (人力资源强国). Only thus can we make still greater contributions to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the advancement of human civilization.
SECTION I: GENERAL STRATEGY
Chapter 1: Guiding Ideology and Directives of Work
(1) Guiding ideology. Holding high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, guided by Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thinking of the “Three Represents,” thoroughly implementing the scientific development concept, carrying out the strategy of rejuvenating the nation through science and education and the strategy of making the nation strong through talent, giving priority to the development of education, perfecting the socialist modern education system with Chinese characteristics, running education to the satisfaction of the people, and building our nation into a human resources superpower.
Carrying out the Party’s directives on education, persisting in making education serve the people and the socialist modernization drive, integrating education with production, labor, and social practice, and cultivating socialist builders and successors who are well developed morally, intellectually, physically, and aesthetically.
Comprehensively promoting the scientific development of education upon the basic conditions of our nation at the initial stage of socialism, adhering to the principle of being people-centered (以人为本), following the norms of education, meeting the needs of society, optimizing the structural layout, and raising the level of modernization in education.
(2) Directives of work. Give priority to development, educate the people, reform and innovate, promote fairness, and improve quality.
Give strategic priority to education development. Giving high priority to education development is a paramount, long-term principle advocated and upheld by the Party and the State. Party committees and governments at all levels should regard giving priority to educational development as one of the fundamental prerequisites for implementing the scientific development concept, earnestly ensure the priority of education in local economic and social development plans, the priority of education investments in financial arrangements, and education and human resource development needs in public resource allocation. The entire society should be mobilized to care for and support education, jointly shoulder the responsibility of nurturing the younger generation, and create a good environment for the healthy growth of young people. Systems and policies shall be perfected to encourage the creation of private schools (鼓励社会力量兴办教育), and continuously expand the input of social resources in education.
Taking the cultivation of people as the bottom line for education. Human resources are the foremost of all resources for our nation’s economic development, and education is the main channel to develop human resources. Education should always be student-oriented, with teachers playing a leading role in order to mobilize the initiative of the students. Healthy development should be both the starting point, end point, and basis of all schools’ work. Care for each student, promote their active and lively development, respect the laws governing education and the physical and mental development of students, and provide them with a suitable education. Strive to cultivate high-quality workers by the hundreds of millions, specialized professionals by the tens of millions, and a large number of top-notch innovative talents.
Treating reform and innovation as a mighty driving force for education development. Reform is pivotal to education development. Focus on institutional reforms, encourage localities and schools to explore and experiment boldly, and accelerate the pace of reform in key areas and key aspects. Talent training systems, schooling systems, and education administration systems must be innovative. Quality evaluations and examination and enrollment systems must be reformed. Teaching content, methods, and means must be revamped. A modern school system must be built. Address the conflicts between the need for high-quality and diversified talents in economic and social development and the lack of capacity for education and training, between the public’s longing for better education and the relative shortage in education resources, and between the need to invigorate education and the institutional impediments thereto in order to fuel the sustainable and healthy development of education.
Promote equal access to education as a basic state policy. Equal access to education is a major cornerstone of social justice. The key to equal access to education is equality of opportunity. The fundamental requirement of education equity is to guarantee that all citizens have equal rights to receive education according to law. It is imperative that we promote the balanced development of compulsory education and help and support the underprivileged. The fundamental way by which we achieve this is to rationally allocate education resources, with preference given to rural, impoverished, remote and border areas and ethnic minority autonomous areas, and thereby bridge the gap in education development. Equal access to education is and always has been a government responsibility, but it cannot be done without concerted public effort.
Take improving quality as the core task of education reform and development. Foster a scientific outlook on quality and take promoting people’s all-round development and meeting society’s needs as the crucial criteria when evaluating education quality. Foster an outlook on education development with quality at its core. Attach great importance to the development of educational content (教育内涵发展). Encourage schools to distinguish themselves with first-rate education quality and to produce renowned teachers and top-notch talent. Establish school administrations and operations that are oriented towards improving the quality of education. The allocation of educational resources and every school’s work agenda should be focused on strengthening teaching and improving the quality of education. Formulate state standards for education quality and establish and improve a quality assurance system for education. Strengthen the establishment of faculty and improve the overall qualities of teachers.
Chapter 2: Strategic Goals and Themes
(3) Strategic goals: The strategic goals to be attained by the year 2020 are to basically modernize education, to basically form a learning society (学习型社会), and turn China into a human resources superpower.
Further popularize education. Basically universalize preschool education and consolidate and enhance the popularization of nine-year compulsory education. Popularize high school education at a 90% gross enrollment rate. Further popularize higher education at a gross enrollment rate of 40%. Eliminate illiteracy among the young and the middle-aged. Raise the average number of years of education received by newly-added members of the workforce from 12.4 to 13.5 years. Extend the average number of years of education received by the working-age population from 9.5 to 11.2 years, with 20% of the working-age population having completed higher education by 2020, doubling that of 2009.
Deliver equal education that benefits all. Education should remain public welfare-oriented and inclusive in nature, and equal access to it shall be safeguarded. All citizens should be guaranteed access to a good education according to the law. Establish a basic public education service network covering both urban and rural areas, in which equal services are provided and regional disparities in this field are narrowed down. Strive to run every school well, and bring the best possible education to every student. No child should drop out of school because of their family’s financial woes. Effectively solve the problem of equal access to compulsory education for children of people who move to cities for work (进城务工人员). Guarantee the right to education for persons with disabilities.
Provide an enriched and quality education. Improve the overall quality of education, with a rise in its level of modernization by a significant margin. Constantly expand the total aggregate volume of quality education resources to better meet the needs of the people to receive a quality education. Dramatically improve students’ ideological awareness, moral conduct, scientific and cultural attainment, and physical health. Significantly enhance the ability of all types of talent to serve the country, serve the people, and participate in international competition.
Build a complete system for lifelong education. Coordinate academic and non-academic education, ensure that vocational and general education communicate are connected, and effectively link pre-job to on-the-job education. Continue to significantly boost participation in continuing education and reach an annual employee participation rate of 50% for continuing education. The modern national education system must be further perfected, and a basic framework for lifelong education must be put in place so that everyone can be taught what they want to learn, excel at what they learn, and put what they have learned into use.
Establish a full-fledged, vibrant education system. We must further emancipate our minds (解放思想), update our concepts, deepen educational reform, improve the level of openness in education, and bring about an education system and mechanisms that are dynamic, efficient, open, and conducive to scientific development in line with the socialist market economy and the objective of building a well-off society in an all-round way. In this way, we can have world-class modern education with Chinese characteristics.
(4) Strategic themes: Being people-centered and fully implementing quality-oriented education must be the strategic themes of education reform and development. The times demand that we follow the Party’s directives on education. The key to these themes is answering the questions of what kinds of talent should be cultivated and how. The emphasis of the themes is to serve all students, promote their all-round development, enhance their sense of social responsibility to serve the nation and the people, nurture their innovative and daring spirit to explore the unknown, and hone their abilities to solve practical problems.
Continue to prioritize moral education. Educate people with morality. Integrate the socialist core values system into the entire process of our national education. Education in the latest achievements in the Sinicization of Marxism should be enhanced to guide our students to form a correct perspective of the world, of life and of values. Education in ideals, beliefs, and morality should be strengthened to fortify students’ faith and confidence in the Communist Party of China’s leadership and in the socialist system. Strengthen education on the national spirit with patriotism as the core and the spirit of the times with reform and innovation as the core. Promote education in the socialist concept of honor and disgrace, and help students cherish solidarity and mutual assistance and be honest, trustworthy, disciplined, law-abiding, and hard-working. Strengthen education in civic awareness and establish socialist concepts of democracy, the rule of law, freedom, equality, equity, and justice for students that they may grow into capable socialist citizens. Promote education in the fine traditions of Chinese culture and our revolutionary traditions. Incorporate moral education into all aspects of teaching and learning at schools, at home, and in our society. Effectively strengthen and improve the ideological and moral education of the youth and the ideological and political education of college students. Establish a system of moral education that effectively encompasses primary, secondary, and tertiary schools. Explore new forms of moral education, enrich the content of moral education, and make sustained efforts to make moral education more appealing, effective, pertinent, and practical. Enhance the quality of teams of instructors and class advisors.
Continue to emphasize capacity building. Optimize the knowledge structure, enrich social practice, and strengthen capacity building. Efforts should be made to improve students’ capacity to learn, practice and innovate, to teach them knowledge and expertise, to help them learn how to use their hands and minds, how to survive, how to make a living, and how to behave themselves, and to enable them to adapt to society on their own and create a better future.
Continue to promote all-around development. Moral education, intellectual education, physical education, and aesthetic education must be comprehensively strengthened and improved. Give equal footings to cultural learning and ideological and moral edification, to theoretical study and social practice, and to comprehensive development and individual characteristics. Emphasize physical education and firmly establish the idea of health first. Guarantee students’ physical education courses and time for extracurricular activities, and improve the quality of physical education. Promote mental health education to improve students’ mental and physical health for physical strength and a strong will. Promote education in aesthetics to instill a cultured aesthetic taste and humanistic qualities in students. Labor education should be strengthened, to cultivate their love for work and for working people. Attach importance to education in personal and campus safety, human life, national defense, and sustainable development. Integrate education in morality, intelligence, physical health, and aesthetics. Improve the overall refinement of students that they may grow into socialist builders and successors that are well developed morally, intellectually, physically, and aesthetically.
Box 1: Main Goals of Education Development
| Indicator | Unit | 2009 | 2015 | 2020 |
| Preschool education | ||||
| Number of children in kindergartens | 10,000 people | 2658 | 3400 | 4000 |
| Gross attendance rate for those entering kindergartens 1 year before starting school | % | 74.0 | 85.0 | 95.0 |
| Gross attendance rate for those entering kindergartens 2 years before starting school | % | 65.0 | 70.0 | 80.0 |
| Gross attendance rate for those entering kindergartens 3 years before starting school | % | 50.9 | 60.0 | 70.0 |
| Nine-year compulsory education | ||||
| Number of students in school | 10,000 people | 15772 | 16100 | 1650 |
| Retention rate | % | 90.8 | 93.0 | 95.0 |
| High school education* | ||||
| Number of students in school | 10,000 people | 4624 | 4500 | 4700 |
| Gross enrollment rate | % | 79.2 | 87.0 | 90.0 |
| Vocational education | ||||
| Number of students in secondary vocational schools | 10,000 people | 2179 | 2250 | 2350 |
| Number of students in higher vocational colleges | 10,000 people | 1280 | 1390 | 1480 |
| Higher education** | ||||
| Gross enrollment rate | 10,000 people | 2979 | 3350 | 3550 |
| Total enrollments | 10,000 people | 2826 | 3080 | 3300 |
| Number of students in school | 10,000 people | 140 | 170 | 200 |
| Number of graduate students | % | 24.2 | 36.00 | 40.0 |
| Continuing education | ||||
| Number of on-the-job learners in continuing education | 10,000 person-times | 16600 | 29000 | 35000 |
Note: * including students in secondary vocational schools; ** including students in higher vocational colleges.
Chart: Box 1: Main Goals of Education Development, Xinhua News Agency
Box 2: Main Goals for Human Resource Development
| Indicator | Unit | 2009 | 2015 | 2020 |
| Number of people with a higher education | 10,000 people | 9830 | 14500 | 19500 |
| Average number of years of education received by the working-age population | Years | 9.5 | 10.5 | 11.2 |
| Percentage of those having received higher education | % | 9.9 | 15.0 | 20.0 |
| Average number of years of education received by newly-added members of the workforce | Years | 12.4 | 13.3 | 13.5 |
| Percentage of those having received high school or higher education | % | 67.0 | 87.0 | 90.0 |
Chart: Box 2: Main Goals for Human Resource Development, Xinhua News Agency
SECTION II: DEVELOPMENT MISSIONS
Chapter 3: Preschool Education
(5) Basically universalize preschool education. Preschool education is key to the physical and mental growth of children and to their habit formation and intellectual development. Follow the laws governing children’s physical and mental development, adhere to science-based care and teaching methods, and ensure the happy and healthy growth of children. Actively push forward preschool education. By 2020, one-year preschool education should be universal, while two-year preschool education should be basically universalized, and three-year preschool education should be popularized in regions where conditions are ripe. Attach importance to the education of infants from ages 0 to 3.
(6) Define government responsibilities. Incorporate the development of preschool education into urban development plans and socialist new countryside development plans. Establish a government-led kindergarten management mechanism, which includes social participation and pools both public and private (民办) resources. Vigorously develop public kindergartens and actively support private ones. Increase government input to improve cost-sharing mechanisms and provide subsidies for families that cannot afford preschool education. Strengthen the management of preschool education and standardize kindergarten management standards. Formulate preschool education standards and establish a system for kindergarten admissions. Perfect administrative approaches to kindergarten tuition fees. Strictly implement qualification standards for kindergarten teachers and effectively strengthen their training so as to improve their overall quality. Guarantee the status and benefits of kindergarten teachers in accordance with relevant laws. Preschool education shall be put under the overall guidance and administration of the government’s education departments, and the departments concerned must perform their respective duties and mobilize the entire society to strengthen preschool education.
(7) Strengthen preschool education in rural areas. Strive to improve the popularity of preschool education in rural areas. Make sure that all children left behind by parents working away from their home villages (留守儿童) are sent to kindergartens. Expand rural preschool education resources through various means, renovate and build new kindergartens, and make full use of the layouts of primary and secondary schools to adjust surplus school buildings and teachers to hold kindergarten (classes). Kindergartens in township centers must play a guiding and demonstrative role for village kindergartens. Preschool education in impoverished areas shall also be supported.
Chapter 4: Compulsory Education
(8) Consolidate and enhance nine-year compulsory education. School-age children must receive compulsory education according to Chinese law. Compulsory education in China is mandatory, free, universal, and the most critical part of all phases of education. Focus on cultivating the moral conduct of students, stimulating their learning interests, improving their physical health, and helping them develop good habits. By 2020, compulsory education shall be universalized at a higher level, while teaching quality should be improved comprehensively. The development of preschool education shall be basically balanced among different regions, and all school-age children and adolescents should be guaranteed access to high-quality compulsory education.
Consolidate progress made in universalizing compulsory education. Adapt to the needs of urban and rural development, rationally plan the geographical layout of schools, and set up necessary teaching venues so that students can attend schools near their homes. The task of ensuring equal access to compulsory education for children of people who move to cities for work shall be ensured primarily by local governments and allotted mainly to full-time public primary and middle schools. Rules and regulations must be studied and formulated to accommodate these children to take entrance exams for higher schools upon finishing compulsory education without going back to their hometowns. A care and service framework and a monitoring mechanism operated chiefly by the government with participation from the public for the children left behind in rural areas by parents working in cities (农村留守儿童) must be set up and perfected. Accelerate the establishment of rural boarding schools and give priority to meeting the housing needs of the left-behind children. Necessary measures must be taken to ensure that school-age children do not have to drop out of school because of their family’s financial difficulties, lack of access to schools, or poor academic performance. Efforts should also be made to discourage students from giving up on their studies.
Improve the quality of compulsory education. Establish basic national standards and a monitoring system for the quality of compulsory education. Strictly implement the national curriculum standards for compulsory education and teachers’ credentials. Deepen the reform of curriculum and teaching methods and promote small-class teaching. Teaching posts for music, physical education, art, and other subjects must be filled, and schools must offer all subjects required without omission. Vigorously promote the teaching of Mandarin Chinese and the standard written forms of Chinese characters.
Improve the physical health of students. Studies, daily life, and physical exercise must be arranged for on a scientific basis, while ample time for sleep must be guaranteed. Promote “sunshine sports” to ensure that every student has one hour each day to exercise to improve their physical health. Advocate for a healthy diet to improve students’ nutrition and improve the nutrition of rural students in impoverished areas. Protect the eyesight of students.
(9) Promote balanced development in compulsory education. Balanced development is a strategic mission for compulsory education. To achieve this goal, a mechanism to safeguard balanced compulsory education development should be set up and perfected. Promote the construction of standardized schools for compulsory education, and teachers, equipment, books, school buildings, and other resources should be allotted in a balanced manner.
Bridge the gap between schools and focus on solving the problem of parents choose the best school for their children. Accelerate the transformation of weak schools and focus on improving the level of teachers. Exchanges of teachers and school principals within counties (districts) should be implemented. Quotas for enrollment in high-quality high schools and secondary vocational schools shall be distributed rationally among local junior high schools (初中). No elite schools or classes should be set up in compulsory education. While ensuring that school-age children and adolescents should attend public schools near home, private schools should be developed to offer more opportunities for choice.
Accelerate the efforts to bridge the education development gap between urban and rural areas. Establish a mechanism to integrate urban and rural areas in compulsory education development, with preference given to rural areas in fiscal funding, school construction, and teacher allocations. Coordinated urban and rural development must be realized first in counties (districts) before it is promoted in a broader scope.
Strive to narrow interregional disparities. Fiscal transfer payments shall be increased in favor of compulsory education development in old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority autonomous regions, border areas, and impoverished areas. Encourage developed regions to assist underdeveloped regions.
(10) Lessen schoolwork burdens on primary and middle school students. Excessive schoolwork is harmful to the mental and physical well-being of children and adolescents. Reducing schoolwork burdens on students is the shared responsibility of our whole society. Governments, schools, families, and communities must jointly address this problem by addressing both its symptoms and root causes. Reduce the burden of schoolwork at primary and secondary schools. Enable students to learn in lively ways and grow up happily and healthily. Primary school students should be the first to have their heavy burdens lightened.
Governments at all levels shall regard reducing heavy schoolwork burdens as a major task for education work, as well as a goal that calls for overall planning and implementation. Textbook contents shall be adjusted, and their degree of difficulty must be designed with a scientific footing. Student testing and assessment systems and school appraisal methods must be reformed. Standardize schooling and establish a system for monitoring and informing the public of students’ schoolwork burdens. Do not rank regions and schools by enrollment rates or enrollment indexes. Standardize preparatory organizations and teaching aid markets. Strengthen the construction and management of off-campus venues for events to enrich students’ extracurricular and off-campus activities.
Schools should reduce students’ schoolwork burdens so as to give students enough time to learn about society, think deeply, practice more, exercise, and amuse themselves. Improve teachers’ professional refinement, their teaching methods, and their ability to achieve classroom teaching results and reduce the amount of homework and exams. Nurture students’ interest in studies and hobbies. Curricula and syllabi must be followed strictly, and class times and lesson difficulty levels cannot be increased. The scores of graded exams and competitions of various kinds must not be used as the basis for enrollment or progression to higher grades during compulsory education.
Give full play to the important role of family education in the growth of children and adolescents. Parents should have the right concepts for education, master scientific methods of education, respect children’s healthy interests and temperaments, help their children cultivate good habits, and communicate and work more closely with schools to reduce students’ schoolwork burdens.
Chapter 5: High School Education
(11) Accelerate the popularization of high school education. High school education, which covers a pivotal period in a student’s self-development and formation of personality traits, is of special significance to improving the refinement of our citizens and to cultivating innovative personnel. Focus on cultivating students’ ability to learn independently, to be self-reliant, and to adapt to society to help them overcome the tendency to teach to the test (应试教育). By 2020, high school education must be universalized to meet the needs of junior high school graduates for high school education.
Appropriate enrollment ratios must be set for regular high schools and secondary vocational schools in light of economic and social development needs. These two categories of schools should generally maintain the same enrollment scale for some time to come. Provide greater support to high school education in impoverished areas in the central and western regions.
(12) Comprehensively improve students’ quality in high school. Deepen curricular reform and comprehensively implement syllabi reform to guarantee that students can finish their studies in all state-required subjects in liberal arts and sciences (文理). Create conditions to offer a variety of elective courses and provide more choices for students to set the stage for comprehensive and individual growth. Gradually phase out large class sizes. Actively carry out inquisitive learning, community service, and social practice. Establish a scientific teaching quality evaluation system, and institute academic proficiency tests and comprehensive student quality evaluations throughout high school education. Establish a student development steering framework to strengthen guidance over students’ ideals, mental health, and academic studies.
(13) Promote diversification of high schools. Promote schooling system diversification and expand high-quality education resources. Promote training model diversification to meet the development needs of students with different potentials. Explore ways and means for discovering and cultivating innovative talent. Encourage regular high schools to distinguish themselves. Encourage regular high schools with the right conditions to offer vocational training where possible. Explore integrated development models for high schools. Use various approaches to provide vocational education at schools for current students as well as graduates who have not entered college.
Chapter 6: Vocational Education
(14) Intensify efforts in developing vocational education. The expansion of vocational education must be given greater precedence partly because it is a major channel through which economic growth is boosted, employment is promoted, the people’s livelihoods are improved, and issues pertinent to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers are addressed and partly because it is a key link in the mitigation of structural conflicts between labor supply and demand. Vocational education should reach out to people and face society and strive to cultivate work ethics, occupational skills, employability, and career-starting abilities in students. By 2020, a modern vocational education system with well-coordinated secondary and higher vocational education must be in place to meet the requirements of adjusting the modes of economic development and restructuring industries, to embody the philosophy of lifelong education, and to satisfy the demand of the people for vocational education and the needs of the economy and society for high-caliber workers and technical talent.
The government must earnestly fulfill its responsibility to expand vocational education. Incorporate vocational education into economic and social and industrial development programs and adapt its scale and range of programs to economic and social development needs. Coordinate the development of both secondary and higher vocational education. Introduce sound mechanisms for multi-channel investments and increase vocational education funding.
Emphasize quality improvement. Promote service- and employment-oriented education and teaching reform. Implement a training model that incorporates work with study through collaboration between schools and enterprises and by placing students in internship positions. Develop vocational training alongside classroom education, and part-time schools alongside full-time schools. Formulate basic operational standards for vocational schools. Strengthen the establishment of faculty and training bases that are proficient in both theory and expertise and enhance the fundamentals of vocational education. Establish a robust system in which skilled personnel can teach in vocational schools. Improve the standards for teachers’ credentials and the methods for accrediting professional and technical positions (professional titles) based on the characteristics of vocational education. Establish a robust system to guarantee the quality of vocational education and invite enterprises to participate in the appraisal of teaching quality. Hold occupational skills competitions.
(15) Mobilize the enthusiasm of industries and enterprises in vocational education. Establish robust schooling mechanisms led by the government with industry guidance and enterprise participation. Enact legislation to advance and institutionalize collaborations between vocational schools and enterprises. Encourage industry associations and enterprises to run vocational schools and to entrust these schools to train their employees. Grant incentives to enterprises to encourage them to accept student internship training and in-service teacher training and increase investment in vocational education.
(16) Accelerate vocational education development to meet the needs of rural areas. Consider the strengthening of vocational education as a major endeavor in serving the establishment of the socialist new countryside. Strengthen coordination across basic education, vocational education, and adult education to promote the integration of agriculture, science, and education. Strengthen the responsibilities of provincial and municipal (prefecture) governments in developing rural vocational education, and expand rural vocational education and training to cover more rural areas with county-level vocational education centers run as needed. Strengthen the overall coordination and utilization of vocational education resources to promote collaboration between urban and rural areas and across regions and to make vocational education better serve agriculture, farmers, and the rural economy (“三农”). Strengthen the establishment of agriculture-related majors and boost the training of professionals to meet agricultural and rural development needs. Support all types of schools at all levels in their active participation in the training of new types of farmers (新型农民) who are educated, skilled, and can run businesses. Conduct training programs for people who move to the cities for work, as well as those who are leaving farming for other work. Gradually implement free work preparation training for the workforce of the new countryside.
(17) Enhance the appeal of vocational education. Improve policy support for vocational education. Gradually implement free secondary vocational education and improve financial aid for students with financial difficulties. Reform enrollment and teaching models. Actively promote a “dual certification” system that grants students both a diploma and a vocational permit and align the content of professional courses in vocational schools and professional standards. Improve the work permit system and implement the stipulation that graduates must be trained before they become eligible for jobs and employment. Formulate methods in which retired soldiers can receive vocational education and training. Establish a robust and cohesive framework for vocational education curricula. Encourage graduates to continue with on-the-job studies, and improve the system for enrolling vocational school graduates directly in higher schools to broaden the channels by which graduates can continue their studies. Improve the status and treatment of skilled personnel. Increase propaganda on and commendations for highly skilled personnel who make outstanding contributions, so as to foster an atmosphere in society that encourages diligence and excellence in every occupation (行行出状元).
Chapter 7: Higher Education
(18) Raise the quality of higher education. Higher education performs the important task of cultivating high-caliber professionals, developing science, technology, and culture, and promoting socialist modernization. Improving quality is at the heart of this task; it is a basic requirement in the effort to build the nation into a higher education superpower (高等教育强国). By 2020, the structure of higher education must be more balanced and distinctive. the overall level of talent cultivation, scientific research, and social services must improve comprehensively. A number of universities must reach or be close to becoming world-famous universities, and Chinese higher education must be significantly more globally competitive.
(19) Improve the quality of talent cultivation. Firmly establish a central position for the cultivation of talent in the work of colleges and universities and spare no effort in producing high-caliber professionals and top-notch innovators with steadfast beliefs, moral integrity, vast knowledge, and strong skills. Increase investment in teaching. Treat teaching as the primary aspect of teacher assessments and treat professor-led instruction of lower grade students as an important system of education. Strengthen the building of basic teaching infrastructure, including laboratories, on- and off-campus internship bases, and teaching programs and textbooks. Deepen teaching reform. Promote and improve the credit system, implement elastic schooling systems, and promote the blending of the liberal arts and sciences. Support student participation in scientific research and strengthen practical teaching aspects. Strengthen career and entrepreneurship education and career guidance services. Create a new framework for talent training that integrates the efforts of colleges and universities, research institutes, industries, and enterprises. Fully implement the “Higher Education Undergraduate Teaching Quality and Teaching Reform Project.” Strictly enforce teaching oversight. Improve systems that guarantee teaching quality and improve college and university (高校) teaching evaluations. Fully mobilize students’ enthusiasm and initiative to encourage them to study hard with a greater sense of integrity and to develop greater study habits.
Vigorously promote reform of the graduate student training mechanism. Establish a system in which research projects in the sciences and engineering are led by mentors, along with a system for mentor project grants. Implement a “dual mentor system” to combine production, scholarship, and research in graduate education. Implement the “Graduate Education Innovation Plan.” Strengthen management and continuously improve the quality of graduates, especially doctoral candidates.
(20) Elevate academic research. Give full play to the important role of colleges and universities in the state innovation system and encourage them to contribute to innovation in knowledge, technology, and national defense, as well as regional innovations. Vigorously carry out research in natural science, technological science, philosophy, and social science. While serving national objectives, encourage free exploration and strengthen basic research. Strengthen applied research with a focus on major practical issues. Promote the sharing of science and technology education resources among universities and colleges, research institutes, and enterprises. Promote innovative organizational structures for colleges and universities, and cultivate interdisciplinary teams and interdisciplinary research and teaching. Promote interaction between scientific research and teaching and combine talent training with innovation. Give full play to the role of graduates in scientific research. Strengthen the construction of key scientific research and innovation bases and technological innovation platforms in colleges and universities. Improve scientific research evaluation mechanisms based on innovation and quality. Actively participate in Marxist theory research and development projects. Fully implement the “Higher Education Philosophy and Social Science Prosperity Plan.”
(21) Strengthen social service capabilities. Colleges and universities must foster a willingness to take the initiative to serve the community in all aspects. Promote the integration of production, scholarship, research, and application, accelerate the transformation of S&T achievements into commercial products (科技成果转化), and regulate the development of the schooling industry. Provide continuing education services for members of the community. Carry out efforts to popularize the sciences and improve the scientific and humanistic values of the public. Actively promote cultural communication, encourage fine cultural traditions, and develop and advance our culture. Actively consult on decision-making, take the initiative to engage in forward-looking and strategic research, and give full play to the roles of brain trusts and think tanks. Encourage faculty and students to volunteer.
(22) Optimize a distinctive higher education structure. Establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism and continuously optimize the structure of higher education to adapt to the needs of national and regional economic and social development. Optimize disciplines, types, and sequences of courses to promote multidisciplinary programs and integration. Focus on expanding the scale of versatile and skilled professionals with applicable expertise. Accelerate the development of degree-granting graduate studies. Optimize regional education layouts and structures. Set up special funds to support local higher education and implement the Higher Education Rejuvenation Plan for the Central and Western Regions. New college enrollment quotas shall be tipped in favor of central and western regions that lack higher education resources, and expand the scale of recruitment in the central and western regions by eastern colleges and universities. Encourage eastern colleges and universities to strengthen their support for their western counterparts. Encourage the eastern regions to take the lead in higher education development. Establish robust systems for military personnel training that integrate military and civilian purposes and combine military efforts with civilian support.
Promote distinction in higher education. Establish a classification system for colleges and universities and govern them accordingly. The impact of policy guidance and resource allocation shall be brought into play to guide colleges and universities to position themselves properly in the higher education system, overcome the tendency toward homogeneity, form their own distinctive schooling philosophies and styles, distinguish themselves at different levels and in different fields, and strive to be the best.
Accelerate the establishment of first-class universities and academic disciplines. Continue to carry out the “985 Project” on the basis of establishing key disciplines and build a platform for innovation in advantageous disciplines. Continue to carry out the “211 Project” and launch special key academic discipline projects. Improve governance models, introduce competitive mechanisms, conduct performance evaluations, and carry out dynamic management. Encourage schools to open their best academic disciplines to the world. Support participation in or the establishment of collaborative international academic organizations or international science programs. Support the establishment of joint research and development bases with high-level overseas education and research institutes. Accelerate the pace of world-class and high-level university building to cultivate top-notch innovators and world-class disciplines, achieve internationally advanced original results, and contribute to the improvement of China’s overall national strength.
Chapter 8: Continuing Education
(23) Accelerate the development of continuing education. Designed for all members of society who have finished school education, and for adults in particular, continuing education is an integral part of a lifelong learning system. Upgrade continuing education concepts, increase investments in continuing education, and vigorously develop non-academic continuing education with a focus on human resource capacity building, and steadily develop diploma-granting continuing education. Emphasize education for the elderly. Advocate for reading for all. Extensively carry out community education in urban and rural areas and accelerate the establishment of all kinds of learning organizations (学习型组织) to fundamentally form a learning society where every citizen is committed to learning and pursues lifelong learning.
(24) Establish a robust framework for continuing education. The government must establish interdepartmental organizations to coordinate and guide overall planning for the development of continuing education. Include continuing education in the general development plans for localities and industries. Industrial administrative departments or industry associations must take charge of formulating continuing education plans and procedures for their respective industries. Accelerate the enactment of legislation on continuing education. Introduce robust incentive mechanisms for continuing education, and link continuing education to personnel management systems such as performance evaluations, job appointment (employment), position (title) recognition, and vocational registration. Encourage individuals to receive continuing education in various forms and support employers that provide conditions for employees to receive continuing education. Strengthen the supervision and evaluation of continuing education.
(25) Build a flexible and open system for lifelong education. Develop and standardize education and training services and coordinate the expansion of continuing education resources. Encourage schools, research institutes, enterprises, and other related organizations to carry out continuing education. Strengthen the construction of educational institutions and networks in urban and rural communities and develop community education resources. Vigorously develop modern distance education and build open platforms for remote continuing education and public services offered via satellite, television, and the internet to offer learners convenient, flexible, and personalized learning conditions.
Build “flyovers” for lifelong learning. Promote vertical and horizontal connections between all kinds of education at all levels and make multiple choices available to meet people’s diverse learning and development needs. Introduce a robust learning system that is generous on enrollment but strict on graduation standards (宽进严出). Run open universities, and reform and perfect higher education exams for self-taught individuals. Establish a system of accumulation and conversion of continuing education credits to achieve mutual recognition and convergence of different types of learning outcomes.
Chapter 9: Education for Ethnic Minorities
(26) Value and support education for ethnic minorities. Accelerating the educational development of ethnic minorities is of far-reaching importance to promoting economic and social development among these people and in the areas inhabited by them as well as to enhancing unity between people of all ethnic backgrounds in striving for common prosperity and development. It is necessary to strengthen leadership over education for minority peoples, to implement the Party’s ethnic policy, and to work pragmatically to address special impediments and outstanding problems that confront ethnic minorities and minority-inhabited areas in developing education.
Extensively conduct education on ethnic unity in schools at all levels and of all varieties. Promote the Party’s ethnic theory and policy and state laws and ordinances in textbooks, lecture on them in the classrooms, and instill them in the students’ minds. Give teachers and students guidance on fostering Marxist outlooks on the motherland, ethnicity, and religion to constantly consolidate the grand unity between people of all ethnic backgrounds and strengthen national pride and cohesion.
(27) Comprehensively improve the development of education among ethnic minorities and in minority-inhabited areas. Deploy public education resources in favor of minority-inhabited areas. Central and local governments must further expand support for the education of ethnic minorities.
Promote the coordinated development of all kinds of education at all levels in minority-inhabited areas. Consolidate the achievements made by these areas in popularizing compulsory education to ensure that school-age children and adolescents receive compulsory education in accordance with the law and to comprehensively improve popularization rates and teaching quality. Support the standardized construction of school buildings for compulsory education in border counties and impoverished counties in ethnic minority autonomous areas, with special efforts devoted to building boarding schools in these areas. Accelerate the development of high school education in minority-inhabited areas. Support the renovation, expansion, or construction of high schools in areas with a poor foundation for education. Intensify efforts in developing vocational education in minority-inhabited areas. Provide greater support for secondary vocational education in minority-inhabited areas. Actively develop higher education in minority-inhabited areas. Support universities and colleges for ethnic minority groups in their efforts to establish disciplines and talent teams and to improve the quality of their schooling. Further improve college and university preparatory classes for ethnic minority groups. Increase support for education development for ethnic minorities with small populations.
Vigorously promote bilingual teaching. Open Chinese language classes in every school and popularize the national common language and writing system. Respect and guarantee the right of ethnic minorities to receive education in their own spoken and written languages. Comprehensively strengthen bilingual preschool education. State support shall be given to bilingual faculty training, teaching research, and textbook compilation and publication.
Strengthen education counterpart support. Rigorously organize and implement the work of inland provinces and municipalities in support of education in minority-inhabited areas. Make full use of quality education resources to explore ways to attract more ethnic minority students to study in other inland provinces. Properly run vocational schools that enroll students from minority-inhabited areas. Increase the cultivation and training of teachers for minority-inhabited areas and improve their political awareness and professional quality. The state must draft incentive policies to encourage and support college graduates who teach at the grassroots level in minority-inhabited areas. Support minority-inhabited areas in their development of modern distance education and extend the coverage of quality education resources.
Chapter 10: Special Education
(28) Care for and support special education. Special education is a fundamental way to promote the comprehensive development of the disabled and to help them better establish themselves in society. Governments at all levels must speed up the development of special education and incorporate special education into local economic and social development plans and agendas. The whole society should care for and support special education.
Provide better comprehensive character building for disabled students. Attach importance to tapping into their potential, making up for their physical disabilities, and helping them face life with optimism, self-respect, and self-confidence so that they can become independent, self-supporting members of society. Strengthen the development of vocational skills and employability of disabled students.
(29) Improve the special education system. By 2020, every municipality (locality) and every county (city) that has more than 300,000 residents and a large number of disabled children shall have at least one special education school. Schools at all levels and of all types must actively create conditions to accept disabled students, and the number of disabled students enrolled by regular schools in both regular and special education classes must steadily grow. Compulsory education must be further popularized among disabled children and adolescents. The development of high school education for the disabled must be accelerated. Vocational education for the disabled must be vigorously promoted. Great importance must be attached to higher education for the disabled. Preschool education for disabled children must be developed to suit local conditions.
(30) Perfect guarantees for special education. The state must formulate basic national standards for the operation of special education schools, and local governments must set standards for per-student fiscal funding for such schools. Increase investment in special education. Encourage and support regular schools that provide learning and living conditions for disabled students that they have enrolled. Strengthen special education faculty building and take measures to guarantee teacher salaries and benefits. Increase the percentage of special education teachers that are cited and awarded as outstanding teachers. Increase funding for disabled students from families with financial difficulties. Gradually begin to offer free high school education for disabled students.
SECTION III: EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM REFORMS
Chapter 11: Reform of Cultivation System for Talent
(31) Update concepts of talent cultivation. The key to ongoing education reform lies in upgrading the concept of education. The focus of reform is on overhauling the system whereby talent is cultivated, and the aim of reform is to elevate the level of training of talent. Establish a comprehensive sense of development and strive to bring forth high-caliber professionals who are well-developed morally, intellectually, physically, and aesthetically. Establish the sense that every person has the potential to become a talented person so that education can develop each and every student into a useful member of society. Establish a concept of diversified talent, respect individual choices, develop personalities, and cultivate talent without limit. Establish the concept of lifelong learning and lay the groundwork for its sustainable development. Establish the concept of systematic cultivation and strengthen organic links between universities and primary and secondary schools, between teaching, research, and practice, and between schools, families, and society. Strengthen collaborations between schools, between schools and enterprises, between schools and research institutes, and between China and other nations in order to form an open system for talent cultivation with flexible mechanisms, interlinked channels, and diverse choices.
(32) Innovate cultivation modes for talent. Adapt to the needs of national and social development, follow the regular patterns of education and talent growth. Deepen education and teaching reforms, innovate education and teaching methods, and explore a variety of training methods so as to form a situation in which all kinds of talent and top-notch innovators emerge.
Attach importance to integrating learning with thinking. Advocate for heuristic, exploratory, discussion-based, and participatory teaching and help students learn how to study. Stimulate students’ curiosity, cultivate students’ hobbies and interests, and create an environment that is conducive to independent thinking, free exploration, and innovation. Adapt to the requirements of economic and social development and scientific and technological progress, promote curriculum reform, strengthen the compilation of teaching materials, and establish a robust quality supervision system for teaching materials. Deepen the study and definition of core content that students must master at different stages of education and formulate mechanisms by which teaching contents are updated. Give full play to the role of modern information technology and promote the sharing of quality teaching resources.
Attach importance to the unity of study and practice. Persist in combining teaching with labor and social practice. Develop practical and activity courses to enhance the effectiveness of science experiments, production internships, and skills training for students. Make full use of public education resources to carry out various extracurricular and off-campus activities. Build more extracurricular activity venues for primary and secondary school students. Strengthen the guidance of student organizations and encourage students to actively participate in volunteer services and public welfare undertakings.
Focus on teaching students in accordance with their aptitude. Be mindful of the differences between students in conduct and personality and develop each student’s potential. Promote the reform of teaching management approaches, such as graded teaching, students taking the same course from different teachers, academic credit systems, and a mentoring and tutorial system. Establish mechanisms to help students with learning difficulties. Improve methods in which top students are trained and provide assistance and guidance to students who want to skip grades, transfer to other schools or majors, or select advanced courses. Improve upon open, equal, competitive, and merit-based approaches to enrollment, improve methods of high school recruitment by recommendation for middle school students, and create new methods of graduate training. Explore models in which top students can be trained in high schools and in colleges and universities.
(33) Reform education quality assessments and talent assessment systems. Improve the evaluation of education and teaching. Establish scientific and diverse benchmarks for evaluation based on training objectives and talent concepts. Evaluate educational quality with the participation of the government, schools, parents, and all sectors of society. Keep records of student growth and improve the assessment of comprehensive quality. Explore a variety of evaluation methods to promote student development and encourage students to be optimistic, self-reliant, and to strive to become useful persons.
Improve the system by which talent is evaluated and selected and create an environment that is conducive to the cultivation of talent. Establish a scientific talent concept and establish a scientific and socialized talent evaluation mechanism based on job responsibilities and oriented by morality, ability, and performance. Strengthen the examination of practical abilities in the selection and employment of talented people and overcome the tendency of employers to simply focus on the academic qualifications of their employees.
Chapter 12: Reform of Examination and Enrollment Systems
(34) Advance examination and enrollment reform. Taking matriculation reform as a breakthrough in overcoming the shortcomings of single exams that determine the lifelong destinies of students, promote the implementation of quality education and the cultivation of innovative talents. Methods for separating enrollment from entrance exams must be explored to facilitate the selection of students through scientific approaches to promote the healthy development of students and maintain social justice. Professional institutions must be entrusted to organize the implementation of these methods under overall government administration. Schools must make their own enrollment decisions according to the law. Students must be offered multiple choices. These methods are designed to gradually bring about a new examination and enrollment system whereby exams are given in different categories, and students are evaluated comprehensively and enrolled based on diverse criteria. Strengthen the management of exams, improve the functions of professional examination organizations, and improve service capabilities and levels. Establish a national education examination steering committee to study and formulate examination reform programs and guide examination reform pilot projects.
(35) Improve high school exams and enrollment. Perfect methods for junior high schools to enroll local students without entrance exams. Improve academic aptitude exams and evaluations of students’ comprehensive quality so as to provide a more scientific basis for high school enrollment. Improve high school examination and enrollment methods and give play to the guiding role of rationally distributed quotas for outstanding high schools and secondary vocational schools. Standardize the procedures and methods for the enrollment of outstanding students. Secondary vocational schools shall enroll students or admit students on their own.
(36) Improve higher education exams and enrollment. Deepen the reform of examination content and forms with a focus on students’ comprehensive quality and abilities. Establish a national bank of questions for exam subjects in compliance with the selection requirements of colleges and universities and national curriculum standards to ensure that national exams are scientific, properly oriented, and standardized. Explore ways in which several exams can be held in a year on certain subjects and explore the socialization of exams.
Gradually implement categorized college entrance exams. National entrance exams for regular higher education institutions shall be organized uniformly across the nation, and entrance exams for higher vocational education shall be independently organized by provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. Enrollment methods for adult higher education shall be determined independently by provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. Further promote the reform of the graduate entrance examination system, strengthen the assessment of students’ innovative abilities, and give play to the role of mentors in the selection and enrollment process.
Improve the allocation of quotas and enrollment methods for higher education institutions and establish a robust multi-disciplinary mechanism that is conducive to promoting fair access to schools and to facilitating the selection of outstanding talent. Unified national entrance exam results serve as the basis for the enrollment of students in regular higher education institutions and can be combined with academic aptitude tests and overall quality evaluations to offer enrollment to outstanding students. Schools may admit students with exceptional talent who meet educational requirements on the basis of interviews or testing results. High school graduates who are well-developed and excel in their studies may be enrolled through recommendation. Students who meet requirements and are willing to work in industries or areas where employment is needed may sign agreements and be eligible for targeted enrollment. Special procedures and enrollment, by exception, should be established for talented people who have made outstanding contributions or have special talents in practical positions.
(37) Strengthen information transparency and social supervision. Improve the system for releasing examination and enrollment information to achieve information disclosure transparency, protect the rights and interests of candidates, and strengthen government and community supervision. Publicize the principles and methods for the allocation of college and university enrollment quotas, enrollment regulations and policies, admission procedures and results, and institutions’ independent enrollment methods, procedures, and results. Strengthen the enactment of examination and enrollment legislation, standardize school admissions procedures, and clean up and standardize the enrollment extra points policy. Strengthen examination security responsibilities, strengthen the introduction of an integrity system, and resolutely prevent and seriously investigate and punish examination and enrollment fraud.
Chapter 13: Building a Modern School System
(38) Further separate government functions from school management and detach school governance from school operations. Adapt to China’s national conditions and the requirements of the times to build a modern school system that runs schools according to the law, under autonomous governance and democratic supervision, and with public participation. Build a new relationship between government, schools, and society. Adapt to state requirements on administrative and management structural reform, clarify the government’s administrative powers and responsibilities, and define the rights and responsibilities of schools of all types and at all levels. Explore school management systems and schooling models to adapt to different types of education and talent growth and thus avoid the mere resemblance of schools. Improve school goal and performance management mechanisms. Improve school affairs disclosure systems and accept supervision by teachers, students, and the public. With the reform of the classification of public institutions, explore the establishment of a management system and supporting policies that are consistent with the characteristics of schools to overcome bureaucratic tendencies and do away with the practice of granting schools administrative rankings as well as government-led school administration.
(39) Extend school decision-making power. The government and its departments must establish service awareness, improve their management methods and supervision mechanisms, reduce and standardize administrative approval items for schools, and ensure that schools fully exercise their autonomy and assume corresponding responsibilities. Institutions of higher education shall follow state legislation and overall policies to independently carry out teaching activities, scientific research, technology development, and social services, independently set and adjust disciplines and majors, independently formulate school plans and organize their implementation, and independently set up teaching, research, and administrative institutions. They must independently handle internal income distribution, personnel management and appointment, and school property and funds management and disbursement. Expand the autonomy of regular high school and secondary vocational schools in terms of schooling and education models, resource allocation, personnel management, schooling collaborations, and community service.
(40) Improve the modern university system with Chinese characteristics. Improve governance structures. Public higher education institutions must uphold and improve a governance system that holds the school president responsible under the leadership of the Party committee (党委领导下的校长负责制). Improve the rules of procedure and decision-making procedures and allot the power to the Party committee and president in accordance with the law. Improve the selection and appointment of university presidents. Give full play to the important role of academic committees in curricula creation and academic evaluation and development. Explore effective ways to teach and give full play to the role of professors in teaching, academic research, and school governance. Strengthen the construction of educational workers’ congresses and students’ congresses and give play to the role of mass organizations.
Strengthen the construction of school charters (章程). All kinds of colleges and universities should formulate regulations according to law and manage their schools in accordance with such regulations. Respect academic freedom and create a relaxed academic environment. Fully implement systems for appointment and work post management. Establish scientific assessment and incentive mechanisms.
Broaden cooperation with the community. Explore the establishment of college and university councils or boards of directors and improve mechanisms for their long-term efficacy for greater public support for and supervision over school development. Explore models of close cooperation between universities and industries and enterprises, promote the sharing of resources between higher education institutions, research institutes, and social organizations, form an effective mechanism for coordination and collaboration, and improve schools’ capacity to serve the economy and social progress. Promote the outsourcing of college logistics.
Promote professional evaluations. Encourage professional agencies and intermediaries to assess the level and quality of college curricula, majors, and courses. Establish a scientific and standardized evaluation system. Explore ways to collaborate with international high-level education assessment agencies to form a school evaluation model with Chinese characteristics. Establish an annual report release system on higher education quality.
(41) Improve primary and secondary school management. Improve the system that holds principals accountable in their management of regular primary and secondary schools and secondary vocational schools. Improve the conditional requirements and appointment methods for principals. Implement management systems, such as school meetings, establish a robust system of faculty representatives, and constantly improve scientific and democratic decision-making mechanisms. Expand the autonomy of secondary vocational schools in setting up majors. Establish parents’ associations in primary and secondary schools. Guide the community and relevant professionals to participate in school governance and supervision. Give play to the role of enterprises in the development of secondary vocational schools. Establish a collaboration mechanism between secondary vocational schools and industries and enterprises.
Chapter 14: School Management Structural Reform
(42) Deepen school management structural reform. Adhere to the principle that education is for the public good and establish a schooling system in which schools provide diverse forms of schooling and are run a diverse group of entities under the guidance of the government and with public participation, and implement a pattern in which the government leads the running of schools and both public and private education are offered. Mobilize the enthusiasm of the whole society to participate in education, further stimulate the vitality of education, and meet the multi-level and diversified educational needs of the people.
Deepen the reform of the public-school schooling structure and actively encourage industries, enterprises, and other social forces to participate in public schools, support the development of weak schools, expand quality education resources, invigorate schooling efforts, and improve schooling efficiency. All localities can proceed from their own realities to conduct experiments such as running schools jointly and entrusting management of public schools to others to explore ways of schooling and to improve school performance.
Improve the provision of public services for non-compulsory education, improve preferential policies, encourage fair competition, and guide community funds into education through various means.
(43) Strongly support private education. Private education is an important growth point for the development of education and an important force for promoting education reform. Governments at all levels should regard the development of private education as a major task, encourage investments in and donations to schools, and urge social forces to organize various forms of education, such as schools that are run independently or jointly. Improve the management and operation mechanisms of independent colleges. Support the innovative systems and models of education of private schools and improve their quality to introduce a number of high-level private schools with distinct features.
Private schools and their students and teachers must be granted the same legal status as their public counterparts, and the autonomy of private schools must be guaranteed. Clean up and correct various types of discrimination policies against private schools. Formulate and improve preferential policies to promote the development of private education. Private schools granting bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees are subject to approval in accordance with prescribed procedures. Establish a robust social insurance system for teachers in private schools.
Improve fiscal support policies for private education. The government shall entrust private schools with education and training tasks and allocate appropriate education funds. People’s governments at or above the county level may set up special funds to support private schools according to the specific conditions of their respective administrative regions. The state shall give awards and recognition to organizations, schools, and individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the development of private education.
(44) Manage private education in accordance with the law. Departments of education must effectively strengthen overall coordination, planning, and administration of private education. Actively explore differentiated management (分类管理) of for-profit and non-profit private schools. Standardize the registration of legal persons in private schools. Improve the corporate governance structures of private schools. Establish private school councils or boards of directors according to the law to ensure that principals exercise their powers according to the law. Gradually implement a supervisory system. Actively give play to the role of party organizations in private schools. Improve the system of supervision and commissioners for private higher education institutions. Implement the right of faculty and staff of private schools to participate in democratic governance and supervision over their schools. Clearly change the legal mechanisms for changes to and decommissioning of private schools. Effectively implement the property rights of legal persons in private schools. Establish financial, accounting, and asset management systems for private schools in accordance with the law. No organization or individual may encroach upon school assets, withdraw school funds, or misappropriate school outlays. Establish a risk prevention mechanism and an information disclosure system for private schools. Expand the participation of society in the governance and supervision of private schools. Strengthen private education assessments.
Chapter 15: Administration System Reform
(45) Improve education administration systems with strong coordination and well-defined rights and responsibilities. By focusing on the transformation of government functions and decentralization, deepen the reform of the education administration system and improve the level of public education services. Clarify the responsibilities of governments at all levels, standardize schooling operations, promote the separation of administration from evaluations, and form an orderly education administration system that is detached from day-to-day affairs with clear powers and responsibilities and overall coordination. The central government shall bring education under unified leadership and administration, formulate development plans, guidelines, policies, and basic benchmarks, optimize the layout of disciplines and school types, structures, and geographic distributions, and the overall deployment of education reform experiments, and shall provide unified planning and coordination for regional education development. Local governments are responsible for implementing state guidelines and policies, carrying out educational reform pilot programs, and are responsible for education reform, development, and stability in areas under their jurisdiction.
(46) Strengthen provincial government education planning. Further increase provincial governments’ overall planning for all levels of education under their jurisdiction. Coordinate the administration of compulsory education, promote the balanced development of compulsory education in urban and rural areas, and implement fiscal responsibilities for developing compulsory education in accordance with the law. Promote the rational distribution of regular high school and secondary vocational schools, accelerate the popularization of high school education, and focus on supporting the development of high school education in impoverished areas. Promote the coordinated development of vocational education and public sharing of resources within provinces and support industries and enterprises in developing vocational education. Improve the system whereby provincial governments play a leading role in the administration of higher education, rationally set up and adjust the geographic distribution of higher education institutions, disciplines, and majors, and improve governance and school-running proficiency. Examine and endorse the establishment of higher education institutions that offer courses leading to a junior college diploma in accordance with the law and endorse the establishment of provincial-level government-administered higher education institutions that offer baccalaureate degrees as well as higher education institutions that have been selected for granting master’s degrees. Improve fiscal transfer payment systems at or below the provincial level and increase support for economically underdeveloped areas. Rationally determine and implement standards for schooling conditions and faculty sizes for schools at all levels and of all types according to state-mandated standards and local conditions. Coordinate comprehensive education reform, promote regional collaboration in education, and improve the level of economic and social development of education services. Support and urge municipal (prefecture) and county governments to perform their duties and develop and manage various types of education under their jurisdiction.
(47) Change government functions on education. Governments at all levels must earnestly perform their duties of overall planning, policy guidance, supervision and governance, and provision of public education services, establish a robust public education service system, gradually equalize basic public education services, and maintain educational equity and education order. They must change their single-minded approach to direct administration over schools and comprehensively apply legislation, grants, planning, information services, policy guidance, and necessary administrative measures to reduce unnecessary administrative intervention.
Improve the scientific and administrative effectiveness of government decision-making. Standardize the decision-making process. Before major education policies are promulgated, openly discuss and fully listen to people’s opinions. Establish an education advisory committee to provide consultation and argumentation for education reform and development and improve the scientific backing for major education decisions. Establish and improve basic state standards for education. Integrate national education quality monitoring and evaluation institutions and resources, improve monitoring and evaluation systems, and regularly issue monitoring and evaluation reports. Strengthen education supervision and inspection and improve education accountability mechanisms.
Cultivate professional education services. Improve the access, funding, supervision, and industry self-discipline system of educational intermediary agencies. Actively give play to the role of various social organizations such as industry associations, professional societies, and foundations in the public governance of education.
Chapter 16: Furthering Educational Openness
(48) Strengthen international exchanges and collaboration. Adhere to openness to promote reform and promote development. Carry out multi-level and wide-ranging educational exchanges and collaborations to improve the level of international education in China. Draw on internationally advanced educational concepts and experiences, promote the development of education reform in China, and enhance the international status, influence, and competitiveness of Chinese education. Adapt to the requirements of opening up the Chinese economy and society to the world and cultivate a large number of talented internationalized people with global vision who are well-versed in international rules and can participate in international affairs and competitions.
(49) Introduce quality education resources. Attract well-known overseas schools, educational and scientific research institutions, and enterprises and work together to set up educational teaching, training, and research institutions or projects. Encourage various types of schools at all levels to carry out various forms of international exchanges and collaborations and run a number of exemplary joint schools and education projects with foreign partners. Explore a variety of ways to use high-quality educational resources abroad.
Attract more world-class experts and scholars to China for teaching, research, and management and plan to introduce high-end overseas talent and academic teams. Introduce outstanding overseas teaching materials and increase the proportion of foreign teachers hired by higher education institutions. Attract outstanding Chinese students to return to China after they complete their overseas studies.
(50) Improve the level of exchanges and collaboration. Expand the mutual recognition of academic credentials and degrees from more countries and regions. Support teacher exchanges, student exchanges, credit recognition, and degree mutual recognition between Chinese and foreign universities. Strengthen cooperation with high-level universities abroad, establish a platform for collaboration in teaching and research, and jointly promote high-level research in basic sciences and high technology. Strengthen exchanges and cooperation between primary and secondary schools and vocational schools. Strengthen international understanding education, promote cross-cultural exchanges, and enhance students’ understanding and awareness of different countries and cultures.
Encourage Chinese high-level educational institutions to run schools overseas, strengthen international exchanges in education, and extensively carry out international cooperation and education services. Support international Chinese education. Improve the quality and level of Confucius Institutes. Increase international assistance in education and train professionals in developing countries. Broaden channels and fields for establishing overseas volunteer service mechanisms for college graduates.
Innovate and improve the mechanism for sending government-funded students to study abroad and openly select outstanding Chinese students to study at high-level universities and research institutions abroad. Strengthen policy guidance for students that study abroad at their own expense and increase financial aid and awards for outstanding self-funded international students. Adhere to the principle of “supporting students that study abroad, encouraging them to return to China, and allowing them to come and go freely” to improve services catering to and the administration of overseas students.
Further expand the scale of foreign students studying in China. Increase the number of Chinese government scholarships, focus on providing financial aid for students from developing countries, and optimize the composition of overseas students. Implement foundation courses for students who will be studying in China, increase the number of disciplines taught in foreign languages in higher education institutions, and continuously improve the quality of education in China.
Strengthen cooperation with international organizations such as UNESCO and actively participate in bilateral, multilateral, global, and regional collaborations on education. Actively participate in and promote the research and formulation of the educational policies, rules, and standards for international organizations. Establish a high-level international education platform for exchange, collaboration, and policy dialog and strengthen international exchange and collaboration in educational research fields and educational innovation practices.
Strengthen educational exchanges and cooperation between the mainland and Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Expand exchange content, create new modes of collaboration, and promote the common development of education.
SECTION IV: SAFEGUARDS
Chapter 17: Strengthening Faculty Building
(51) Build high-quality faculty. Education’s enduring future hinges on teachers. A good education can only be possible if there are good teachers. Improve the status of teachers, safeguard their rights and interests, improve their treatment, and make teaching a respected profession. Strictly enforce teacher credentials, instill virtue among them, and strive to create a well-structured and dynamic contingent of high-caliber professional teachers with moral integrity and teaching expertise.
(52) Strengthen professional ethics among teachers. Strengthen the education of teachers in professional ideals and ethics and imbue in them a sense of responsibility and mission for imparting knowledge to students and educating them. Teachers must care for their students, be strict and diligent in academic pursuits, remain impervious to fame and fortune, value self-respect and self-discipline, educate students with personality and academic charm, and be a guide in ensuring students’ healthy growth. Moral conduct must become the primary factor in the assessment, appointment (employment), and evaluation of teachers. Take comprehensive measures to establish mechanisms with long-term effects, form sound academic ethics and an academic atmosphere, overcome academic impetuousness, and investigate academic misconduct.
(53) Improve teachers’ level of professionalism. Improve teacher training systems and training programs, optimize faculty compositions, and improve their professionalism and teaching proficiency. Cultivate teachers, academic leaders, and principals who can serve as the backbone of education and teaching who are skilled in theory and expertise. Create a group of renowned teachers and academic mentors in various disciplines through training, academic exchanges, and project funding.
Improve the overall quality of primary and secondary school teachers, with an emphasis on rural teachers. Create new mechanisms to supplement the ranks of rural teachers, improve institutional policies, and attract more outstanding talent to education. Actively promote free education for students in training to become teachers, implement a special teaching posts program in rural compulsory education schools, improve compensation mechanisms, and encourage college graduates to become teachers in remote areas. Improve the teacher training system, with special funding pledged in government budgets, and provide full-time training for teachers every five years. Increase bilingual training for teachers in minority-inhabited areas. Strengthen the training of school principals and pay attention to the training of counselors and class advisors. Strengthen teacher education and build an open and flexible system for teacher education with teacher-training colleges as the mainstay and with participation from comprehensive universities. Deepen the reform of teacher education, create new modes of training, encourage internships, strengthen the training of work ethics and teaching proficiency, and improve overall training quality.
Strengthen the establishment of teachers in vocational colleges, with emphasis on teachers who are “skilled in both theory and expertise” (“双师型”). Increase the training and education of teachers in vocational colleges. Encourage colleges and universities and large and medium-sized enterprises to work together to build training centers to instruct teachers in both theory and expertise. Improve the system in which teachers practice their trades in enterprises. Improve personnel systems, hire (employ) professional and technical personnel with high practical skills and high-skilled personnel to serve as full-time and part-time teachers, and increase the proportion of teachers holding professional and technical credentials or vocational credentials.
Build a high-quality team of college instructors, with an emphasis on young and middle-aged teachers and innovative teams. Vigorously improve teaching proficiency, scientific research and innovation, and social service capabilities in college teachers. Promote interdisciplinary and trans-organizational cooperation to form high-level teaching and research innovation teams. Create new personnel management and salary distribution methods to guide teachers to concentrate on teaching and research and encourage outstanding young and middle-aged teachers to make contributions. Promote overseas high-level talent introduction programs, such as the “Chang Jiang Scholars Program” (“长江学者奖励计划”) and the “National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars” (“国家杰出青年科学基金”) to acquire academic leaders with international influence.
(54) Improve the status and treatment of teachers. Continuously improve teachers’ work, study, and living conditions and attract outstanding talent to make teaching a lifelong commitment. Enact legislation to ensure that the average salary for teachers is higher than, or not lower than, than the average salary of state civil servants and that it will be gradually increased. Implement performance-based pay for teachers. Tip policies on wages and accreditation (titles) and stipends in favor of teachers who have worked in the rural grassroots or in difficult work environments in remote regions for long periods of time. Construct spare school dormitories for teachers in rural areas. Study and formulate preferential policies to improve teachers’ working and living conditions. Care for the physical and mental health of teachers. Implement and improve social security policies such as health care and old-age pensions for teachers. Reward teachers who have long educated in or made contributions to rural areas.
(55) Build a sound faculty administration system. Improve and strictly implement the teacher permit system and strictly control the admission of teachers. Establish teacher credential standards to improve the qualifications and conduct requirements of teachers. Establish a regular-interval registration system for teacher credentials. Organize the unified examination and certification of teacher credentials by education administrative departments at the provincial level, with county-level education administrative departments taking charge of the recruitment, employment, accreditation, training, and assessment of primary and secondary school teachers in accordance with regulations.
Gradually unify standards for primary and secondary schools in both urban and rural areas with preferential policies in place for rural and remote areas. Develop kindergarten teacher payroll standards. Establish a unified sequence of academic (professional) titles for primary and secondary school teachers and set up a senior teacher position (title) in primary and secondary schools. Explore the establishment of a senior teacher position (title) in vocational schools. Formulate standards for the preparation of higher education institutions. Strengthen management of school posts, create new employment methods, standardize employment conduct, improve incentive mechanisms, and stimulate teachers’ enthusiasm and creativity. Establish and improve the rotation of teachers and principals in compulsory education schools. When teachers in urban primary and secondary schools are evaluated and hired for senior positions (professional titles), in principle, they must have more than one year of teaching experience in rural schools or weak schools. Strengthen teacher management and improve teacher removal mechanisms. Formulate credential standards for principals, promote the professionalization of principals, and improve the management level of principals. Introduce a rank structure for principals.
Create favorable conditions to encourage teachers and principals to explore boldly in practice, bring new ideas, models, and methods into education, form new distinctive teaching and schooling styles, create a contingent of educators, and advocate for educators running schools. Effectively commend and propagandize the meritorious deeds of model teachers. Establish honorary titles for teachers and educators who have made outstanding contributions.
Chapter 18: Guaranteeing Funding and Investment
(56) Increase investment in education. Education funding is a basic and strategic investment that supports the long-term development of the nation. It is the material basis for education and an important function of public finance. The system of government investment and fundraising for education through multiple channels must be improved, and investment in education must be substantially increased.
Governments at all levels must optimize the structure of fiscal expenditures, coordinate all revenue streams, and give priority to education as a key area of fiscal expenditure. Education laws and regulations must be strictly enforced to ensure that fiscal budget and excess revenue are formed and distributed in a way that ensures the statutory growth requirements for education, that the growth rate for fiscal appropriation on education is significantly higher than that of regular fiscal revenue, and that the average cost-per-student education expense, public spending, and teachers’ salaries increase steadily. An education surtax accounting for 3% of the value-added tax, business tax, and consumption tax will be levied in full and spent exclusively on education. Raise national fiscal education expenditures as a proportion of GDP to 4% by 2012.
Nongovernmental investment is a major part of education investment. Fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the whole society to carry out education, expand social resources into educational channels, and increase investment in education through multiple channels. Improve preferential finance, tax, monetary, and land-use policies and encourage and guide social forces to donate funds to and invest in schools. Improve the cost-sharing mechanism for noncompulsory education and adjust tuition fees based on economic development, training costs, and affordability. Improve stimulus mechanisms for donations to education and implement pre-tax deductions for income from charitable donations for personal education.
(57) Improve input mechanisms. Further define the responsibilities of governments at all levels to provide educational services, improve investment mechanisms for education at all levels, and ensure stable sources for school funding and its growth. All localities must formulate and gradually improve the basic standards for per-student outlay and per-student fiscal appropriation in accordance with basic schooling standards and basic education and teaching needs.
Compulsory education must be fully incorporated into the scope of financial security, and the State Council and local people’s governments at all levels must be jointly burdened according to their responsibilities. The people’s governments of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities are responsible for the overall implementation of funding for compulsory education. With regards to compulsory education funding for rural areas, further improve the fiscal load shared between the central and local financial authorities at a certain ratio on an item basis and improve guarantees. Resolve the debt of rural compulsory education schools as soon as possible.
Noncompulsory education is mainly funded by the government with learners shouldering a reasonable burden with support from various other channels. Preschool education must be financed by both government and nongovernment sponsors, with families sharing part of the burden. Fiscal input for regular high schools must be supplemented with funds raised from various channels. Funding for secondary vocational education must be raised from governments, industries, enterprises, and other nongovernmental quarters in accordance with the law. Higher education funding must be covered mainly by those who run the schools (举办者), with a reasonable share of the cost borne by students and established school funds that accept donations from the public also contributing.
Further increase investment in education in rural, remote, impoverished, and minority-inhabited areas. By increasing transfer payments, the central government must support the development of education in underdeveloped areas and minority-inhabited areas, strengthen key areas and weak links, and solve outstanding problems.
Improve the policy system for state funding. Take steps to support preschool education for children from rural families with economic difficulties and from low-income urban families based on the degree and development of universal preschool education at the local level. Improve living allowance standards for compulsory education boarding students from rural families and improve the nutrition level of primary and secondary school students. Establish a state subsidy system for high school students from families with financial difficulties. Improve the system of financial aid policies for regular undergraduate college and university students, higher vocational school students, and secondary vocational school students from families with financial difficulties. Improve the institutional mechanisms for student loans and promote disbursement to students in their hometowns. Establish a sound system for graduate education fees/tuition, improve financial support policies, and set up national scholarships for graduate students. Establish a dynamic mechanism in which state scholarships can be adjusted based on national economic development and fiscal capacities.
(58) Strengthen funding management. Manage finances in accordance with the law and strictly enforce the legal system of state fiscal management as well as financial and economic discipline. Establish a scientific and meticulous budget management mechanism, prepare budgets with a scientific basis, and improve budget execution efficiency. Establish a higher education funding advisory committee to enhance the scientific nature of fiscal allocations. Strengthen the establishment of school financial and accounting systems and improve the use of internal audit and control systems. Improve regulatory functions over education funding and attempt to establish chief accountants in higher education institutions to improve the use of funds and the professionalization of asset management. Chief accountants at public colleges and universities should be appointed by government committees. Strengthen the supervision of the use of funds and strengthen the audit of major projects and the use of funds throughout the process to ensure that the use of funds is standardized, safe, and effective. Establish and continuously improve a basic information bank for education funds and improve the level of informatization of fund management. Prevent financial risks in schools. Establish a performance evaluation system for funds and strengthen the evaluation of the use of major project funds. Strengthen the management of state assets in schools, establish and improve the management system for the allocation, use, and disposal of state assets in schools, prevent the loss of state assets, and improve the efficiency of use.
Improve the management of fees collected by schools, regulate school management of fees, charges, and fund use. Run schools with diligence, prohibit extravagance and waste, and build conservation-minded schools.
Chapter 19: Accelerating Informatization in Education
(59) Accelerate information infrastructure building in education. Information technology has a revolutionary impact on the development of education and must be given high priority. Incorporate education informatization into the overall strategy of national informatization development and deploy educational information networks ahead of schedule. By 2020, establish an education information system covering all schools in urban and rural areas to promote the modernization of teaching content, pedagogy, and methodology. Make full use of high-quality resources and advanced technologies, innovate operational mechanisms and management models, integrate existing resources, and build an advanced, efficient, and practical digital education infrastructure. Accelerate the popularization of computer terminals, promote the construction of e-campuses, and offer multiple access points to the Internet. Focus on strengthening the information infrastructure of rural schools and narrowing the gap in urban and rural digitalization. Accelerate the upgrade of the China Education and Research Network and the China Education Satellite Broadband Transmission Network. Formulate basic standards for education informatization and promote the interconnection of information systems.
(60) Develop and apply quality education resources. Strengthen the construction of an internet teaching resource system. Introduce high-quality international online teaching resources. Develop an online learning curriculum. Establish e-libraries and virtual laboratories. Establish an open and flexible public service platform for educational resources to promote the popularization and public sharing of quality educational resources. Create new modes of online education and promote high-quality, high-level distance education. Continue to promote distance education in rural primary and secondary schools so that teachers and students in rural and remote areas can enjoy quality education resources.
Strengthen information technology applications. Improve teachers’ proficiency in applying information technology, update teaching concepts, improve teaching methods, and improve teaching results. Encourage students to use information to actively learn and study independently and enhance their ability to use information technology to analyze and solve problems. Accelerate the popularization and application of information technology for all.
(61) Build a state education management information system. Formulate basic information management requirements for schools, accelerate the process of school administration informatization, and promote the standardization of schooling. Promote the informatization of government administration over education to accumulate basic information, grasp the overall situation, strengthen dynamic monitoring, and boost administrative efficiency. Integrate all levels of education administrative resources, build a national public education administrative service platform, provide a scientific basis for overall policy decisions, provide public education information to the public, and continuously improve the modernization of education administration.
Chapter 20: Promoting Rule of Law in Education
(62) Improve educational laws and regulations. Accelerate the building of a legal system pertinent to education in accordance with the requirements of fully implementing the basic strategy of governing the country according to law to improve socialist education legislation with Chinese characteristics. In accordance with the needs of economic and social development and education reform, the Education Law, the Vocational Education Law, the Higher Education Law, the Procedural Regulations on Academic Degrees, the Teachers’ Law, and the Law for Promotion of Nongovernmental Education must be amended to enact laws on exams, schools, lifelong learning, preschool education, and family education. Strengthen the construction of educational administrative regulations. Local governments must formulate local laws and regulations to promote the development of education in their regions according to local conditions.
(63) Comprehensively advance administration by law. Governments at all levels must fulfill their educational responsibilities in accordance with the requirements of building a government under the rule of law. Explore ways and means for reform of educational administrative enforcement, implement an accountability system for educational administrative enforcement, promptly investigate and deal with violations of education laws and regulations, infringement upon the rights and interests of learners, and disruption of the education order, and safeguard the rights and interests of schools, students, teachers, principals, and organizers according to law. Improve the educational information disclosure system to protect the public’s right to know of, participate in, and supervise in education.
(64) Vigorously promote on-campus rule of law. Schools must establish and improve school regulations and systems that conform to the legal requirements and reflect their own characteristics, run schools in accordance with the law, strictly govern schools, and earnestly perform their education, teaching, and governance duties. Respect teachers’ rights and strengthen administration over teachers. To protect students’ right to education, awards and penalties for students must be in accordance with the principles of fairness and justice. Improve the education relief system in line with the rule of law.
Carry out education in accordance with the law. Encourage teachers and students to improve their legal and civic awareness, to consciously know the law and abide by the law, to observe public order, and to set an example in obeying the law.
(65) Improve the superintendent system and the supervision and accountability mechanism. Formulate educational superintendent regulations to further improve the education superintendent system. Explore the establishment of a relatively independent educational superintendent institution and independently exercise superintendent functions. Improve the national school inspection system and build a full-time cadre of school inspectors. Adhere to administrative supervision and academic inspection and equally emphasize both supervision and guidance. Strengthen compulsory education supervision and inspection and supervise and inspect preschool and high school education. Strengthen supervision and inspection of the government’s implementation of education laws, regulations, and policies. Establish a system for publicizing supervision and inspection results and a system for setting deadlines for rectification.
Strictly implement an accountability system. Schools must willingly accept and cooperate with the people’s congresses at all levels and their standing committees in supervision and inspection of educational law enforcement as well as with the judiciary in judicial supervision. Establish and improve mechanisms for supervision at all levels. Strengthen supervision, auditing, and other special-purpose supervision. Strengthen public supervision.
Chapter 21: Major Projects and Pilot Reform Programs
(66) Major projects to be organized and undertaken: For 2010-2012, focus on the strategic goals of education reform and development, focus on promoting education equity, improve the quality of education, and enhance the capacity for sustainable development. Focus on strengthening key areas and weak links, improve mechanisms, and organize and implement a number of major projects.
Standardized construction of compulsory education schools: Improve the mechanisms for guaranteeing funding for urban and rural compulsory education on the basis of scientific planning, overall planning, balanced allocations, and geographical distribution. Implement safety projects for primary and secondary schools, focusing on the renovation of dilapidated buildings and the addition of earthquake-resistant reinforcements to achieve safety standards for primary and secondary schools in urban and rural areas. Renovate weak primary and junior high schools and ensure that teachers, teaching instruments and equipment, books, and sports fields of compulsory education schools are basically up to standard. Renovate and expand dormitories in major provinces that export migrant workers or in impoverished areas to improve the lodging conditions for rural children, especially left-behind children, to basically satisfy their needs.
Training compulsory education teachers: Continue to implement the special teaching post program for teachers in rural compulsory education schools to attract college graduates to teach in rural areas. Strengthen the training of teachers for short-handed disciplines in rural primary and secondary schools with a focus on cultivating and supplementing teachers urgently needed in remote areas, impoverished areas, and revolutionary base areas. Conduct full-staff training and organize training and study programs for principals. Improve the education of primary school teachers with a degree below a junior college education so that all primary school teachers will gradually attain an education of at least a junior college degree.
Promoting preschool education in rural areas: Support existing kindergartens in townships and villages. Support impoverished areas in the central and western regions in order for them to make full use of surplus buildings in primary and middle schools and social resources to renovate or expand kindergartens. Train rural kindergarten principals and core teachers.
Basic capacity building for vocational education: Support the construction of a number of vocational education training bases and improve the practical teaching capacities of vocational education. Complete large-scale training of teachers in both theory and expertise and hire (employ) a large number of full-time and part-time teachers with practical experience and skills. Provide support to turn a group of secondary vocational education schools into model schools and high-quality and distinctive schools for vocational education reform. Support the construction of model vocational colleges. Support the construction of a number of exemplary vocational education schools and promote the open sharing of quality resources.
Raising the quality of higher education: Implement the Revitalization Plan for Central and Western Higher Education to strengthen the establishment of advantageous disciplines and faculty at local colleges and universities. Implement the counterpart program in which eastern universities support western counterparts. Support the establishment of a number of production-study-research college bases and education and training programs for doctors and other personnel. Continue to implement the 985 Program along with the construction of innovative platforms in advantageous disciplines. Continue to implement the 211 Program and launch special key discipline projects. Continue to implement the “College and University Undergraduate Teaching Quality and Teaching Reform Project,” the “Graduate Education Innovation Program,” the “College and University Philosophy and Social Science Prosperity Plan,” and the “College and University High-Level Innovative Talent Program.”
Developing education in minority-inhabited areas: Consolidate the achievements of nine-year compulsory education in minority-inhabited areas. Support border counties and impoverished counties in ethnic minority autonomous areas to achieve standardization of compulsory education schools. Focus on supporting and cultivating teachers in short-handed border areas inhabited by minority ethnic groups. Strengthen bilingual training for teachers in primary and secondary schools and kindergartens in minority-inhabited areas. Accelerate the development of high school education in minority-inhabited areas and launch secondary vocational classes for minority ethnic groups in other areas. Support the renovation and expansion of education bases in underdeveloped counties and build a group of regular high school and secondary vocational schools. Support the construction of colleges and universities for minority ethnic groups.
Developing special education: Renovate and expand a number of special education schools, so that cities (prefectures) and counties (cities) with more than 300,000 people and children with disabilities have a special education school. Add teaching, living, and rehabilitation training facilities to existing special education schools. Provide professional training for special education teachers to improve their teaching credentials.
Financial aid for students from families with financial difficulties: Initiate a nutrition improvement plan for rural primary school students in minority-inhabited areas and impoverished areas. Exempt secondary vocational students who are from families with financial difficulties or study agricultural-related majors from tuition fees. Include regular high school students and graduates in the state education assistance system (国家助学体系).
Establishing informatized education: Increase the number of computers per hundred students in primary and secondary schools and equip classrooms in rural primary and secondary schools with multimedia distance learning equipment. Build a national database of e-teaching resources and a public service platform that effectively shares and covers all levels of education. Fundamentally establish a comprehensive national and provincial basic education information database with systems for monitoring and analyzing education quality, student flow, resource allocation, and graduate employment.
International education exchanges and collaboration: Support a number of exemplary Chinese-foreign cooperative education institutions. Support the construction of a number of joint laboratories and research centers in universities with international cooperation. Introduce a large number of high-level professionals from overseas countries and regions. Carry out overseas training for primary and secondary school principals and key teachers. Send more students abroad on government funding. Implement a study abroad program to bring more international students to China. Train talented people to gain fluency in foreign languages. Support the construction of overseas Confucius Institutes.
(67) Pilot reform programs to be organized and undertaken: A working office shall be set up to study, arrange, and guide national education reform. Following the principle of acting on an overall plan, getting things done one step at a time, advancing programs with pilot projects, and dynamic adjustment, some pilot localities and schools shall be selected to carry out major reform pilot projects.
Pilot reform for promoting quality education: An effective mechanism shall be established to reduce the schoolwork burden of primary and secondary school students and strengthen the establishment of basic education curriculum materials. Diversified trials of high school education models shall be carried out to develop special courses. Flexible training systems and other training methods shall be explored. The system in which education quality is monitored and evaluated shall be improved, and findings shall be regularly publicized.
Pilot for balanced development in compulsory education reform: An integrated development mechanism shall be established for urban and rural compulsory education. Countywide (district) exchanges of teachers and school principals shall be promoted in a systematic fashion. Quotas for enrollment in high-quality high schools and secondary vocational schools shall be distributed rationally among local junior high schools. Steps shall be taken to effectively tackle the problem of regional school selection in compulsory education.
Pilot for vocational education schooling mode reform: A mechanism for governments, industries, and enterprises to participate in schooling shall be explored, with a focus on promoting overall government coordination, cooperation between schools and enterprises, and collective school administration. Pilot programs shall be carried out to run entrusted training, orientation training, and order-based training for enterprises. Pilot programs shall be carried out to experiment with work-study programs, flexible schooling, and modular teaching. Vocational education shall be promoted in pilot programs to better serve “agriculture, farmers, and rural development” and to train the new type of farmer (新型农民).
Pilot for building lifelong education systems and mechanisms: A mechanism shall be established to connect regular, vocational, and continuing education in every region. A lifelong learning network and service platform shall be built. The development of community education resources shall be coordinated to actively develop community education. A system with a “bank of credits” shall be established for accrediting learning results.
Pilot reform for cultivating top-notch innovative talent: Approaches shall be explored to train innovative talents across all levels of education. Higher education institutions shall be encouraged to jointly train top-notch innovators. Eligible high schools shall be encouraged to collaborate with universities and research institutes to conduct research and experimentation on innovation and establish training bases for innovation.
Pilot for exam and enrollment system reform: Examinations of the academic level and overall quality of students in junior and senior high schools shall be improved. The unified implementation of entrance exams for high-level universities shall be explored. Independent enrollment exams or registration for enrollment based on academic proficiency testing scores shall be explored for higher vocational schools. Methods shall be explored for school autonomy on enrollment, enrollment on recommendations, targeted enrollment, and enrollment by exception. Initiatives shall be explored to bridge regional gaps in higher education enrollment opportunities.
Pilot for modern university system reform: The implementation of the university president accountability system shall be studied and formulated under the leadership of university Party committees. School charters shall be formulated and improved and mechanisms shall be explored to give an active role to school councils, boards of directors, and academic committees. Systems for appointments, employment, and work post management shall be comprehensively implemented. New employees shall be hired through open procedures, and flexible and diverse income distribution methods, such as a negotiable wage system, shall be studied. Various forms of full-time research teams shall be established, and a managerial personnel staff system shall be promoted. The system in which school affairs are publicized shall be improved.
Pilot for deepening schooling system reform: Reform experiments in joint public schools, Chinese-foreign cooperative education, and outsourced school management shall be explored. Pilot programs shall be conducted in the governing of for-profit and nonprofit private schools. Financial, accounting, and asset management systems shall be established for private schools. Effective approaches to the management and development of independent colleges shall be explored.
Pilot for local education investment guarantee mechanism reform: A mechanism with long-term effects for raising education funds through multiple channels shall be established. Basic standards for per-student school outlays and per-student fiscal funding shall be formulated at all school levels. Methods to coordinate government revenues shall be explored to support education. A mechanism shall be established for sharing of education funds on an itemized basis. Incentive policies shall be formulated to encourage investment in education. Preferential salaries and welfare policies shall be granted to teachers working long-term under harsh conditions at the rural grassroots and in remote areas.
Pilot for comprehensive provincial government coordinated education governance reform: The separation of public schools from the administration of government shall be explored, detaching school governance from school operation. Schools, disciplines, and specialties shall be distributed regionally in a rational way. Basic standards shall be formulated for schooling conditions, teacher staff sizes, and enrollment scales. Pilot programs shall be promoted for comprehensive education reform in counties (cities). An education superintendent system shall be constructed with a mechanism for independent supervision of performance by superintendent institutions. Pilot programs for collaboration between provinces on education shall be explored, and mechanisms for interregional collaboration shall be established.
Chapter 22: Strengthening Organization and Leadership
(68) Strengthen and reform leadership over education. Party committees and governments at all levels must be guided by Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thinking of the “Three Represents,” deeply implement and practice the scientific development concept, take promoting the development of education as a priority and scientific development as an important responsibility, improve leadership systems and decision-making mechanisms, and take time to study and resolve major issues in the reform and development of education and hot topics of public concern. Promote the scientific development of education as an important part of the performance evaluation of Party committees and governments at all levels and improve relevant assessment and accountability systems. Governments at all levels must regularly report work on education to their respective people’s congresses or standing committees. Members of Party and government leadership at all levels must be designated to maintain contact with the school system. Relevant departments must earnestly perform their duties and support education reform and development. Expand the people’s right to know and participate in the cause of education.
Strengthen the study of general education policies and development strategies to improve the scientific level of educational decision-making. Encourage and support education and scientific research personnel to integrate theory with practice, thoroughly explore the principles of socialist education with Chinese characteristics, study and answer major theoretical and practical issues of education reform and development, and promote the scientific development of education.
(69) Strengthen and improve Party building in the education system. Transform Party organizations in education into learning teams. Study in depth Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thinking of the “Three Represents,” and the scientific development concept. Arm party member cadres with ever-developing Marxism (发展着的马克思), and educate the masses of teachers and students on ever-developing Marxism. Deeply promote the introduction of the theory system of socialism with Chinese characteristics into textbooks, lectures on it in classrooms, and instill it into everyone’s minds. Launch study and education on the socialist core values system.
Improve the organization of Party organizations in schools of all types and at all levels. Fully implement the Party’s educational directives and train socialist builders and successors in schools through Party organization activities. Adhere to the direction of socialist education and firmly grasp the Party’s leading power over school ideology. Party organizations in colleges and universities must give full play to the core role of leadership in the reform and development of schools. Party organizations in primary and secondary schools must give full play to their core political role. Strengthen Party building in private schools and actively explore ways and means for Party organizations to play their roles.
Strengthen school governing bodies and the ranks of leading cadres and continuously improve their ideological and political awareness and school governance capabilities. Adhere to the principle of combining morality and professional competence, with preference to moral integrity, when selecting and appointing leading cadres at schools. Increase training and exchanges for leading cadres of schools.
Strive to expand the coverage of Party organizations, promote work innovation, and enhance their vitality and vigor. Give full play to the role of grassroots Party organizations in schools and the vanguard role of Party members. Strengthen the work of developing Party members among outstanding young teachers and students. Attach importance to the work of the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers in schools.
Establish a strong Party work style with clean and honest governance and professional ethics in our education system. Strive to uphold social morals, such as maintaining close ties with the people, seeking the truth and being pragmatic, diligence, and criticism and self-criticism. Adhere to the principle of treating both the symptoms and the root causes and dealing with them comprehensively, paying equal attention to both punishment and prevention while emphasizing prevention in a way that reflects the characteristics of the education system. Implement a strict accountability system for Party style and clean and honest governance. Push for innovation in education, supervision, reform, and institution building and resolutely punish corruption. Strictly and uniformly govern schools and actively promote open government and school affairs. Resolutely correct unhealthy tendencies and practices of all kinds that harm the interests of the people.
(70) Maintain harmony and stability in the education system. Strengthen and improve the ideological and political work of schools. Strengthen campus culture and carry out activities to create safe, civilized, green, and harmonious campuses. Pay attention to solving the practical difficulties and problems of teachers and students. Improve the mechanisms for investigation and resolution of disputes and conflicts. Improve emergency management mechanisms for school emergencies and properly handle various kinds of incidents. Strengthen campus network management. Establish and improve safety and security systems and working mechanisms, including staff defense, material defense, and technical security measures. Strengthen teacher and student safety training and school safety management and improve disaster prevention, emergency response, and criminal activity prevention. Strengthen the comprehensive management of public security on campus and in surrounding areas and create a stable, orderly, harmonious, and energetic environment where teachers and students can work, learn, and live.
IMPLEMENTATION
This Outline for medium- and long-term education reform and development is the first of its kind for the nation in the 21st century. It encompasses a wide range, a large time span, heavy tasks, and demanding requirements. It must be carefully deployed, carefully organized, and carefully implemented to ensure that all tasks are implemented.
Clearly define tasks and implement division of responsibilities. It is an important duty of Party committees and governments at all levels to implement this Outline. Under the unified leadership of the Central Committee, all localities and departments shall, in accordance with the deployment and requirements of this Outline, decompose the target tasks and clarify the division of responsibilities. The education administrative departments under the State Council are responsible for the organization, coordination, and implementation of this Outline. All other departments shall actively cooperate and work closely together with them and jointly implement these tasks.
Propose implementation plans and formulate supporting policies. All localities shall put forward specific plans and measures for their regions around strategic objectives, main tasks, system reforms, major measures, and projects identified in this Outline and organize their implementation in stages and in steps. All relevant departments shall promptly study and formulate practical and operational supporting policies and implement them at once.
Encourage exploration and innovation and strengthen supervision and inspection. Fully respect the pioneering spirit of the people, encourage localities to actively explore, be brave in innovation, and creatively implement this Outline. The good practices and effective experience of localities in implementing this Outline shall be promptly summarized and actively promoted. Conduct monitoring, evaluation, and follow-up inspections of the implementation of this Outline.
Extensively propagandize this Outline and mobilize efforts to create a conducive environment. Extensively propagate the Party’s education policies, widely propagate the importance and urgency of giving priority to the development of education and building a country rich in human resources, widely propagate the significance and main content of this Outline, and mobilize the whole Party and all of society to further care for the support of education. Create a social environment and public opinion that is conducive to reform and development and the implementation of this Outline.