Less access to high school in rural China and its impact for sustainable development for economy and social equality

• In Event: Poster session 2

Proposal

According to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital(Bourdieu 1977), children from the upper class perform better than the children from the lower class about the academic achievement. This is because children from the upper class are exposed to high-status culture in their family context, and thus more likely to possess cultural capital which are necessary for the success of the school system. When we utilize Bourdieu’s theory in China, the different possession of “cultural capital” between urban area and rural area also exists. To clarify it clearly, culture of urban area can be defined as “elite culture”. At the same time, culture of rural area is defined as “labor culture”. This difference is resulted from the distribution of resources. The urban area has controlled the rules for designing the courses, grading their scores and selecting the books for school. In addition,one of the representative theories in education stratification is EMI hypothesis. I think this hypothesis is suitable for China. Even though the whole quantity of education is increased, the quality gap of education between urban areas and rural areas has expanded. According to REAP program research, only one-third of students in rural area have access to the high school, comparing with the 90% of the urban students can go to the high school. As a energetic society, school system should be function as a tool to provide people with opportunities to achieve their social mobility. What is more, if the gap between urban education and rural education can not be reduced, this will influence the whole human capital for China’s future economics. When considering the sustainable development of economy, policy makers in China should take measures to enhance the enrollment rate for rural students.
Although there are a lot of researches about China education, they focus on the access to college and elite college. Liang and Zhang conducted a research about the constitution of Peking University and Suzhou University from 1949-2002, which is called “Silent Revolutionary” . Some may pay attention to the family effects on children and gender differences of academic performance in compulsory education(Wang;Gong). Few of them focus on the transition from middle school to high school. Our research plans to find out why there are more proportions of rural students fail in the exam for high school than urban students. We think this problem should be attached importance to is because of the accumulation of superiority. If a student can not be selected by key high school, the chance for him to enter the college is mere. In order to increase the rural children access to the college or elite university, we should enhance their education opportunity for the high school.
Our research is an empirical research. We decide to use CFPS(China Family Panel Study) data in 2016 to examine the research questions. The main factors we want to exam include regional economic development, parents’ education degree,personal expectation for school and teachers’ quality. Two main comparisons have been made: one comparison is made between the urban areas and rural areas in the data; another comparison is made among some provinces. By comparing, our research desires to examine the factors that influence the rural students why they fail in the examination for high school. Using the comparative perspective, we portray the extent which the gaps between urban and rural area exists.
One of the UN sustainable development goals is to achieve quality education. When people get access to the education, they can break the cycle of poverty. This is because education empowers people everywhere to live more healthy and sustainable lives. Our research aims to find out the reasons why rural students fail in the examination for the high school. Then, specific measures can be adopted to increase the enrollment rate for the high school. Education helps the rural students prepare for the labour market and reduces the inequality between the urban and rural areas, providing a sustainable development for China.

Authors

• Li Yan, UCLA

• Zhe Zhang, UCLA