‘Basic education’ in China comprises of pre-school education, nine-year compulsory education from elementary to junior high school, and standard senior high school(China.org.cn, 2006). There was also a 5-year alternative primary school education system which was implemented especially in rural areas during much of the 1980s and 1990s(N. Zhou & Zhu, 2007). A tiny number of students (2%) have 4-year schooling at junior high school stage (China Education Center, 2015). Today however, most places across the country are following the 6-year primary school education and 3-year junior high school education system.
China’s basic education system can also be divided into two main stages: the compulsory education stage and the post-compulsory education stage. The compulsory education stage takes 9 years to complete, divided into 6-year primary school education and 3-year junior
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high school education. Schools in compulsory education stage enrol students in the catchment area.
The ‘Compulsory Education Law of the People’s Republic of China’ was first introduced in 1986. Since then, governments at various levels have committed to implementing the 9-year compulsory education with the aim of the universalization of basic education nationwide, especially in rural, poor and ethnic minority regions (China Education Center, 2015). This law was amended and adopted at the 22nd Session of the Standing Committee of the Tenth National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China on June 29, 2006, and was soon enacted and put into effect in the same year (Lawinforchina, 2015). This amended law stipulated its purpose of ‘guaranteeing the right to compulsory education of school-age
children and adolescents, ensuring the implementation of the compulsory education policy and promoting the quality of the whole nation’ (Article 1). ‘Compulsory education’ was
defined in it as ‘theeducation which is implemented uniformly by the State and shall be
received by all school-age children and adolescents. It is a public welfare cause that shall be guaranteed by the state’ (Article 2). ‘Compulsory education’ also means ‘free education’ for
individuals as ‘no tuition or miscellaneous fees may be charged in the implementation of
compulsory education’, and the State takes responsibility for guaranteeing funds and ensuring
the implementation of the compulsory education system (Article 2). Significant progress has been made since the introduction of the 1986 ‘Compulsory Education Law’, for example, statistics show in 2010, the net enrolment of children at primary school age was above 99%, and the primary school graduates who continued their study in junior high schools accounted for 99%. In 2010, the total number of primary schools in China was 280,184 with an
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enrolment of 17,388,465 students. Altogether there were 87,665 secondary schools across the country (China Education Center, 2015).
The post-compulsory education stage refers to senior secondary school education, which includes 3-year senior high schools, adult high schools, secondary specialized schools, vocational high schools, technical schools, and secondary technical schools for adults (China.org.cn, 2015). Generally speaking, students who complete junior high school will either further their education to senior high school, which takes 3 years to finish and will lead on to higher education (university or college) to obtain a degree or vocational high school, which is prone to immediate employment after graduation. The emergence of vocational high schools (zhi ye gao zhong) is a result of China’s economic reforms in the 1980s which brought market elements into the economy, eventually transforming the traditional socialist ‘planned economy’ pattern into the socialist ‘market-oriented economy’ pattern (K.-M. Cheng, 1994). This ‘market-oriented economy’ pattern has radically changed the operational mechanism of the economy in China and, as a consequence, it has also brought fundamental changes to young adults’ ideologies. For example, the notion of ‘job’ and the concept of ‘choice’3 were developed among young Chinese citizens for the first time in over forty years
as a result of great variety of jobs that were created and offered by all types of industrial and commercial units in the country (K.-M. Cheng, 1994). Vocational high schools emerged to meet the needs of individuals who prioritized specific skills training that were considered as making students more employable. These tended to be in and remain in areas where the job market is promising. The programmes and courses are essentially in-house training
3Since the communist take-over in 1949 and before China’s economic reforms in the early 1980s, jobs and choices were perceived by Chinese people especially young school graduates as submitting to the national needs for the purpose of socialist development. There was strong indoctrination and ideological education in the socialist China at that time that young people should always be subject to the national needs. It was
unequivocally propagated across the nation that when there was contraction between individual interests and collective interests, the later should always prevail. (K.-M. Cheng, 1994)
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programmes for specific employers (K.-M. Cheng, 1994). As a result, graduates of these schools are often readily recruited by potential employers and are usually paid a higher salary than graduates from elsewhere (K.-M. Cheng, 1994). In this sense, such job-oriented training provided in these schools is more attractive than higher education for young adults who value the practicality of this type of education as universities do not assign jobs.